The Long Sunset

Written by Jack McDevitt

Narrated by Alyssa Bresnahan

From Nebula Award winner Jack McDevitt comes the eighth installment in the popular The Academy series-Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins discovers an interstellar message from a highly advanced race that could be her last chance for a mission before the program is shut down for good. Hutch has been the Academy's best pilot for decades. She's had numerous first contact encounters and even became a minor celebrity. But world politics have shifted from exploration to a growing fear that the program will run into an extraterrestrial race more advanced than humanity and war. Despite taking part in the recent scientific breakthrough that rejuvenates the human body and expands one's lifespan, Hutch finds herself as a famous interstellar pilot with little to do, until a message from an alien race arrives. The message is a piece of music from an unexplored area. Despite the fact that this alien race could pose a great danger and that this message could have taken several thousand years to travel, the program prepares the last interstellar ship for the journey. As the paranoia grows, Hutch and her crew make an early escape-but what they find at the other end of the galaxy is completely unexpected.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 18, 2018
• ISBN: 9781980016441

Jack McDevitt

Jack McDevitt is the author of A Talent for War, The Engines of God, Ancient Shores, Eternity Road, Moonfall, 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.

Reviews for The Long Sunset

[davisfamily-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Thought provoking...

A grand space adventure with a bit of love your neighbors. The writing was suspenseful and kept the story moving along. Lots of moral dilemmas and Hutch being Hutch.

[chrisriesbeck · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

If this concludes the Priscilla Hutchins series, not counting prequels, it doesn't feel like it. After being desk-bound in the middle of the series, Hutch heads out yet again into unexplored territory, with a random collection of passengers. AI has replaced the need for a crew of astronauts.

The trigger for setting off into space is the reception on Earth of a video from space showing a beautiful waterfall, set to music. As with Cauldron, getting into is delayed because of political resistance. Fortunately this time that delay doesn't occupy half the novel. Then, as with Cauldron, a fair amount of time is spent site-seeing, with only a little relevance to later events. One discovery, captured on the cover, a giant sword in space, seems to have no point that I can see (pun intended). In terms of the Academy universe, the omega clouds are only mentioned in passing, but there is some new background revealed late in the book on the Monument Makers.

As in previous books, McDevitt's future Earth is stuck in the 1990s. Broadcast television is still important for news releases. The Web is a secondary medium. The only influencers are television hosts. McDevitt's aliens are just like people except in appearance. Most of the book is spent with aliens who have cars and telephones and so on. One character waves this away as necessary paths of development, but it feels more like a lack of imagination and creativity.

As a conclusion, this is a whimper not a bang. OK for fans of McDevitt who have grown used to his speculative imitations.

[jbarringer-2 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Oh, good grief. A team of 'explorers' from a sadly stunted future Earth travel thousands of light YEARS (complaining the whole MONTH they have to spend in the spaceship to get there) to investigate an alien transmission. They find several species of aliens, on several worlds, but seem barely capable of being curious and professional enough about discovering aliens. That's ok, though, because they crash land on a doomed world with aliens who are basically humans that look like dolphins. The aliens live in a society with technology and customs very much like those of the USA in the 70s or 80s. All the other aliens also seem to have oddly American, human-like technology, and the human explorers seem not at all bothered by the lack of alienness of the aliens. McDevitt's other books are generally much better than this. Maybe he had a looming deadline and was feeling ill when he sent this one to his publisher?