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Reviewed by Robert Collier III for Readers' Favorite
In Aletheia by Michael Karlsen-Williksen, we follow a Norwegian astronomer who grew up on his Uncle Arne's tall tales about a UFO landing in the freezing north. Everyone figured Arne was just eccentric, but decades later, the protagonist is working at a LOFAR telescope in the Netherlands when he catches a signal that changes everything. It's a direct response to a message Earth sent out in 2017, only it's not exactly a "welcome to the neighborhood" message—it's just the binary code for absolute zero. Panic hits the globe immediately. To undo the damage of screaming their location into the dark, the protagonist is placed on a ship called Aletheia to hunt down and destroy the Voyager probes before something hostile uses them as a map. He's completely alone out there, except for a surprisingly perceptive AI named NOUS. Is it actually possible to undo a message that's already been heard?
Aletheia by Michael Karlsen-Williksen is a clever piece of speculative fiction that really nails that "alone in the dark" kind of feeling. The pacing is a bit of a slow burn, which makes sense since it's trying to show the grueling reality of spending months in a tin can, as the world moves forward without you. That part caught me off guard—how quickly people back on Earth just turned the apocalypse into memes, merchandise, and TikTok videos, while the protagonist was getting ready to go into outer space to risk it all. The back-and-forth between the pilot and NOUS is easily the best part. The AI has a conversational edge that makes you wonder if it's actually a friend or just a very smart cage. Aletheia is an engaging, slightly chilling look at the consequences of being a little too loud in a universe that might prefer silence. If you like space thrillers that make you think, you should definitely grab this book.
