Science Fiction: Shadows Of Eternity By Gregory Benford

(Drivebycuriosity) - The universe seems to be infinite. There must exist many civilizations somewhere. What could we learn from them? Years ago humans started a Search for Exterrestrial Inteligence, known as SETI, and founded 1984 a SETI Institute, "whose mission is to explore, understand, and explain the origin and nature of life in the universe, and to apply the knowledge gained to inspire and guide present and future generations"  (wikipedia).

Gregory Benford´s novel "Shadows of Eternity", is set on the moon, some centuries in the future ( amazon). Then the humans have received, collected & researched myriads of messages from alien cultures, many light years away and maybe are already extinct. The exterrestrial messages are collected in a huge SETI library on the moon. The plot follows Rachel, a young aspiring librarian @ SETI, who is tasked to analyze some of the alien messages. What will she discover? (this is a spoiler free blog)

The alien messages are advanced software programs, a kind of artificial intelligence. These programs are aware of themselves and see themselves as the servants of their senders and they are able to communicate with librarians like Rachel.

Benford spiced his novel with a lot of science and interwove cosmology, evolution, biology & sociology into an interesting plot, a melange of space opera and exotic adventure tale. Many of his ideas are very speculative, but plausible because they are based on science.

I enjoyed how Benford elaborately described exotic & weird situations and environments and had fun to follow Rachel, the SETI library hierarchy and their encounters and experiences.

Benford belongs to my favorite authors.  I have reread his novel "In the Ocean of the Night" many times (driveby) and love many of his short stories ( driveby). He writes hard science fiction in the tradition of Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke and mingles fascinating tales with science. The logical, analytical and scientific style of his novels & short stories shows that the author also has a career as professor and astrophysicist on the faculty of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Irvine since 1971 (wikipedia).