Book notes - Celestial by MD Lachlan

RichardAbbott

Well, I wasn't expecting to write about Celestial by MD Lachlan quite so soon after the last email, but turns out it was a very fast read. And a slightly disappointing one after what seemed a very strong start.

In case you haven't followed the blurb, the idea is that a late 1970s continuation of the Apollo program, in which the Soviets play a much more active part and have their own moon lander, discovers the entrance to an alien vessel very close to where Apollo 17 landed (I think this was coincidence rather than a cunning choice of landing location, since it's the Soviets who discover they hatchway first). NASA have employed an oriental female linguist as her studies of numerous sacred writings (mostly from the far-eastern tradition, but with a vague nod to ancient Egypt as well) have led her to the conclusion that there is something to be found in that exact area. So off she goes on a lunar mission, and the story is about what she finds there, and how it can only really be understood by means of eastern mystical traditions and not western scientific or military ones,

So far so good - there are a lot of resonances with Arthur C Clarke's writings, especially 2001 (for the alien artefact arriving which triggers consciousness on Earth) and Rendezvous with Rama (since the artefact ends up zipping off again having had its repeated contact with earthlings). The writing is quite prosaic (like Clarke's) except when the focus is on eastern mysticism when it kind of lights up a bit. One suspects that the whole SF trapping is to provide an excuse for writing a fictional story about how mysticism is a cool thing. I don't have any problems with that as a strategy, but I would have liked the story itself to be more convincing and solid. So much of the interpersonal interaction sections seemed to be "NASA's psychologists should have weeded this or that person out of the program, but unaccountably they missed it", thus allowing the various crew members to act like total plonkers towards each other!

So it's an OK story, a quick read and would be good on a long journey from A to B - there's enough in it to hold your interest in that context, but I can't see that it is a book that many people would reread. It's just too thin on the ground once you get the idea that a) most things that the protagonists are seeing are not real, and b) meditation and mysticism will help them solve the problem. I was reminded of something [a mutual friend] said a meeting or two back, how she gets wary when the testimonial quotes are for other books that the author has written, and that's certainly true for this one.

Who would like it? I think as previously mentioned it's a good journey book or maybe holiday book where you're not expecting too much but want something a bit different to pass the time. If you're looking for something to keep on your shelves and go back to from time to time, this probably isn't it. It's slightly a mystery to me why Gollancz would publish it, when there's so much other stuff out there with more depth (it feels more like an indie book by an author who is super-keen to explore science vs mysticism and picks the space program in the 70s to do so) but maybe they felt that the oriental side of things gave enough difference to the book to propel it along. But the start is very strong, and maybe the Gollancz editors only read ch1 and made their decision on that basis