Cavalcade

by Alison Sinclair

Having taken up the aliens' invitation to travel to a better world, the assembled humans find themselves in an enormous cathedral like edifice, their electronic clocks stopped at midnight - the moment they were picked up from the beaches - and with two hours or more missing. None of their advanced technology works - anything like a silicon based microchip is broken down to dust. Two groups form - one made up of a US army reconnaissence team , one a women's group in search of self determination. They try and organise life aboard the alien ship, since there are no actual aliens in evidence and the humans appear to have been left completely to their own devices. But after a time it seems that it is not that there are no aliens, but that the ship itself is an alien life form - and one that recruits its own crew from amongst the volunteers who come aboard. Some will fail, some will be rejected and some will survive. Only one woman seems to believe that communication with the aliens is possible, that communication is in fact the only way to survive and perhaps return to earth.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction

299 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Alison Sinclair is a science fiction and fantasy author.

Reviews

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating idea, a giant spaceship offers a ride to anyone who wants to come. Be on a seashore at a given time, and you come along for the ride. A lot of people take the spaceship up on the offer, for a lot of reasons. The beginning of the working out of all their combined stories is the novel. The title is perfectly chosen. In a way, it's similar to the recent movie, "The Way".

One passing observation of Sinclair's stuck with me. The measure of our sins is the totality of the pain they cause others. That's a non-obvious criterion, but it seems right, somehow. Kill someone and you cause them great pain for a short time, but you also cause longer-lasting, less-intense pain to all the other people you involve, their family, your family, the EMTs, the police, the judge, jury & prosecuters, if it comes to that. That idea alone was worth the read.

[Andrew Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really intriguing book.

[Jo Walton]

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/09/wher...

[Arlene · Rating 4 out of 5]

A terrific book.

[Donna · Rating 3 out of 5]

After aliens offer to take any interested humans in their spacecraft, a group of people from Earth find that things are not what they expected.

I would give this book five stars for ideas. I loved the 'would you accept that offer?' beginning as the first page has the people already on the spacecraft. It jumped right to confusion and fear as they realize all their electronics are disintegrating including pacemakers. Then you have to deal with food and water and shelter - all fascinating to explore especially because the aliens are not communicating in any way.

I was surprised to realize about a hundred pages in that I wasn't really enjoying the book. I just didn't attach to any of the characters enough to get pulled in. I still think this is a good book and I respect what the author was doing but I wish she'd stayed focused more on ideas and less on social and political squabbles.

[Ian · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF. Couldn't sustain interest.

[Eric Lawton · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this scifi novel, thousands of people volunteer to join an alien space craft as it travels past the earth, en route to places unknown. The passengers must learn how to interact with the ship and each other, in order to get food and other essential supplies.
Slightly more of the main characters are women, and women's perspectives such as dealing with male violence are given suitable prominence.
Several of the characters are scientists, male and female in equal proportion and skill level, and the book deals with the interplay of scientific method and knowledge with the human skills needed to organise a new society from scratch, or at least from small groups andisolated individuals, who have many different ideas on how things should be organised.
The writing is fairly plain but I always found myself wanting to know what happens next. Recommended.
AIthough the underlying theme is space travel, the science is not related to that. Mostly the small-scale physics, chemistry, biology (including medicine) and social sciences needed for survival in a strange environment.

[Jenne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the premise of this book--what if instead of abducting people, the aliens asked for volunteers? Would you go? I think I would go.

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

Decent writing, with a really cool twist on the "First Contact" theme...but is ultimately bogged down by a really slow pace with few developed characters.