The novel “Cauldron” by Jack McDevitt was published for the first time in 2007. This is the sixth novel in a series set in the XXIII century starring the space pilot Priscilla “Hutch” Hutchins. The other novels in the series are: “The Engines of God” (1995), “Deepsix” (2001), “Chindi” (2002), “Omega” (2003) and “Odyssey” (2006). “Cauldron” was a finalist for the Nebula Award for best novel.
“Cauldron” is set in the middle of the XXIII century. In the future things are in many ways the same as the present: there are problems in the Middle East and especially the space program is being decommissioned. There’s a technology for interstellar travel that allows traveling faster than light and alien life forms were found but space missions are expensive and only a minority of people care about them.
When a scientist develops a new technology that makes interstellar travel much faster that rises a certain enthusiasm for space missions. An expedition is prepared to go very far toward the galactic center to try to identify the authors of the messages received on Earth decades earlier by Priscilla Hutchins father and to try to locate the sources of the omega clouds, energy formations that seem to look for sentient life unleashing against them lethal amounts of energy. The answers that Priscilla and her fellow travellers will find however will be very different from what they expect.
Jack McDevitt is famous for his novels in which space exploration meets with archaeological mysteries often about ancient alien civilizations. In Priscilla Hutchins adventures all of these elements are mixed together. The novel “Cauldron” contains many references to “Hutch” earlier adventures so it would be much better to read the whole series to appreciate it in its entirety although in this last chapter there’s an autonomous story.
The previous novel in the series “Odyssey”, also a finalist for the Nebula Award and also for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, already explored the myopia of the U.S. government continually cutting the budget for space missions. In “Cauldron” we see the future equivalent of the end of the Space Shuttle missions, now very close.
The melancholy of the pilots of the novel, some of whom have already found another job such as the real estate agent, is the same an astronaut can feel today seeing the Shuttles being retired. In the future most people will think that space travel is a waste of money and there are many other problems to solve on Earth, as if the budget allocated to space missions was much more than a small fraction of the military budget.
In this novel Jack McDevitt doesn’t make examples of technologies developed thanks to the XXII and XXIII century space missions but it’s possible that in the future space travel detractors are the ones who use them the most. On the other hand how many people today know that the budget of the ’60s was also used to develop the computer industry helping the informatics revolution? And what about telecommunications satellites that allow the satellite television broadcasting and the use of mobile phones? Without the space program would those be developed the same way?
“Cauldron” is also a story of space exploration out of the ordinary, the problem is that the journey is divided into several stages which aren’t detailed enough. In fact only the second half of the novel is dedicated to the expedition but the story of the trip would deserve more development.
The expedition covers a distance far greater than has ever been attempted by humans and despite the new propulsion system it requires a long journey. The novel explores mainly what the travelers feel in reaching a frontier where they’re on their own and in this sense a mission that reaches thousands of light years from Earth brings human beings to look better into themselves.
Unfortunately the discovery of ancient civilizations or their remains and the source of the omega clouds are treated almost superficially in comparison with the voyage, bringing almost to the extreme the notion that it’s the journey that counts, not the destination or the intermediate stops.
Overall “Cauldron” is commendable for the brave choice to avoid the introduction of fabulous aliens to create an easy sense-of-wonder in the readers but also for that reason it remains halfway between an adventure and a reflection novel, giving the impression that it needed more work to really fulfil its potential.
Also considering the constant references to the events from the previous novels in the series I’d recommend “Cauldron” only to people who have read them so they can finish it, of course unless additional novels get published. I regret not recommending it to most fans because it has some good points but as an independent novel it’s not easy to find it to your liking.
