What happens when first contact goes horribly wrong? When that initial meeting between two sentient species leads to utter confusion and misunderstanding, murder and hijacking, and a tight-lipped coverup for years afterward? Jack McDevitt sets this situation up in Infinity Beach, describing humanity at the end of the third millennium as a solitary race, seemingly alone in the cosmos even after colonizing many worlds beyond Earth: "The universe has come to resemble a magnificent but sterile wilderness, an ocean which boasts no friendly coast, no sails, no sign that any have passed this way before." But a ship in search of life returned years earlier under suspicious circumstances, with two crew members missing, one presumed dead in an unexplained explosion, and the fourth retired into silence. Tales of apparitions, strange lights, and voices near the explosion site persist. No one's talking, but the scientist sister (and clone) of one of the missing shipmates starts asking questions and finds herself at the heart of a complex and frightening puzzle.

McDevitt, an accomplished storyteller and perennial Nebula runner-up, proves to have an excellent ear for such drama, telling a solid story that exudes mood and atmosphere while still staying tense enough to keep those pages turning. By turns a murder mystery, ghost story, and solid sci-fi thriller, Infinity Beach takes one of the genre's more prosaic schticks--first contact--and gives it a twist with style and skill: when you do make contact, what you find might scare you. --Paul Hughes


From Publishers Weekly
HA thousand years in the future, on the terraformed planet Greenaway, humanity has everything to make itself comfortable and complacent--longevity, leisure and luxury are all readily available. But one question remains: Is humanity alone in the universe? Kimberly Brandywine doesn't necessarily believe in aliens, until she hears that her missing elder "sister," of whom she's a clone, may have been murdered, along with some crewmates, by celestial beings after a voyage aboard a space yacht. Her sister/clone's disappearance has long haunted Kim, whose search for the truth takes her underwater and into space, loses her a lover and causes her to commit crimes (including stealing a spaceship). Kim's efforts to solve the mystery of the vanishing and to make first contact with the aliens presumably behind it are hampered by the general malaise society has sunk into. And since death appears to follow in the wake of the aliens, Kim wavers about whether first contact will be beneficial or will destroy civilization as she knows it. McDevitt (Eternity Road) has created a future that is technologically sound and filled with hubristic, foolish people who make choices based more on how they will look to history than on what's best for it. Though his aliens are insubstantial (both physically and on the page), the mystery of what happened to Kim's sister and her fellow celestial seekers unfolds as precisely as an origami flower, and will hold readers in thrall. (Feb.) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From School Library Journal
YA-This futuristic novel has an intriguing mystery and gives a view of what could happen if another life-form, completely different from our own, were found. Twenty-seven years after the disappearance of her sister (and clone), Kim Brandywine begins the long process of solving Emily's mysterious disappearance along with the fates of the three other crew members who were with her on their last voyage into space. Kim uses friends as well as her own intelligence and bravado to force and find clues. The mystery brings frightening moments as she faces life-forms that were unsuccessfully dealt with in the recent past. Some well-placed spooky moments elevate the heart rate as the search for the truth progresses. McDevitt deftly mixes in a detailed vision of a successful colony of humans on another world, including the cultural aspects, even as the plot spins toward solving the mystery. Personal relationships share an important aspect of the story, and the author draws personalities of even the minor characters clearly and succinctly. This is a wonderful mix of science-based fiction, mystery, and romance, with loads of action, as well as some spine-tingling moments.Pam Johnson, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
On the colony world of Greenway, humans still search in vain for evidence of alien intelligence. When Kim Brandywine, fundraiser for the Seabright Institute's Beacon Project, begins an investigation into the disappearance of her cloned sister Emily, also involved in the search for extraterrestrial life, she opens a door that leads her to her fondest dreams and darkest nightmares. The author of Moonfall combines elements of mystery and horror with a classic story of first contact in a masterly tale that belongs in most sf collections. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Near the end of the third millennium, on the light-years-distant planet Greenway, scientist Kay Brandywine is part of a last, desperate effort to contact intelligent nonhuman life. She has started suspecting that a mysterious voyage by the starship Hunter actually succeeded in finding aliens, and that that voyage is somehow linked to the disappearance of her clone-sister and to a mysterious presence in the Greenway backwoods. She is quite correct, but to confirm her suspicions she has to turn detective, spy, shipjacker, and alien-contact specialist; risk her life to defeat the alien presence on Greenway; and lose her lover Solly Hobbs to the results of second contact with the aliens. Exquisitely timed revelations maximize suspense, and fine characterization and world building also hold the reader's interest, as do many original touches (e.g., the implications of the aliens being insect-sized). McDevitt's latest most closely recalls his A Talent for War (1989) but is conceived and executed on the larger scale of his Ancient Shores (1996) and subsequent books. Roland Green


