Boundary by Eric Flint & Ryk E. Spoor

Boundary by Eric Flint & Ryk E. Spoor. Riverdale, New York: Baen Books, 2006. ISBN: 978-1-4165-1932-5

This is another good hard science fiction story, set in the not too distant future, in which the first human expedition to Mars is the main focus of the story. It's the motivation for the trip that makes the book a bit unusual. First, a paleontologist discovers a strange fossil, a “problematica,” to use a paleontological term defined in the book as referring to fossils “that appear to be either of unknown taxonomic origin, or whose occurrence in the location they are found contradicts current beliefs of the field.”

In this case the problematica appears to be the fossil skeleton of an alien being, something not related to any known life on earth, fossil or otherwise. Then, a robotic expedition to Phobos, one of the moons orbiting Mars, discovers an alien installation, complete with a mummified alien, who just happens to match the fossil found several years earlier by our paleontologist. So the whole kit and caboodle are off to Mars to investigate an alien installation apparently abandoned some 65 million years before.

It's makes a good story, albeit one with a plot line as sketched above that is fairly far fetched from a scientific point of view. The only other problem I had with the book is that the characters are just all too cozy with one another. Everyone is too hunky dory, nicey nice, and all that. The style is just a bit too informal for my personal taste. Almost as though written for a younger age reader. I'd give it a 5 or 6 out of 10 on my personal scale because of its fairly light-weight approach and story line.