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| Cover art by Bruce Jensen |
| SUMMERTIDE Charles Sheffield New York: Del Rey Books, January 1991 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-345-36937-6 | ||||
| ISBN-10 0-345-36937-8 | 281pp. | SC | $4.95 | |
Thousands of years of human expansion have led to their presence on hundreds of worlds, and contact with other intelligent species, each with their own domain of worlds. Overlying everything, and tying everything together, are the artifacts of the Builders — first the Bose network that permits instantaneous transit between its hundreds of nodes, and then the other 1,236 artifacts, each more mysterious than the last, operating on principles of science indistinguishable from magic in the performance of purposes unfathomable. Naturally all the surviving civilizations are constantly striving in their various ways to unravel the secrets of the unknown race that filled the galaxy with advanced technology.
Within a small coalition of worlds known as the Phemus Circle is the Dobelle system, home to Opal and Quake which, mere millions of years ago, became tidally locked to each other through a cosmological accident. This put the otherwise unremarkable pair on the map, so to speak, for they are joined by The Umbilical: a tube spanning the several thousand kilometers between their facing points that carries electromagnetically-driven shuttle cars between them. The Umbilical compensates for natural changes in distance between the worlds, and at intervals withdraws from Quake entirely. Such withdrawals happen roughly every 3,500 centuries, when conjunction of other bodies in the system causes the tidal disruptions that gave Quake its name.
Such a conjunction is almost due, and an odd coterie of characters has arrived on Opal spaceport applying for permission to observe it on the surface of Quake. It develops that all are experts on the Builders, and that they have reason to think those 1,235 other artifacts give Summertide, as the conjunction is known, a special import. In addition there is a pair of human twins suspected of genocide, and thought to have come to the Dobelle system in their own starship. They are not on Opal, so by elimination must be hiding on Quake.
All these people are at risk in various ways, in addition to the common risk from geological turmoil they all face on Quake. The good guys — Darya Lang, Max Perry, Hans Rebka, Councillor Graves, the surviving twin, and two alien savant-servants, escape the surface in the nick of time in the twins' starship, using its last gasp of power. There in orbit, at the moment of Summertide, they observe something wonderful happening.1
Charles Sheffield (1935-2002) was chief scientist for the Earth Satellite Corporation and a prolific author of science fiction. Summertide gives us complex characters, an interestingly diverse assortment of Builder artifacts (all cataloged by Darya Lang, as it turns out), and reasonably plausible jeopardy. It is an entertaining read and an effective lure for the remaining novels of the series.
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