From Kirkus Reviews
McDevitt, Jack [pointer] INFINITY BEACH Alien-contact/murder mystery from the ever-reliable author of Moonfall (1998), etc. Hundreds of years hence, humans have colonized remote planets, but no alien life-forms have ever been encountered. Decades ago, survey ship Hunter suffered engine problems and returned early to planet Greenway. Soon after, crew members Emily and Yoshi vanished; Kile Tripley was presumed killed in a mysterious explosion; and the fourth, war hero Markis Kane, never piloted another ship and retired into obscurity on Earth. Thereafter, the explosion area was considered to be haunted. So what really happened? Now, Emily's sister Kim Brandywine, while working on an unrelated project, becomes curious and decides to reinvestigate an affair that everyone else prefers to forget. With her friend Solly Hobbs, Kim ignores hostility and stonewallingofficials have locked away Hunter's flight logand steals the records. The log, she discovers, has been faked: Emily never returned. Kim encounters the ghost, tooan alien somehow brought back by Hunter? After more sleuthing, Kim and Solly uncover Yoshi's remains. Did Tripley murder her? Kane, however, loved Emily, and after returning painted many pictures of her. One of them shows an alien starship, a model of which is owned by Tripley's clone-son, although he doesn't know what it really is. Soon Kim and Solly will have no choice but to steal a ship and go searching for some answers. Gripping mystery, taut intriguesthe forgoing barely hints at the complexities hereand fascinating aliens: an altogether splendid, satisfying puzzle. -- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Kirkus
"Gripping mystery, taut intrigues...and fascinating aliens; an altogether splendid, satisfying puzzle."


Stephen King
"Jack McDevitt is that splendid rarity, a writer who is a storyteller first and a science fiction writer second. In his ability to absolutely rivet the reader, it seems to me that he is the logical heir to Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. "Infinity Beach" is a ... fascinating look at how first contact with an utterly alien species might happen. I simply couldn't put it down. You're going to love it even if you think you don't like science fiction."


Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Unfolds as precisely as an origami flower, and will hold readers in thrall."


Kirkus
"Gripping mystery, taut intrigues...and fascinating aliens; an altogether splendid, satisfying puzzle."


Publishers Weekly
"Unfolds as precisely as an origami flower, and will hold readers in thrall."



"A slick First Contact story...a fine read."



"[McDevitt's] best yet thanks to a clever plot, superior characterizations, and several outstandingly good scenes."



"Another page-turner...thoroughly entertains and absorbs you in its unfolding drama."


