BOOK REVIEW: The Contact Episode One by Albert Sartison

The Contact Episode One by Albert Sartison
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The ascendancy of mankind is being decided on Jupiter...

In the 22nd century, mankind assimilated the Solar System within the orbits of the inner planets, and was gradually moving further out, beyond the asteroid belt, onward towards the outer planets. 

The recently discovered technology of remote manipulation gave people the capability of altering the orbit of celestial bodies of planetary size, which laid the foundation of a new era for the human race: the terraforming age. The colonization of space beyond the limits of the Solar System became only a matter of time. 

Soon after the first successful test, changing the orbit of Mercury, a strange object moving from the depths of space towards the centre of the Solar System entered the field of vision of a telescope at an observatory in Chile…

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This first episode to a larger first contact story is actually quite good. It's got a definite hard sci-fi flavor and is well written in the sense that the grammar is good and it flows well and therefore easy to read. It's set a few hundred years in the future which is cool and the characters are real and believable and there's reasonable development of the main character Steve. I found that I liked the author's writing style and this actually enhanced the reading experience for me a lot. The plot follows Steve as he observes by telescope an object rapidly enter our solar system and go into orbit around Jupiter after demonstrating some peculiar and unlikely manoeuvres. It also begins to exhibit signs that it's probably not an inert piece of space material but quite possibly under some form of control. Eventually a group is assembled to oversee further investigation and and contact attempts with the mystery object. Steve is very much part of this group and so is the military (the "Space Force") so I'm guessing that things might get a lot more interesting. There is even a suggestion of a romantic interest for Steve too, but don't let that put you off (lol) and overall I would consider this to be a fine introduction to what sounds like a fascinating story. I see that the complete story of four episodes is available as a single volume but I've elected to continue the story in it's single episode format which I quite enjoy.

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