Insistent Oracles

by Bob J. Koester

Lyta and Carl are astronomy grad students who hardly know each other and are trying to figure out their lives. Arbitrarily thrown together on a project, they make a surprising discovery: an unobtrusive light in the sky shows signs of being an alien spacecraft. As they study the object more closely, they start receiving a stream of information that creates an unexpected bond with it, each other, their government, and ultimately humanity as a whole. Their story mixes first contact science fiction, romantic drama, and technological thriller, as they negotiate the difficult questions their discoveries raise, and the extreme reactions the answers cause in others. Their unique status, as sources of otherwise unobtainable knowledge, causes others to vilify them, revere them, or try to take permanent possession of them, but the biggest question still remains: In a world full of opportunities and responsibilities, what is the best way to live their lives?

The cover picture is "Dream Of A Starry Sky" by Tama Wang.

Kindle Edition

Published July 6, 2017

About the author

Bob J. Koester (b. 1970) is a longtime science fiction creator. His radio play Companions, a story of love and isolation in deep space, was an official selection of the 2017 Hear Now Audio Fiction festival. His audio drama series Immunities, a body snatcher thriller, is appearing as a podcast from Dueling Genre Productions. Insistent Oracles, his first novel, came out in 2017, and deals with two astronomers whose interest in an unidentified object in space binds them to it and to each other. Prior to these projects he made several short films with science fiction themes.

In addition to science fiction, he has also worked in drama, most notably the Hamlet: The Series web series, which is also available from Amazon on dvd and instant video.

He also regularly appears on various podcasts & conventions. A list of these in maintained here... https://hamletseries.wordpress.com/20...

Reviews

[Fred Snyder · Rating 4 out of 5]

A team of graduate astronomy students find something odd, begin to suspect aliens. They graduate and leave their research for others to follow up on.
But when strange things happen - possible contact from supposed aliens, with vast knowledge - the US government takes an interest.

The story is an alien first contact, but the Oracle is just like the Greek stories - a conduit to the knowledge of gods.

Sure, the first section is a little slow, I pretty much gave it away in the first two sentences in this review. But the characters are real and self-doubtingly believable. Once the fullness of the Oracle is revealed I eagerly read the book every day to discover its consequences.

[Tasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to the audiobook on this one. The performers did a terrific job with it — a lot of nuance and variety in the voices, so the large cast of characters really came across. The book has a pretty techy, hard-SF start that I had a little trouble with — I may just not have the requisite interest in astronomy and scientific-method procedurals — but as the characters start to come through, the story builds to a pretty surprising and human drama. I was deeply hooked by the end, and authentically emotional about some of the choices made, particularly by what you might call the villain, though the character certainly doesn't self-identify that way.