4 out of 4 stars
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Dr. Arturo Riojas’s book Heaven and Earth (398 pages) offers an interesting blending of fact and fiction. Heavily relying on the author’s specialization in chemical and environmental engineering, it addresses the issue of cadmium, a carcinogenic heavy metal to be found in water and food supplies and most likely seriously affecting human health. With this aim in mind, Riojas manages to write a highly appealing science-fiction novel which poses fundamental existential questions regarding our place and role in the universe, the organization of human society, the past and future of our planet and so on.
From the very beginning, the structure of the book strikes by its originality since after each of the 21 well-developed chapters there is an insertion of information containing Cadmium Poisoning Facts not only for dissemination purposes but also as a warning for any potential readers. The prologue reveals the fact that aliens visited Earth many thousands of years ago planting seeds of knowledge for the Earthlings to benefit from and for the future interest of Treretum, the planet where they came from. A new spacecraft sent to collect more data about Earth hovers over present-day Atlanta with Houston and Area 51 as their next destinations. The subsequent meetings between a few carefully selected people on Earth and the aliens make up the focus of a storyline whose pace may be slow at first but always rewarding in terms of the exciting matters it addresses.
The novel features two protagonists: Olga Ramos, a brilliant young woman who earned her doctorate from the Aeronautical Engineering Department at Stanford University and was working as one of the principal researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California and her Mexican friend Cuahtémoc Gavilán, an environmental engineer whom she met at Stanford and who seems to be Arturo Riojas’s alter-ego in the book. They both want to attend that year’s Powwow gathering at Stanford, but Olga has first to attend a conference organized by the Department of Defense in Houston with the best scientists and engineers invited to attend in the name of national security. Since Olga is an expert in computer-enhanced, high-resolution digital photography used for her project on Interstellar Surveillance – Search for Life she is included in one of the sessions of the conference and has accepted the invitation with the hope of beneficial exchange of information with other scientists. What she cannot understand while at the event is the high level of secrecy surrounding the conference whose main purpose seems to be different from what she initially expected.
Olga’s rebellious nature attracts both the unwanted attention of Homeland Security which sends Agent Bob Stevenson to track down her every step and the interest of Dr. William R. Welch (Billy Ruben) from CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) and of his young data analyst, Sam Robinson who are involved in a project of statistical analysis of data on cadmium and its effects on human health. Olga, Gavilán, Dr. Welch and Sam are driven by their curiosity to discover what the government is trying to hide and thus are thrown in an adventure in which they will find out what is hidden in Hangar 18 of famous Area 51, Nevada and they will have the chance to have ample conversations with Nivla of the alien Kcalb Clan and his two drones, Cinz and Reppoc. The tension build up gradually reaching climactic moments toward the end of the story when Olga and Gavilán find themselves in life-and-death situations and have to figure out if the aliens have come to Earth only to help and gather information or have some other secret agenda too. The scenes on the alien spacecraft depicting the confrontation between two alien clans and their fight against the Muimdac invasion add additional suspense to an already gripping plot.
All in all, I rate this book 4 out of 4 stars because it displays a stylistic variety meant to satisfy different readers’ tastes: humorous exchanges between the protagonists, colorful Spanish retorts hiding an incipient love story between Olga and Gavilán, highly documented scientific facts about cadmium poisoning, attempts to answer social, medical, economic and political concerns and a suspense-filled plot bringing together human beings and aliens in an effort to unravel the mysteries of the universe.
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Heaven and Earth
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What I actually appreciated about this author is the fact that he has struggled to write a novel just to raise people's awareness on cadmium poisoning. I checked the technical aspects on the internet and I soon discovered that what he kept telling in the book was the truth. Before reading the book, I had no idea cadmium existed and nothing whatsoever about its poisonous effect on our body, that we accumulate it from various things we eat, etc., that we can reduce it by taking zinc, etc. Besides, the author has a PhD in engineering, he obviously knows a lot of things. We have to give him some credit: he chooses to write about real scientific facts paradoxically in a science-fiction novel and although dragging at times because of his lack of experience, the science-fiction plot is not so bad either. On top of that, the editing is very good. I think he may actually turn into a very good writer if he keeps doing it. 
