An unidentified object enters the solar system and an exploration team is sent to investigate. No this isn’t Rendezvous with Rama… In fact, All Judgement Fled predates Rama with some three years or so. Where Arthur C. Clarke’s novel is pretty much the genre-defining big-dumb-object, or artifact, story, this is a novel about first contact. Or is it? All Judgement Fled raises a number of pretty interesting moral issues, even though it seems hesitant to deal with them directly, leaving some conclusion-drawing to the reader. It has a definite old school feel about it, which I liked, but the psychological portions were a bit heavy handed at times. Other than that, it’s actually a pretty short novel and time well spent if you like this kind of thing. Yes, the object is a space-ship. And no, that is not a spoiler, as this is made abundantly clear on the first page and the back cover. Once the actual exploration of the alien vessel gets underway, the plot hits some more familiar buttons (Alien, for one thing, comes to mind – although, again, this book predates Alien as well) and things get pretty tense. The tension generated by the story is ambiguous, and you’ll understand it if you read it - that is spoiler territory, so explanations are out. As for me, I quite enjoyed it.
