{"id":8,"date":"2010-09-21T21:55:40","date_gmt":"2010-09-21T20:55:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/?p=8"},"modified":"2011-01-16T13:56:49","modified_gmt":"2011-01-16T13:56:49","slug":"mini-review-jack-mcdevitt-the-engines-of-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/?p=8","title":{"rendered":"Mini-review: Jack McDevitt, The Engines of God"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Jack McDevitt<\/strong> <em>The Engines of God<\/em> (Voyager 1996; \u00a35.99 pb, 419pp)<br \/>\nOr <em>Engines of God <\/em>as the cover has it. &#8220;Classic sense-of-wonder sf meets <em>The X-Files<\/em>&#8221; puffs the blurb, straining for a market, but don&#8217;t be put off: this intelligent, humane, and very readable book has little in common with either. Instead it&#8217;s an alien-contact mystery, with archaeologists as heroes. Why are various relics &#8211; seemingly purposeless sculptures &#8211; scattered round the nearer star systems, and why does dating place them alongside the extinction of various races? Reminiscent of Kim Stanley Robinson (<em>Icehenge<\/em>) and Paul McAuley (<em>Four Hundred Billion Stars<\/em>), this thoughful and somewhat bleak book is warmly recommended.<br \/>\nAmazon UK link: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/0006482279?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=roast-21&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=6738&amp;creativeASIN=0006482279\">The Engines of God (Voyager)<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\" bzzizxjiqizvbmktpror bzzizxjiqizvbmktpror bzzizxjiqizvbmktpror bzzizxjiqizvbmktpror\" style=\"border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.co.uk\/e\/ir?t=roast-21&amp;l=as2&amp;o=2&amp;a=0006482279\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jack McDevitt The Engines of God (Voyager 1996; \u00a35.99 pb, 419pp) Or Engines of God as the cover has it. &#8220;Classic sense-of-wonder sf meets The X-Files&#8221; puffs the blurb, straining for a market, but don&#8217;t be put off: this intelligent, humane, and very readable book has little in common with either. Instead it&#8217;s an alien-contact &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/?p=8\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Mini-review: Jack McDevitt, The Engines of God&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54,"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions\/54"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vermilionsands.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}