The point has long been made in sci-fi that while we search for extraterrestrial intelligence, the ETs may already have located us and set off to do something about it. But in the up-to-date scenario of Peter F. Hamilton’s “Salvation” (Del Rey, 565 pages, $30), they don’t land in a spaceship outside the White House and say, “Take us to your leader!” Instead they send an AI capable of constructing “biologics” on arrival, creatures that can pass as human. Unusually effective humans, that is, set on working their way into power. The reader is left guessing which of the characters in the story is, or may be, an alien sleeper.

Source: Wall Street Journal September 28, 2018 21:00 UTC