Read Voyage to Alpha Centauri A Novel Michael D O'Brien 9781621642084 Books
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Set eighty years in the future, this novel is about an expedition sent from Earth to Alpha Centauri, the star closest to our solar system. The Kosmos, a great ship that the central character Neil de Hoyos describes as a "flying city", is immense in size and capable of more than half light-speed. Hoyos is a Nobel Prize winning physicist who has played a major role in designing the ship.
Hoyos has signed on as a passenger because he desires to escape the seemingly benign totalitarian government that controls everything on his home planet. He is a skeptical and quirky misanthropic humanist with old tragedies, loves, and hatreds that are secreted in his memory. The surprises that await him on the voyage--and at its destination--will shatter all of his assumptions and point him to a true new horizon.
Our fascination with the near-angelic powers of new technology, its benefits and dangers, its potential for obsession and catastrophe, raises vital questions that this work explores about human nature and the cosmos, about man's image of himself and where he is going --and why he seeks to go there.
Read Voyage to Alpha Centauri A Novel Michael D O'Brien 9781621642084 Books
"But, like an 8 year old with a flashlight under the covers, I stayed up WAY too late last night. Who can blame me? I was on a trip to outer space with a good friend!
This book is subtle, that is Mr. O'Brien's style. As my daddy always said "still waters run deep". It is not smash bang Sciffy junk food (not that there is anything wrong with Sciffy, I love a good rollicking tale). This book is a fine dining experience, all the courses, linen table cloths and soft lighting. It is a book to be savored. Another reviewer called it boring, I shake my head. Is a voyage across the ocean on a sailboat boring because one is used to riding jet-skis?
I have chronic health issues that keep me in constant pain. Mr. O'Brien is graciously taking me away on this voyage. That is worth the price of admission (the most I have ever paid for a Kindle book!)
Will update when I finish the novel... I remember the end of the first Michael O'Brien novel I read - "Strangers and Sojourners" - I wept. I did not have a tear trickling down my face, I did not cry, I wept. It was that powerful. Already I have had tears in this book, I expect more to come."
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Tags : Voyage to Alpha Centauri A Novel [Michael D. O'Brien] on . Set eighty years in the future, this novel is about an expedition sent from Earth to Alpha Centauri,Michael D. O'Brien,Voyage to Alpha Centauri A Novel,Ignatius Press,1621642089,Christian - Futuristic,Science Fiction - General,Literature Fiction / Genre Fiction,FICTION / Christian / Futuristic,FICTION / Science Fiction / General,Fiction,Fiction-Science Fiction,Fiction/Christian - Futuristic,GENERAL,General Adult,Science Fiction,United States
Voyage to Alpha Centauri A Novel Michael D O'Brien 9781621642084 Books Reviews :
Voyage to Alpha Centauri A Novel Michael D O'Brien 9781621642084 Books Reviews
- But, like an 8 year old with a flashlight under the covers, I stayed up WAY too late last night. Who can blame me? I was on a trip to outer space with a good friend!
This book is subtle, that is Mr. O'Brien's style. As my daddy always said "still waters run deep". It is not smash bang Sciffy junk food (not that there is anything wrong with Sciffy, I love a good rollicking tale). This book is a fine dining experience, all the courses, linen table cloths and soft lighting. It is a book to be savored. Another reviewer called it boring, I shake my head. Is a voyage across the ocean on a sailboat boring because one is used to riding jet-skis?
I have chronic health issues that keep me in constant pain. Mr. O'Brien is graciously taking me away on this voyage. That is worth the price of admission (the most I have ever paid for a book!)
Will update when I finish the novel... I remember the end of the first Michael O'Brien novel I read - "Strangers and Sojourners" - I wept. I did not have a tear trickling down my face, I did not cry, I wept. It was that powerful. Already I have had tears in this book, I expect more to come. - To say much of anything about the book is to reveal too much. It is science fiction in the same way C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy is science fiction looking at faith and the world of today at the arm's length of science fiction. There is really not much science, and one realizes with growing dread not much fiction, either. A handpicked crew giant spaceship makes a nine-year voyage to Alpha Centauri to see what they can see. The story is told through the diary of an old curmudgeon, a Nobel prizewinning scientist whose discoveries helped make the voyage possible. Much of the novel involves his and others' atempts to adapt to the comfortable tedium. There are greater threats than tedium, however, and a theme of power and subversion is developed during the voyage.
