The Agathon: Book One

by Colin Weldon

Overview

For one hundred years the deep space signal has been transmitted to Earth. All attempts to decode it have failed. Carrie Barrington, the first human child to be born on Mars begins having strange visions. A terrifying voice calls to her in the darkness. An ancient and deadly presence lurks deep beneath the surface of the planet. When disaster strikes, it falls upon her father as commander of The Agathon, the first faster than light ship ever built, to travel to the origin of the signal makers in the hopes of finding the mysterious race. What they find not only threatens to destroy the ship but all life in the galaxy. The fate of humanity now rests in the fingertips of Carrie Barrington and her reclusive and mysterious mentor, Doctor Tyrone Tyrell.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781519139689
Publisher:	CreateSpace Publishing
Publication date:	12/11/2015
Pages:	346
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.77(d)

About the Author

Colin Weldon lives in Dublin, Ireland. The Agathon is his debut novel. He studied Journalism at Griffith college and runs a small family antique store off Grafton Street in Dublin's city centre. He is an avid reader and lover of all things sci-fi. Follow on twitter @colinweldon

Editorial Reviews

2016-02-11
The unexpected, unexplained destruction of Earth sends an experimental faster-than-light starship careening into the cosmos on a desperate mission to save what's left of humanity. As in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, this kickoff to an interplanetary sci-fi series opens with the callous obliteration of Earth. But this debut novel isn't a witty satire. The spacegoing humanity of 2339 has spent 100 years studying a mysterious mirror-surfaced "Monolith" (possibly a tribute here to Arthur C. Clarke) found on the Mars moon Phobos, transmitting terabytes of indecipherable information into deep space. In a cave on the red planet itself is the only form of nonhuman alien life ever discovered, "the Black," an ancient, enigmatic, dangerous pool of organic ooze that devours anything that touches it, including people. Suddenly, shockingly, the Monolith beams a high-energy gamma stream directly at Earth, causing the planet to explode. Left on their own, remnants of humanity scattered on spacecraft and colonies throughout the solar system try to pull together to survive. Their one hope is the Agathon, a newly developed, experimental faster-than-light starship. The audacious, risky scheme involves taking the untested Agathon on a deep-space voyage to locate an Earth-like world on which to relocate survivors—and, if possible, solve the deadly riddle of the Monolith and the Black and what triggered the action against Earth. Chief among the ensemble of characters are Mars explorer/commander John Barrington, designated captain of the Agathon, and his daughter Carrie, both secretly products of accelerated evolution and sharing a telepathic link (they mourn Carrie's mother, one of the Black's first victims). While the naming of certain individuals after established sci-fi/fantasy characters suggests a pastiche, this volume offers nail-biting action and pacing that seldom flags. And the astronomical body count, which doesn't spare key characters, adds a proper sense of jeopardy (as if the near-annihilation of Homo sapiens did not). The Irish author endows the alien component of the yarn with a genuine awe and mystery (at one point, a geologist says of the Black: "We don't know why the hell this ‘stuff' has been sitting here for millions of years, when its purpose seems to be to absorb organic and inorganic substances on contact"). Weldon concludes the cosmic tale with a cliffhanger promising more revelations ahead. A compelling sci-fi series that starts with a big bang.

Kirkus Reviews