Book review: Exodus, by M.R. Forbes
Exodus is a militarised science fiction adventure in which Earth has an aggressive alien infestation and the only hope for the people is to get away on an ark-type spaceship that will voyage to a planet orbiting a distant star (who knows if the aliens might be in possession when they land?). This is the first book in the series, so covers the last stand, launch and first near-Earth challenge.
Exodus is the perfect word for what the humans are doing but I think what hasn’t been taken into consideration is the sheer number of sci-fi books that already use the one word title ‘Exodus’ (just do a browser search for Exodus + Sci-Fi to see a screen full of covers). A Goodreads search (which doesn’t sort by genre) on the word Exodus in the title returns nearly 4,000 books. It’s up to the author, I suppose, but it seems sensible to consider differentiation to help people find it in a crowded market.
The story is told from a USA army-mentality perspective, with lots of marines holding the line in fire-fights and so on. This continues on the space ark, although a division emerges as it carries an autonomous UN scientific presence.
Problems? Well… no guns, machine guns or grenades would work in outer space, as they are described doing so in this story, so that stage of events is not credible. The thing is, propellant needs the presence of oxygen to burn and expand. In the rapidly freezing, oxygen-less vacuum of space, the marines would find their projectile weapons don’t even make pfutt noises and drop a bullet on their shoe. How do chunky space-suit gloves fit into trigger guards anyway, or do they take off the guards and leave triggers hanging out, so they get caught on clothing and pulled inconveniently? Having said that, there is also a plasma weapon, which I acknowledge would be a reasonable tool in the physical conditions of non-atmospheric space.
Let’s also consider the wing aerofoils on the smaller craft that they use for combat in outer space. Wings don’t work outside an atmosphere, so are for decoration. Unless, arguably, they were designed to fly in thick atmospheres in addition to outer space (plausible, but not shown in this book).
Another thing that doesn’t sound plausible is that the aliens have DNA. This is common to all life that evolved on the planet Earth (animals and plants) only because we all have a common ancestor. Life that has evolved in a completely independent location (extra-terrestrial) would be based on something different to DNA — which is the first thing Carl Sagan listed as the evidence to ask for if anything claims to be alien. If it has DNA, it has evolved right here. The only exception would be if life on Earth is in fact alien (originally evolved somewhere external and was seeded her, e.g. the Panspermia theory of Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe).
The novel is an activity adventure with problems being solved mostly by guns. There is some scientific enquiry but, don’t you know it, when science inadequately contains the subject of study inside the ark ship, the weapons come back out again to solve it.
This book is adventurous and works well as military sci-fi entertainment, so perhaps I simply prefer the non-military sub-genres and solving most problems with knowledge and skills. If you are the other way, this is the story for you.
Exodus fits neatly into an old pattern which was first spoken of in connection to claims of UFO abduction. The observation was that people in the UK who claimed to have been abducted described the aliens as being polite to them, passing around refreshments and taking them on sight-seeing tours; Brazilian abductees described being forced to breed in sex farms; but North American abductees almost always reported being experimented on, tortured and having to fight back. Similarly, most US films involving aliens position them as an invading threat that should be defeated. Any book about meeting aliens and shooting them down as monsters clues us in on the author’s geographical origin — and this novel is no exception to that generalisation about the differences in the earthly subconscious mind between our regions and cultures.
If you enjoy the fearful and glorious scenes that can be delivered through armed forces sci-fi adventures, this title is a good example of that sub-genre and you’ll probably like it. In the ark ship sub-genre, which it overlaps with, I can name alternative works that you might enjoy more.
