The Cassandra
Project, a collaboration between Jack McDevitt and Mike Resnick
reads as if Resnick wrote a novel plotted by McDevitt.
The story is the sort of space-faring mystery McDevitt has
written since his earliest published works, and the style shows
Resnick’s voice. The story was expanded from a short story
McDevitt published in Lightspeed in 2010.
Jerry Culpepper is a NASA spokesman in 2019, as the
agency is losing funding and a billionaire, Bucky Blackmore, is about to
launch a privately funded mission to the moon, the first such voyage in
nearly fifty years since Apollo XVII returned to Earth. A mysterious
entry in the journal of an astronaut who orbited the Moon in January of
1969, six months before Apollo 11 landed, touches off a firestorm of
speculation that an American landed on the moon before Armstrong did.
Culpepper issues NASA’s denial, but his own investigation leads
him to believe that there might be something in the report, a feeling
that grows stronger and makes his continued tenure at NASA untenable for
him.
The novel is almost procedural in nature, following
Culpepper’s investigation, but mixing in Blackmore plans for his own
expedition as the billionaire believes there is something in the journal
entry and uses his position, reminiscent of Donald Trump, to attack the
White House and NASA while increasing the publicity and interest in his
own space launch. Despite an
early overture to Culpepper by Blackmore, the two men run their own
investigations for much of the novel, discovering only pieces of the
puzzle they both have come to believe exists, and both wondering how
such a secret could have remained so for half a century.
The culmination of the novel occurs with
Blackmore’s expedition returning to the moon after a fifty year
absence. Surrounding himself
with professionals, Blackmore allows himself the giddiness of a space
enthusiast who has manage to attain his dream.
Upon their return, the novel begins to examine Blackmore’s
discovery and what it means to the immediate future of the world as
Blackmore reveals his knowledge to those who are appropriate, while at
the same time maintaining his own secrets. Secrets do play a big
part in The Cassandra Project, especially the idea of keeping
secrets. While Culpepper tries to figure out what happened and
Blackmore accuses the President of a cover up, McDevitt and Resnick also
present the President's view, who can't cover up what he doesn't know
about, but can still be blamed for not disclosing it.
Perhaps the most disappointing part of the novel is
when Blackmore’s mission reaches the moon. Despite the characters’
excitement, their sense of wonder doesn’t translate to the reader, the
mission and discovery coming across as prosaic rather than
worlds-shaking, which is surprising, given the authors’ Individual
track records which show both know how to communicate the wonders of the
universe which Blackmore merely describes. The novel also ends with the
feeling that there is more to come as the world, and McDevitt and
Resnick’s characters, must come to terms with the discovery made on
the moon and its implications.
There is a classic feel to The Cassandra Project,
a throwback to the days when science fiction was about D. D. Harriman
using private industry to lay claim to the moon, yet with a modern
sensibility and understand of politics and media. McDevitt and
Resnick have created a novel which successfully presents private
enterprise stepping in and doing what the government can not longer do
while paying tribute to both the classic science fiction that inspired
the authors as well as a people who were inspired by Neil Armstrong and
Buzz Aldrin's first steps on the Moon in 1969.
