The First

For the last few years, a hot topic of discussion amongst astrobiologists has been the question of the existence of a technological civilization on this planet before Homo Sapiens came along. No, I’m not talking about some crackpot theory, though personally when the speculation was given the name of an old Dr. Who episode, The Silurian Hypothesis, I don’t think the scientists did themselves any favours. Incidentally, the credibility of the scientists in question is not in doubt either – we are talking about Adam Frank, Professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester, N.Y., and Doctor Gavin A. Schmidt, the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, a world-class climate-science facility.

Think about it for a minute. The Earth is 4.5 Billion years old, give or take 50 million years. We, Homo Sapiens, didn’t appear until 300,000 years ago. Our geological record goes back to the Quaternary period, which is 2.6 million years ago, and in fact, the largest stretch of ancient earth (small ‘e’) that we can examine is only 1.8 million years old and is situated in the Negev Desert, in southern Israel. So where’s the evidence? you may ask. It’s a good question, one that is very relevant IF you are talking about civilizations that rose and fell in the last few millennia, but if you go back further than the Quaternary period, any traces will have been crushed to dust millions of years beforehand.

Now it is into this wonderful enigma that author A. Claire Everward has fearlessly stepped. Her novel, ‘The First’, is fiction, yet, given the above, and an open mind, the questions posed and exploited in the story add weight to its pure entertainment value as an outstanding thriller. Author Everward proposes that such a civilization existed and still exists, and, as is logical, it has evolved both technologically, biologically, and morally to create a society dedicated to peace (otherwise it may have extinguished itself a long time ago, as we seem destined to do today). They coexist, hidden from humans, until it is decided they should reveal themselves and altruistically offer humanity their greater advances. Being us, warring humanity, however, matters do not go as expected. I won’t say more about the story, only that since I finished the novel at 1am last night, I have been thinking about its multiple messages since.

However, if all you want is a superbly-written, original, modern thriller with a touch of romance, populated by credible characters; something that will have you turning pages late into the night, then I thoroughly recommend this tale. If, like me, having heard of the hypothesis beforehand, you find yourself so intrigued by the premise you want to know more, you have two roads to follow: read the scientific papers published by the experts, and grab the next book in the series by this remarkable author.