The Darwin Elevator

My latest kindle book from the library is The Darwin Elevator by Jason M. Hough. I've downloaded it to the computer but haven't yet started it so I can't yet say if I like it, but it's nice for a changee to find a real science fiction novel instead of the prevalent "fantasy novel pretending to be science fiction" ;) You can listen to a review of it at NPR, or read it too. Here's a bit of the review ...

[...] just couldn't put it down, this first novel by an unknown writer. Even the format was exciting, as a fiendish science fiction reader friend of mine blurted out in pleasure - it's just like the old days, he said, a science fiction paperback original. Hough goes back to the old days for some of his motifs, such as the space elevator, an idea that's been around since the end of the 19th century and featured in some novels from the 1970s, notably Arthur C. Clarke's "The Fountains of Paradise."

And the old visit from the aliens who have a shadowy plan for reshaping life on earth, that's here too in Hough's novel. The extraterrestrials arrive to build the space elevator in Darwin, in the north territory of Australia and then they depart, leaving their invention to send out a powerful signal in an area surrounding the elevator in the town, which is good because a dozen years later, a terrible plague spreads around the world turning people into what Hough's surviving characters dub as subhuman or subs, zombie-like creatures who rip and tear and kill and maim any normal human being who gets in their way ...

And here's a brief interview with the author ...