Review of Shield Down

[Nathaniel Owolabi]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Shield Down" by William de Berg.]

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3 out of 4 stars

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Shield Down is a science fiction novel with an apocalyptic vision of the future. This is a story of the brilliant but controversial astrophysicist, James Allan Templeton IV – also known by close friends as Jim and as Professor Templeton in the professional world. After having published other controversial theories with his friend, evolutionary biologist Nicholas Pavlich, Templeton published a paper predicting potential mass extinction on earth. According to his theory, this was to happen by cosmic radiation from the nearest gamma repeater ever recorded, SGR 0245-05 – which represents its designated longitude in hours and minutes, and latitude in degrees ( Soft gamma repeaters are “galactic events associated with starquakes”, their flares release “an enormous amount of electromagnetic energy in the form of gamma and x-rays” that floods the galaxy “with a trail of charged particles”). Although this theory was not widely accepted, Templeton published another paper with his mentee, John Bazany, which aimed to confirm the real-life conspiracy theory that NASA never landed on the moon. This led to him losing more ground in the world of astrophysics but as it later turned out, SGR 0245-05 did erupt again, and so came the apocalyptic part of the novel.

Although, not everyone will agree with the opinions of William de Berg; in this book, he managed to fuse a fictional novel with facts and information pertaining to today’s world in such a way that makes this book very educational. William shows excellent storytelling skills; the way he writes makes the readers feel like they are reading the work of a very experienced writer. He draws the readers into his plots; taking them on a mind trip with fiction and then shakes off the reverie with one of those interesting real-life facts he’s written into the book. To make this book more educational, he included references to website links to fact-check the real-life information he included in his book and explain the astrophysical terminologies he used.

I really enjoyed reading this book but I still have some reservations about it. I found the author’s support for certain conspiracy theories and the fact that he tried to force these views on the readers a bit upsetting. Although, I am very open-minded and willing to unlearn certain things if I ever discover them to be untrue; I do not disagree with common knowledge unless I have irrefutable evidence that those beliefs are untrue, however, the evidence presented by the author to support his claims are presumptuous. There were even some cases where he mixed fiction with facts just to convince his readers. I also found the references a little bit overwhelming because they were written beneath almost every page, I would have preferred if they were all compiled and then written at the end of the book.

This book is still worth reading regardless of its faults. I might not be a fan of conspiracy theories; however, I am a big fan of science fiction and the author’s ability to write science fiction was able to win me over. I have to rate this book 3 out of 4 stars because it deserves it.

I recommend this book to lovers of conspiracy theories and science fiction lovers with open minds.

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Shield Down
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[Oye Timothy]

Sci-fi novels are fascinating. I think it's cool reading books that talk about extinction on Earth. Thanks for the review.