Thomas Jericho, a
paleontologist working at the
Royal Ontario Museum in
Toronto,
Canada makes the first human-to-alien contact when a "Forhilnor", a
spider-like alien from the third planet of the
Beta Hydri system arrives on
Earth to investigate Earth's evolutionary history. The alien, Hollus, has come to Earth to gain access to the museum's large collection of
fossils, and to study accumulated human knowledge in order to gather evidence of the existence of
God. It appears that Earth and Hollus' home planet, and the home planet of another alien species traveling with Hollus, all experienced the same five
cataclysmic events at roughly the same time. Hollus believes that the universe was created by a god, to provide a place where life could develop and evolve. Thomas Jericho is an
atheist who provides a balance to the philosophical discussion regarding the existence of gods. At the end, the star
Betelgeuse goes
supernova, threatening all life within hundreds of
light-years with
radiation. One of several dead civilizations discovered by the explorers may have deliberately induced the
supernova in order to
sterilize the stellar neighborhood. This was presumably done in order to protect the
virtual reality machinery which now housed all of their planet's personalities. According to a theory of Thomas's, several worlds exist where the inhabitants uploaded themselves into machines instead of exploring the nature of the universe and gods. Although the supernova explosion occurred over 400 years before the events of the novel, the radiation is first reaching
Earth at the present time due to its distance from Earth. However, the alien ship's advanced
telescope in
orbit then sees a large black entity emerge from space itself and cover the exploding star. This is final proof that a controlling intelligence is guiding and preserving some life-forms in the universe. In the final chapter, the scientist, who is dying of
cancer, travels to the entity on the alien ship, where a
fusion of
genetic materials from human and alien sources produces a new life form that the aliens conjecture will create the next cycles of the universe. ==Controversy==