Deepsix is concerned with the motivating force that drives all scientists--the quest for truth, for expanding the limits of human knowledge. How much are we willing to risk for that moment of discovery, of knowing what no other soul yet knows? Our time? Our reputations? Our careers? Our lives?

The premise is this: just weeks before the planet Deepsix will be destroyed by a collision with a gas giant, ruins are detected on its surface, suggesting the presence of civilization. The Academy diverts scientists from the nearest spaceship to go down and explore, and they are joined by their century's Ellsworth Toohey: a misogynistic, sanctimonious gadfly who has never before been off of Earth's surface. The party's landers are destroyed in an earthquake induced by the approaching gas giant, so now they must find a way to get off of Deepsix before it is destroyed by the collision. Needless to say, their excavations are placed on the back burner.

The physics describing the space travel and the archeology used to reconstruct the lost culture of Deepsix are interesting and explained well. There is plenty of action and suspense--will the party survive? And the evolving characters and group dynamics are more complex than those usually found in science fiction books, making Deepsix a worthwhile read. --Diana Gitig

From Publishers Weekly
Those who like their science hard and their alien adventures bloody will enjoy this latest from Philip K. Dick Award runner-up McDevitt (The Hercules Text). In the 23rd century Deepsix is a planet in deep trouble. In about three weeks a Jovian-sized world will collide with it. Although Deepsix is a treasure trove of life, it has been left unexplored for the last 20 years because hostile animals slaughtered most of the first human landing party. Now, with the discovery of traces of an advanced civilization on the planet, a new expedition hastily sets out to rescue bits and pieces of the culture before they are lost forever. To find the lander that was abandoned two decades earlier, the disgraced commander of the original expedition must make a deadly trek across Deepsix with (among others) two feisty women and a misogynistic celebrity writer who once pilloried the team leader in the press. Goaded by their off-planet superiors, they also have to solve the mystery inherent in the disappearance of Deepsix's civilization. McDevitt puts his characters into predictable jeopardies while methodically solving the conundrum of the missing aliens. Though the rigorous scientific explanations of the techniques used in the rescue are absorbing, the huge, mostly two-dimensional cast slows down the action. Sadly, McDevitt's world building is frequently sketchy and his otherworldly animals too terrestrial, although the sexual Venus's-flytrap segment does have its creative and amusing moments. 3-city author tour. Agent, Ralph Vicinanza. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-Tourists and scientists have all come to watch the destruction of Deepsix by a planetary collision. However, a few days before, signs of intelligent and technological life are found on the planet, and a team is sent to investigate. It includes Randall Nightingale, who led a previous, failed expedition to the planet years before; Priscilla Hutchins, a pilot who ends up in command; and Gregory MacAllister, a journalist who not only wrecked Nightingale's career with a series of articles, but who is also renowned for his sexism. The author makes the alien planet seem real, poses a compelling engineering challenge involving some of the minor characters, and describes a variety of interesting alien life-forms. The well-rounded characters grow through their adventures, without that growth seeming trite or inevitable. There's even some provocativesocial commentary. What makes this novel work, however, is the combination of an interesting mystery involving the planet's alien life-forms and the team's thrilling adventure as they try to escape the planet before it is destroyed. Set in the 23rd century, this fast-paced novel should appeal to readers interested in science and technology.Paul Brink, Fairfax County Public Library System, VACopyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Former planetary explorer Priscilla Hutchins receives a directive to make an emergency exploration of the planet Deepsix, a relatively unexplored world due to perish from an imminent collision with a wandering gas giant. When an unexpected earthquake destroys her only means of escape, Hutchins and her crew embark on a strenuous journey across the surface of a dying world in pursuit of an alien technology that just might provide them with their salvation. McDevitt's (Infinity Beach) vivid descriptions of alien landscapes and creatures as well as his harrowing images of a world on the verge of physical collapse heighten the inner turmoil his characters face as they struggle to come to terms with the unfinished business in their lives. With an expert sense of pacing and a knack for cliffhanging suspense, McDevitt has crafted a story of survival and personal redemption that belongs in most sf collections. Highly recommended. Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
In 2223, scientists, tourists, and reporters swarm to witness the destruction of Maleiva III, aka Deepsix, by the rogue gas giant, Morgan's World. Nineteen years earlier, the only expedition to search Deepsix for signs of intelligent life ended prematurely when killer birds attacked it. Now scientists awaiting the collision believe they have discovered a tower on Deepsix and other signs of civilization. Spaceship pilot Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, the only person with archaeological experience capable of reaching Deepsix in time, leads a team intent on learning what those signs really portend. Disaster strikes when the mission lander is lost in an earthquake. The survivors must trek across the planet to find a lander stranded during the first expedition. McDevitt's captivating scenario plays out in a surprisingly relaxed, straightforward manner. His writing is sometimes a bit fulsome, but being able to follow a single story line to its conclusion, without numerous subplots and disjointed passages, is refreshing. Hopefully, McDevitt will give us more stories from this universe. Bryan Baldus
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
In recent years, Jack McDevitt has emerged as a leading practitioner of the high-tech, deep-space disaster novel. His 1998 SF thriller, Moonfall, concerns an imminent collision between Earth's moon and a massive, wandering comet, and it stands firmly in the tradition of Philip Wylie's When Worlds Collide. Worlds collide once more in McDevitt's latest novel, Deepsix, an interstellar adventure that might just be the most exciting science fiction novel published so far this year.