Book Description
We are alone. That is the verdict, after centuries of SETI searches and space exploration. The only living things in the Universe are found on the Nine Worlds settled by Earthlings, and the starships that knit them together.No life has been found. No intelligent aliens, no strange ecologies, no awesome civilizations. Not even an amoeba, a lichen, a germ. The Universe is as sterile as a laboratory that was used only once. Or so it seems, until Dr. Kimberly Brandywine undertakes to find out what happened to her sister (and clone) Emily, who, after the final, unsuccessful manned SETI expedition, disappeared along with four others--one of them a famous war hero. But they were not the only ones to vanish: so did an entire village, destroyed by a still-unexplained explosion. Following a few ominous clues (including a model of a starship that never existed) Kim discovers that the log of the ill-fated Hunter was faked. Something happened, out there in the darkness between the stars. Someone was murdered--and something was brought back. Something that still leaves ghostly traces in the night. Kim is prepared to go to any length to find out the truth, even if it means giving up her career with Beacon, the most colossal--and controversial--of all the SETI projects. Even if it means stealing a starship. Even if it means giving up her only love. Kim is about to discover the answer to life's oldest question. And she's going to like the answer even less than she imagines. With his trademark ingenuity, scientific audacity, and narrative energy, Jack McDevitt has penned a mystery in which humankind is the detective--and the universe itself is the corpse. Infinity Beach takes us into the strange, yet strangely familiar, civilization of our own far future--and into the heart of a bold woman whose search for her family's secret leads her to the greatest discovery of all time.


About the Author
Jack McDevitt is the author of A  Moonfall, A  Eternity Road, A  Ancient Shores, and numerous prize-winning short stories. He has served as an officer in the U.S. Navy, taught English and literature, and worked for the U.S. Customs Service in North Dakota and Georgia. He lives in Georgia. 


Excerpted from Infinity Beach by Jack McDevitt. Copyright © 2000. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
NEW YEAR'S EVE, 599It seems safe now to assume that the terrestrial origin of life was a unique event. Some will quibble that we have, after all, seen only a few thousand of the billions of worlds drifting through the gently curving corridors we once called biozones. But we have stood on too many warm beaches and looked across seas over which no gulls hover, that throw forth neither shells, nor strands of weed, nor algae. They are peaceful seas, bounded by rock and sand.The universe has come to resemble a magnificent but sterile wilderness, an ocean which boasts no friendly coast, no sails, no sign that any have passed this way before. And we cannot help but tremble in the gray light of these vast distances. Maybe that is why we are converting the great interstellar liners into museums, or selling them for parts. Why we have begun to retreat, why the Nine Worlds are now really six, why the frontier is collapsing why we are going home to our island.We are coming back at last to Earth. To the forests of our innocence. To the shores of night. Where we need not listen to the seaborne wind.Farewell, Centaurus. Farewell to all we might have been.-- Elio Kardi, "The Shores of Night," Voyagers, 571"Nova goes in three minutes." Dr. Kimberly Brandywine looked out across the dozen or so faces in the briefing room. In back, lenses were pointed at her, sending the event out across the nets. Behind, her projections read HELLO TO THE UNIVERSE and KNOCK and IS ANYBODY OUT THERE?Several flatscreens were positioned around the walls, showing technicians bent over terminals in the Trent. These were the teams that would ignite the nova, but the images were fourteen hours old, the time required for the hypercomm transmissions to arrive.Everyone present was attractive and youthful, except sometimes for their eyes. However vital and agile people were, their true age tended to reveal itself in their gaze. There was a hardness that came with advancing years, eyes that somehow lost their depth and their animation. Kim was in her midthirties, with exquisite features and hair the color of a raven's wing. In an earlier era, they would have launched ships for her. in her own age, she was just part of the crowd."If we haven't found anybody after all this time," the representative from Seabright Communications was saying, "it can only be because there's nobody to find. Or, if there is, they're so far away it doesn't matter."She delivered her standard reply, discounting the great silence, point-ing out that even after eight centuries humans had still inspected only afew thousand star systems. "But you may be right ," she admitted."Maybe we are alone. But the fact is that we really don't know. So we'll keep trying.'"Kim had long since concluded that Seabright was right, They hadn't found so much as an amoeba out there. Briefly, at the beginning of the Space Age, there'd been speculation that life might exist in Europa's seas. Or in Jupiter's clouds. There'd even been a piece of meteoric rock thought to contain evidence of Martian bacteria. It was as dose to extraterrestrial life as we'd ever come.Hands were still waving."One more question," she said.She gave it to Canon Woodbridge, a science advisor for the Grand Council of the Republic. He was tall, dark, bearded, almost satanic in appearance, yet a congenial fiend, one who meant no harm. "Kim" he said, "why do you think we're so afraid of being alone? Why do we want so much to find our own reflections out there?" He glanced in the direction of the screens, where the technicians continued their almostceremonial activities.How on earth would she know? "I have no idea, Canon," she said."But you're deeply involved in the Beacon Project. And your sister devoted her life to the same goal.""Maybe it's in the wiring." Emily, her done actually, had vanished when Kim was seven. She paused momentarily and tried to deliver a thoughtful response, something about the human need to communicate and to explore. "I suspect," she said, "if there's really nothing out there, if the universe is really empty, or at least this part of it is, then maybe a lot of us would feel there's no point to the trip.' There was more to it than that, she knew. Some primal urge not to be alone. But when she tried to put it into words she floundered around, gave up, and glanced at the clock.One minute to midnight, New Year's Eve, in the two hundred eleventh year of the Republic and the six hundredth year since Marquand's landing. One minute to detonation."How are we doing on time?" asked one of the journalists. "Are they on schedule?""Yes," Kim said. "As of ten A.M. this morning." The hypercomm signal from the Trent required fourteen hours and some odd minutes to travel the 580 light-years from the scene of detonation. I think we're safe to assume that the nova is imminent.'She activated an overhead screen, which picked up an image of the target star. Alpha Maxim was a bright AO-class. Hydrogen lines prominent. Surface temperature 11,000* C. Luminosity sixty times that of Helios. Five planets. All barren. Like every other known world, save the few that had been terraformed.It would be the first of six novas. All would occur within a volume of space which measured approximately five hundred cubic light-years. And they would be triggered at sixty-day intervals. It would be a demonstration that could not help but draw the attention of anyone who might be watching. The ultimate message to the stars: We are here.But she believed, as almost everyone else did, that the great silence would continue to roll back.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

