Teaser

Are we alone in the universe? It is a question that has tormented humanity for time immemorial. But what if we had proof of alien life? What if that life was coming to visit? How would humanity handle these revelations . . ?

Review

As a child, I was obsessed with UFOs. The stories of Betty and Barney Hill, Travis Walton, and Alan Godfrey formed a large part of my early exposure to the unknown mysteries of the world. I still listen to an alarming number of podcasts on the topic of the unexplained. But would I classify myself as a believer? Absolutely not. Oh, I’m sure something happened to all these witnesses. Just as I’m equally sure that alien life exists somewhere out there in the cosmos. I just don’t think those two things have much to do with one another. I think the fields of parapsychology and Ufology vary between well-intentioned investigation, and people being a little bit silly.

Kevin D. Randle is, for whatever the term means, a professional and experienced Ufologist. I haven’t looked into the man to see what end of the spectrum between serious scientist and raving lunatic he falls into, and let us not discount the individuals who are both, but that doesn’t really matter. Signals is a work of fiction, and that’s what I’m here to judge.

My judgement finds the book wanting on a number of levels. The prose is the sort you’d expect to find in an airport thriller. It delivers the plot efficiently, and occasionally drops a horribly clunky phrase along the way. Randle also has a very strange habit of describing in great detail a person’s physical features, which feels reminiscent of eyewitness statements. The whole style is slightly journalistic, but these descriptions of faces had a tendency to pull me out of the story.

The overall plot is one told through a seemingly endless series of boardroom meetings and press conferences. There’s a disappointingly plausible politician wilfully misinterpreting a scientist’s report for political gain, but other than this one bit of machination, everyone else in this book is constantly jumping to conclusions. There’s no real sense of anything being thought through as the story leaps from one escalation to the next. Sometimes it works, but more often it does not.

As an aside, I have no idea when this book is supposed to be set. Most of it seems to be present day, or at least a version thereof with a fictional US president and all the usual handwaves of political drama (we never find out which party votes which way, only that ‘they’ are voting against ‘us,’ which is infuriating when politics plays such a large role. But by far the most shocking moment is when the characters casually head to a well-established, and hitherto unmentioned, base on Mars.

There’s not a whole lot else to say about Signals. If you like SyFy original movies, then maybe give this one a read. As for myself, I will happily consign it to the junk pile.

Book Stats

• The Exploration Chronicles #1
• Published 2003
• 263 Pages