The story takes place in the early 23rd century and opens with a prologue describing the disastrous expedition to a remote, Earth-like planet called Maleiva III. Fourteen years later, as the main narrative begins, Maleiva -- popularly known as Deepsix -- stands directly in the path of a roving gas giant and is two weeks away from complete destruction. Scientists and sightseers from across the galaxy are flocking to the event, which promises to provide an unprecedented cosmic spectacle.

Trouble begins when a scan of the planet's surface reveals previously undiscovered evidence of intelligent life. Immediately afterward, commercial pilot Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins finds herself conscripted and sent to Deepsix. Her mission: to discover and preserve as many remnants of that alien civilization as time and circumstance allow. Accompanying Hutch are several volunteer crew members, a middle-aged veteran of the first expedition to Deepsix, and an acerbic journalist named Gregory McAllister. Their exploration has barely begun when an earthquake destroys all functional landing vehicles, stranding Hutch and her amateur archaeologists on a rapidly disintegrating planet.

The bulk of the novel concerns the subsequent, increasingly desperate efforts to mount a viable rescue mission. As the days pass and available options dwindle, a team of scientists from the superluminals -- faster-than-light starships parked in orbit around Deepsix -- concoct an unlikely scheme that involves the modified use of newly discovered alien technology. As Hutch and company struggle to survive on a planet filled with unpredictable dangers, their orbiting cohorts struggle to construct an impossibly large "skyhook," a Rube Goldberg device that will literally scoop the explorers out of the sky and bring them safely home.

In Deepsix, McDevitt has created an exquisitely calibrated narrative in which moments of extreme, almost unbearable tension give way to contrasting moments of beauty, pathos, and unexpected humor. The result is a furiously paced novel that works equally well as hard SF, as a ticking-clock suspense story, as an account of characters changing -- and growing -- under the pressure of external events. However you categorize it, Deepsix is an intelligent, involving entertainment that deserves the largest possible audience. I urge you to give it a try. (Bill Sheehan)

Bill Sheehan reviews horror, suspense, and science fiction for Cemetery Dance, The New York Review of Science Fiction, and other publications. His book-length critical study of the fiction of Peter Straub, At the Foot of the Story Tree, has been published by Subterranean Press (www.subterraneanpress.com).

FROM THE PUBLISHER

A spellbinding epic adventure of discovery, catastrophe, and survival from one of the most masterful storytellers in speculative fiction.

In the year 2204, tragedy and terror forced a scientific team to prematurely evacuate Maleiva III. Twenty-one years later, the opportunity for scientists to study this galactic rarity — a life-supporting planet — is about to vanish forever, as a rogue gas giant has invaded the planetary system on a deadly collision course with the world they are now calling Deepsix.

A superluminal pilot for the Academy of Science and Technology, Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins is the only even remotely qualified professional within lightyears of Deepsix. With less than three weeks left before the disaster, she and a small scientific team — including Randall Nightingale, a survivor of the original expedition who was made the scapegoat for its failure — must descend to the surface, and glean whatever they can about the doomed planet's lifeforms and lost civilizations.

There is more to this strange and complex world, however, than anyone could have imagined: hidden predators; stone cities under the ice; remnants of a warlike, primitive society, yet with inexplicable hints of an impossible technology buried in the rubble ... and in orbit around the soon to be demolished planet. The deeper Hutch and her team delve, the more puzzles are revealed within puzzles, and startling discoveries lead only to greater and more perplexing questions.

But then the unthinkable occurs. An earthquake destroys the explorers' only means of escape. As scientists and sightseers who have come to witness the spectacular end of Deepsix watch helplessly from milesabove, Hutch and her people must survive somehow on a hostile planet going rapidly mad. And with the clock ticking relentlessly toward an unavoidable apocalypse, they must find some way, any way, to get off before Deepsix plunges like a pebble into the limitless depths of the rampaging gas giant.

From the acclaimed author of Infinity Beach comes the ultimate survival adventure — a riveting, relentlessly suspenseful, awesomely possible tale with a firm foundation in hard science which showcases the best and the worst aspects of complex human nature. It is yet another stunning achievement by Jack McDevitt, proving without a doubt that he is indeed the true heir to Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke.

FROM THE CRITICS

Stephen King

Jack McDevitt is that splendid rarity, a writer who is a storyteller first and a science fiction writer second....I simply could not put it down. You're going to love it even if you think you don't like science fiction.

Orlando Sentinel

A well-crafted, hard-to-put-down story....a fast-moving, intelligent and clever science fiction adventure-mystery that is well worth reading.

Locus

A writer capable of haunting beauty and sharp insight...[who] will carry you along by the sheer force of enthusiasm and loaded prose.

Macon Telegraph

One of science fiction's most spine- and mind-tingling authors....Infinity Beach is layered with multiple plots, thrust by a metaphor-filled, nimble-narrative writing style and emboldened with the most humane of ideas, feelings, hopes and fears.

Publishers Weekly