We are alone. That is the verdict, after centuries of SETI searches and space exploration. The only living things in the universe are found on the Nine Worlds settled by Earthlings, and the starships that knit them together." "Or so it seems, until Dr. Kimberly Brandywine begins to investigate what happened to her sister (and clone) Emily, who, after the final, unsuccessful manned SETI expedition, disappeared along with four others - one of them a famous war hero. But they were not the only ones to vanish: so did an entire village, destroyed by a still-unexplained explosion." "Following a few clues Kim discovers that the log of the ill-fated Hunter was faked. Something happened, out there in the darkness between the stars. Someone was murdered - and something was brought back." "Kim is prepared to go to any length to find out the truth, even if it means giving up her career with Beacon, the most colossal - and controversial - of all the SETI projects. Even if it means stealing a starship. Even if it means giving up her only love." "Kim is about to discover the answer to humanity's oldest question. And she's going to like the answer even less than she imagines.

FROM THE CRITICS

Catherine Asaro - SFSite.com

This novel is an engrossing science fiction mystery. In addition to telling a great story, it offers the reader thoughtful questions about what it means for humanity to mature rather than stagnate as a species. The author has served up another exciting, literate yarn.

Science Fiction Weekly

McDevitt has written a complex, perfectly paced hard SF puzzle story addressing some of the genre's most important themes--humanity's proper role as an intelligent species in the cosmos, and the need not to be utterly alone.

Stephen King

Jack McDevitt is that splendid rarity, a writer who is a storyteller first and a science fiction writer second. In his ability to absolutely rivet the reader, it seems to me that he is the logical heir to Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. "Infinity Beach" is a ... fascinating look at how first contact with an utterly alien species might happen. I simply couldn't put it down. You're going to love it even if you think you don't like science fiction.

Florida Times-Union

Bottom line, "Infinity Beach" is a good read, a deft combination of science-fiction and a whisp of horror in a future that is almost believable. McDevitt makes it a page-turner.

San Diego Union-Tribune