The Killing Star by Charles Pellegrino, George Zebrowski

The Apocalypse occurs nine days prior to America's Tri-Centennial celebration - when relativistic bombs launched by an unknown alien civilization finally reach their destinations. One man sees them approaching - but by then, it is already too late. And in a brief, incomprehensible instant, every inhabited planetary surface in the solar system is wiped clean. Life has ceased to exist. Now all that is left of humanity is a handful of survivors hiding between the planets in mobile space research facilities and experimental habitats - a small, terrified remnant of civilization struggling to make some sense of the catastrophe that has obliterated their past and future...while searching desperately for a means of escape before the Intruders' doomsday technology can detect and destroy them.

Astonishingly, on a dead and sterile Earth, two people remain alive - a Jesuit and a pilot aboard the deep-diving submersible, Alvin, protected from the devastation by the cold, enveloping waters. An historian and a scientist, it is they whom destiny has chosen to wander the surreal, empty wastes of a terrifying ghost planet - to battle fear, loneliness and encroaching madness...and to await the inevitable arrival of the annihilators from the stars.

All in all an interesting concept, especially with the humor of cultural icons thrown in, though one being the reason for the destruction was something of a stretch. One TV program saying everything there is to say about the human psyche? I think not. And wiping out every living thing on the planet seems a bit of overkill, especially once the true face of the killing alien is revealed.

Where the book loses another point is that two of the plot lines are left hanging, as the story comes to an abrupt ending. I thought at first that there was a sequel waiting in the wings, but nope, that’s it.

Going by the book’s afterward, I got the impression that the authors were “trying to tell us something,” as in preaching that maybe we shouldn’t be broadcasting? If so, it turns out that, since the signals are being transmitted outward in a sphere, it falls under the inverse square law. The strength of the signal decreases over distance, and would be almost non-existent within a few light years.

Was this figured out after the book was written? Maybe, maybe not, but I would have thought that the law would have been known in 1995.




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66. The Killing Star by Charles Pellegrino, George Zebrowski