I discovered Peter Cawdron thanks to his sci-fi novel Anomaly. It was a while ago, and since then every time the guy publishes a new book for Kindle, I’m probably the first one to purchase it. At €0.89 a pop, they’re a bargain. But the small price should not give you the wrong impression: Cawdron has a very readable and capturing prose, and plots are never trivial nor boring.
Anomaly is a full-length novel, and to some extent it’s a more usual piece of sci-fi, covering the first encounter between the human race and an alien entity in New York. It’s a very good read and I totally recommend it, but as I said it’s somewhat conventional. I’m sure it would make for a pretty good movie.
Serengeti, Trixie & Me and Savannah* are short stories focused on hypothetical human galactic exploration. It’s quite easy to imagine spaceships that travel across the Milky Way in a matter of a few days – or hours – and armed with the most destructive weapons you can think of. It’s quite easy to imagine alien civilizations that are quite the same as ours, only with some minor different traits. Well, Cawdron hasn’t fallen for it. He hasn’t followed the easy route. Instead, he imagined a totally different future, much more plausible, and somewhat melancholic and lonely. Deep space is unimaginably vast, and no one can hear you scream there. The three stories are bound together by the same grand human exploration project, and cover the histories of three different space ships and crews in their quest to find intelligent life in our galaxy and beyond. You will not find obsessive attention to technology, because the author just gives you some hints about what will probably be possible in the future, but without sounding too unrealistic or far-fetched. After all, it’s not important how a space ship can travel hundreds light years across the galaxy. What’s important is what its crew find in space.
In my opinion, Cawdron has demonstrated to be a very versatile science fiction writer. He has the uncommon ability to imagine and describe not only the interactions – whatever that means in each particular case – between humans and aliens, but the very humane reactions and emotions that men and women feel – fear, rage, pity, greed – in such encounters. Some have “accused” him to not giving characters enough profoundness. It might be true, but I think it’s very subjective, and science fiction should not give too much weight to individual characters beyond what’s strictly necessary to convey the meaning of what’s happening. Personally I prefer fast-paces prose, without too many bells and whistles. So, I suggest you to head over to Cawdron’s Amazon page and start reading.
* I haven’t read Savannah yet, but I can’t wait and I’m sure it will be awesome.