Blind Lake, by Robert Charles Wilson

  Blind Lake starts well: a "new astronomy" installation, a small town enclave around a mysterious device that can image the individual lives of alien beings on another planet, is inexplicably quarantined from the outside. No information passes in or out and anyone wanting to leave doesn't get to live.

  In this situation, people act in different ways, as Robert Charles Wilson explores themes of families breaking up and their effect to children, "lockdown romances", but also paranoia, power dynamics, life purpose and other things. However, what is conspicuously missing is anything actually technical. Even the magical installation is just that: magical. One day a space telescope started to send worse and worse signals, so they used self evolving Artificial Intelligence to clean up the signal. And clean it up the little AIs did, even when the telescope stopped sending any signals. No one understands how and they are seemingly content with the situation.

  The sci-fi elements, even if always present throughout the book, stay in the background. Therefore, the entire story is about people: reporters, scientists, security guards, managers and their families or significant others. The ending isn't helping at all, it's a "whatcha gonna do?" kind of shrug-off.

  Bottom line: It is a well written book and I read it really fast, but it the end it felt like killing time more than reading a book. Like watching a TV series episode that I quickly forget afterwards. I feel like the author has a lot more to offer and maybe his other books, with juicy titles like Darwinia and The Chronoliths, would be better. I don't know if I will ever have time to read any of them, though.