"Ascension" by Nicholas Binge
Above: "Ascension," - Nicholas Binge - 344 pages.
I completed reading the above book today.
When Harold found himself inside a tesseract after having entered a cave, I was reminded of the film "Interstellar." "Interstellar's" Joseph Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) traveled millions of lightyears from an outlying star system, via tesseract, to the wall outside of his daughter Murphy's bedroom on earth.
Harold Tunmore, a genius physicist, vanished decades ago. Brother Ben is alerted to Harold's presence in a psychiatric hospital. Harold gives Ben some unsent letters, after which, seemingly having been driven mad by his experiences, Harold burns himself alive.
From Harold's letters, which make up the remainder of the novel: Harold describes being recruited in 1991 by a well-funded yet shady organization to explore an inexplicable phenomenon: A mountain far larger than Everest has appeared in the middle of the Pacific. As a curious scientist, Harold joins the exploration. He is also motivated by the fact that his ex-wife, Dr. Naoko Tanaka is also on the island. She is the last survivor of a previous expedition.
Harold joins fellow top scientists from various disciplines as well as shadowy company operatives. The mission is to climb the impossible elevation, some thirty-five thousand feet and record scientific findings. As the expeditioners climb, they encounter the strange: microbes that defy scientific understanding; people who develop ESP; time elasticity; memory loss; paranoia; violence; and tentacled creatures stalking the frozen ground.
Notwithstanding the trauma associated with their climb, the expeditioners remain impelled to reach the mountain's summit. As they climb, the expeditioners theorize about extra dimensions, alien life, the meaning of existence and the Sisyphus myth. "We have discovered either something very new, or something very old,” Harold writes. What is this mountain? Is it from another time? Another planet? Another universe? The only way to understand is to keep climbing and see how the various mysteries are tied together at the novel’s somewhat rushed peak.
When Harold found himself inside a tesseract after having entered a cave, I was reminded of the film "Interstellar."
"Interstellar's" Joseph Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) traveled millions of lightyears from an outlying star system, via tesseract, to the wall outside of his daughter Murphy's bedroom on earth.
Spoiler alert: It turns out that the mountain is the creation of an alien species which has been monitoring earth for hundreds of millions of years. One of the expeditioners was actually an alien camouflaged as a human. Two or three of the expeditioners were co-opted into alien slaves by alien mind tricks. Other expeditioners were killed. The aliens did not expect the expeditioners to reach the summit. Apparently, in previous mountain appearances, no expeditioner was able to get to the mountain top. Via deductive smarts and clever use of the mountain tesseract, Harold made it to the top. It is perhaps for that reason that he was allowed to survive, albeit in a mentally disturbed state. Harold learned of the alien presence in a discussion with the alien human imposter after he had reached the summit. Harold learned that the manifestation of the mountain was not the first time such an anomaly has appeared on earth. What's the point? "Ascension" considers the limitations of science and faith and examines both the beautiful and the unsettling sides of human nature.
The novel is fast paced, with lots of twists and turns. I wondered as I read how Harold, in freezing cold, often blizzard conditions, could find the wherewithal to write down his experiences. Also, the presence of the mountain being known only to the shadowy organization which organized the expedition and not to the world at large troubled me. Some willing-suspension-of disbelief is required to make the novel work.
The book gets good reviews and blurbs.
"You've gotta read Ascension by Nicholas Binge. Old-school creepy. . .five-star horror."—Stephen King.
"Smartly paced, deploying twists and turns strategically to keep the reader moving. . . The ideas are big, and the journey is a whole lot of fun." —The New York Times
"[An] excellent page-turner. . . a macabre, escapist pleasure for the thoughtful set.”—The Wall Street Journal
The book was an OK escape read. Its putative philosophical messages about the blurring of science and faith didn't resonate with me. I need to read some of the classics I have never read before my time runs out.