Author: Joe Vitale

Publisher:

Published: 2003-08

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 9781410774606

Echoes in Time (90,000 words, 41 chapters, and epilogue) blends the themes of alien contact with the discovery of an asteroid in an orbit that will lead to a collision with earth. The "alien" culture, as the story develops, is not from some far-off star system, but the star-traveling descendants of an earth-born race of dinosaurs that evolved shortly before their own budding civilization was destroyed by an asteroid impact 65 million years ago. The ship bearing a member of the Kirraka, as these not-so-alien beings call themselves, lands in a remote area of Texas. When military units and aircraft move aggressively into the area surrounding the ship, they are attacked with powerful weapons from the alien ship (based on the assumption that star travelers wouldn't survive long without providing for their own protection against the spears and arrows of local savages) and the ship leaves with a powerful display of physical capabilities and disdain for the efforts to prevent their departure. A bizarre message is left at the landing spot that specifically names a person that the aliens wish to use as their sole contact, an obscure woman paleontologist and late Cretaceous period scholar, Edith Izzard. Contact with an advanced alien culture is viewed by Washington to have enormous economic and social consequences and importance. The resources of the federal government are turned to locating Edith and converting her to the governments "side" in dealings with the aliens. Edith is not easily convinced, or converted, to any side, especially as it becomes clear that if she does not cooperate she would forfeit her individual freedom and be coerced to do the government's will. When an asteroid is discovered heading for the earth, the importance of the technology available to an advanced culture seems crucial, and Edith's cooperation ever more essential in utilizing the power of the alien science to avoid global disaster. Edith retains her freedom, establishes contact with the alien, K. Word of the impending asteroid collision leaks to the population of the world, and chaos builds. The entire civilization can't be saved, but a compromise is worked out in partnership with the former residents of the planet.