Drew is not alone in his quest for dinosaurs amid the tumbled rocks and canyons of eastern Utah-rockhounds have probed these canyons and badlands for half a century and more looking for colorful scraps of agatized dinosaur bone. This time Drew finds something new but very very old: The "AO," an Alien Object from off-Earth. Drew and his two friends have no idea how to handle the discovery. The aftermath and its consequences are the story here, in particular the impact this discovery has on Drew, his sense of alienation now buttressed by his need to become as rational and objective as he believes the real aliens must've been. But where are love and friendship and commonality in such a universe? The story follows him as he slowly realizes that certain attributes are probably universal and may apply equally to intellects on other worlds. And yet although we live our own lives as individuals, they're meaningful largely because of our associations with friends, family and those around us, a very small pool in a very large universe of possibilities. Because all lives everywhere are at core a mystery experienced, the role of faith and belief will always be significant, and with these come all the contradictions and difficulties that belief always brings to self-conscious creatures. Drew's resolution is positive, as is the book's ending. Readers should keep in mind that any serious book needs critical readers looking for a bit of heavy lifting along the way, the difficulties accepted as part of their reward and a reader's contributions necessary for the story's success. Don't expect the "propulsive narrative" some novelists provide. You'll find instead an engagingly literate science fiction story about science, an Alien Object and the human heart, cross-genre speculative fiction that looks in as well as out, science fiction for the informed reader interested in geology, paleontology, philosophy, history, real science, some false-science, and a riveting intellectual yarn.
About the Author: Cress Kearny, this book's author and editor, grew up in the area of Western Colorado and Eastern Utah explored in The Mysterians. He found a small Brontosaurus in his early teens and collected agatized dinosaur bone for forty years while following developments in paleontology and biology. These interests, together with readings in history and the philosophy of science, are some of the tools he's used to try to understand science's place in, or misapplication to, our lives and our world. He received a B.A. in the History of Art from Dartmouth College and worked with his wife in the Peace Corps for four years in Sierra Leone at a time when government corruption was beginning to lead that country into the lower depths. Many of his concerns about the nature of culture and history were shaped by that experience and by what happened in Sierra Leone over the next two decades. After the Peace Corps he and his wife settled in California, their base for work and reading when not hiking, backpacking and climbing throughout the mountains and deserts of the West. He now lives with his wife, Lynn, and a cat, Louie Catorze, in Oakland. His articles have appeared in Lapidary Journal, Gems and Minerals, and Jeweler's Bench. In 1991 his close-up photography of agatized dinosaur bone narrowly missed publication by Natural History magazine. His illustrated article on dinosaur-bone petrification and agatization was published in installments by Prehistoric Times magazine in 2018.