Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Beginning of the End: Book One of The End of Children

The Beginning of the End: Book One of The End of Children

Hudgin, Fredrick

Paperback

Series: The End of Children, Book 1

Science Fiction

ISBN10: 1539010929
ISBN13: 9781539010920
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Published: Sep 21 2016
Pages: 392
Weight: 1.15
Height: 0.81 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Kirkus review:

Fantasy/sci-fi author Hudgin (Green Grass, 2017, etc.) launches The End of Children Series with the premise that eons ago, an alien expedition-captained by intelligent octopuses of the interstellar Grock Corporation-claimed prehistoric Earth for trading and natural-resource exploitation. The explorers genetically elevated primates, boosting their brain power to the degree that they would ultimately be able to make future commerce deals. But a rival ET mission from the aquatic planet Quyshargo (these aliens resemble mermaids and Black Lagoon monsters) covets Earth as well, and subverts Grock's plan with secret genetic and dream planters tinkering. Result: Millennia later, California graduate student Lily suddenly conceives a practical technique for instantaneous travel/teleportation she implements with her boyfriend, Kevin, and classmate Doug. Dubbed the Rosy Transmitter (for the color of its beam), the process is soon sold by a greedy professor to competing world governments, and even the White House envisions it principally as a weapon. The invention alarms the Grock aliens monitoring the planet. Homo sapiens, they believe, are too vicious for tech that could send them rampaging destructively across the universe. After briefly abducting the three students, the aliens begin using a sanctioned, nonviolent genocide technique, spreading a virus that halts human reproduction. Lily is the last woman to get traditionally pregnant (via Kevin) while both are held virtual prisoners by a panicked U.S. government. Hudgin details the next tumultuous nine months with succinct but well-thought-out strokes (whereas other authors might overpopulate the narrative with a high page count) of how Earth society reacts to the paradigm shift of the Rosy Transmitter and imminent extinction through sterility. Readers will find echoes of Kurt Vonnegut, Harry Harrison, and Philip Jose Farmer (especially the last's Seventy Years of Decpop) in Hudgin's smart, edgy blend of the sardonic and the apocalyptic. Some may sense a determinedly schizoid tone, as serious extinction concerns (and involved discussions on cloning) contrast with the campy Grock and Quyshargo minions behaving like maritime pirates despite their dire pursuit of enlightened capitalism of a space alien sort. The loose ends and cliffhanger ending point immediately toward the sequel and, unlike Earth's people, the material seems very fertile indeed.

My description:

The End of Children has ALIENS who want to crush us and aliens who want to help. It has VIRUSES. It has PRESIDENTIAL CORRUPTION. It has GALACTIC WARS. It has KIDNAPPED BABIES. It has INTELLIGENT PORPOISES, and they don't hitchhike!

Some kids find out how to open a wormhole, the government weaponizes it, the wormhole detectors on the moon announce the discovery to the rest of the galaxy, and after the aliens make humanity sterile for being too warlike and put us in an airtight quarantine, we have World War III. It takes three hours to decimate almost all the world's governments and militaries - thank god for Canada! The world's male leaders have failed us, and the galaxy won't talk to us about a second chance.

But it all ends happily. A brave young woman finally convinces the galaxy that we have something to contribute by performing Romeo and Juliette by herself in a space capsule with two weeks of food and no way to return to Earth. Our galaxy gets attacked by another galaxy. We save the emperor of our galaxy, show his generals how to fight after ten thousand years of peace, and kick the other galaxy's ass. The emperor offers us another world. We turn Earth over to the porpoises, emigrate to the new world (named Atlantis), and are admitted to the Ur with the woman as our representative.

OK. I left out a little. It's a big story, told in three volumes, each with over 100,000 words.

Also in

Science Fiction

View All