Judging by his book covers, Joshua Calvert likes first-contact stories, and The Object, his recent standalone novel billed as “hard science fiction,” is better than most of its ilk. An astronaut working at an observatory in Hawaii spots an asteroid with a comet-like tail that should not be possible so far beyond the orbit of Saturn. She will eventually lead a multinational team to intersect the object near the orbit of Mars. Calvert avoids most of the pitfalls of the genre—his timeline is plausible, and he does not change the laws of physics to make things easier for his characters. His characters have personal issues to resolve, but the soap opera never overwhelms the scientific adventure. Finally, the alien spacecraft is plausible but always alien—no Rendezvous with Rama theme park here. ( )