The reason this reviewer did not give it five stars is because he found parts of The novel tedious, as well. I have read other novels by this author, and I found them to be overlong, too. Charitably, let's say it is a leisurely exploration not of space, but of the microcosm of one Earth vessel; not of The future but the present; and not of science but of faith.
There is a surprise pivot that at least provides a payoff for the tedium of the outbound voyage. In case it is not otherwise clear, this is a self-consciously Christian, particularly Catholic, novel. The Christian content is worked into the fabric of the novel, however, as themes. Rarely does it become explicit, which is probably a good thing for the novel. It is a serious novel, worthy of the times we are in, and deserving a wide audience. It is not an easy read, however. If there is much at all of the author in his main character, he probably doesn't care. You'll be a richer person for having read it. - In Voyage To Alpha Centauri (Ignatius Press, ISBN 978-1-58617-832-1), Michael O’Brien, Canadian writer and painter, gives us a grand tale of a space voyage to Alpha Centauri, the star closest to our own solar system. Voyage puts us on board the Kosmos, an enormous space vessel carrying over six hundred people scientists, technicians, pilots, workers in the ship’s restaurants, janitors.
The round trip to this next solar system takes nineteen years, with one of those years given over to exploration of one of the planets. The physicist whose ideas helped make the journey possible is Neil de Hoyos, who is the narrator and central character of the story. Both De Hoyos and the other passengers aboard the ship are leaving behind an earth governed by a strong central government which spies continually on its citizens through a variety of electronic devices, including insect-sized drones.
While on the flight to Alpha Centauri, de Hoyos and a few others, including a heroic young hacker from maintenance, discover that the security officers of the ship are also monitoring all members of the crew. This spying—think National Security Agency, 2013—angers de Hoyos to the extent that when, invited to give a speech at one of the ship’s cultural forums, he instead reveals the spying. Punished by being forced to take medication for his supposed “mental breakdownâ€â€”the doctor instead gives him a placebo—de Hoyos eventually becomes a hero to the rebels aboard the ship.
Like all of O’Brien’s novels, Voyage to Alpha Centauri is a hefty tome capable of serving as a doorstop or weapon, and like those other books, Voyage also carries with it a cargo of ideas. Topics ranging from God to marriage and the family, from genetics to physics, fill the book and will entertain and instruct the reader who enjoys philosophy in the guise of fiction. Because the other travelers are from all parts of the earth, O’Brien is free to look at other ideas and religions as well the concept of freedom versus security, for example, or the contrasts between Eastern and Western thought. History and literature are also given heavy play in these conversations, so that the novel makes in many respects for mediation on the meaning of human personhood.
The esoteric parts of the story, however, never impede the story itself or diminish the many details regarding the Kosmos and its journey. O’Brien describes the ship so well, from its lounges and cabins to the working of its engines, that readers quickly come to see how much time and effort he put into his futuristic creation. Some of the gadgetry—the computers, the doors that open at the sound of a voice, the medical treatments—are not the stuff of Start Trek, but instead seem very real extensions of the electronics available today.
Like many other works of science fiction, Voyage to Alpha Centauri also contains a meditation and a warning on science itself. The explorers who come to the new planet, a veritable Eden, find there the vestiges of an old civilization, a cruel and barbarous society of conquerors and conquered, of masters and slaves. The slave-masters who came eons ago from another planet left behind a device which the new visiting scientists cannot resist tinkering with, and in their eagerness to explore this old technology they unleash upon themselves and on part of the planet a horror of blood, fire, and death. (To say anything more specific here would damage the plot of the book).
This overarching theme of Voyage To Alpha Centauri—the clash of world views—has long played a part in O’Brien’s novels and should be of vital concern to any reader interested in today’s issues of individual privacy, religious freedom, and the threat of Big Brother. For those looking for a lengthy book filled with big ideas for a winter’s read, Michael O’Brien’s Voyage To Alpha Centauri entertains and casts a light on the idea of truth. - I read this is a few evenings. It was quite slow in places but did hold my interest. It was detailed and dealt with humanitarian and authoritarian issues, but it was decidedly pro-religion and laced with it throughout. I wanted to see where it would end up, and it ended up asserting that a religious society is best and that god is real, and that Noah's flood happened. I gave it four stars because the story and writing were good, though some of the plot turns were a big stretch.
