The Forever Man

When Raoul Penard's starship returns to Earth--two hundred years after it disappeared--with his mind and soul somehow merged into the circuitry of the ship, scientists try to recreate the phenomenon using pilot Jim Wander and his ship, "AndFriend"

In a break from his heavy-going Childe series, Dickson offers a lighter and brisker-than-usual adventure. The hero is another military superman, but here starship fighter pilot Jim Wander is manipulated by scientist Mary Gallegher into a mental symbiosis with his beloved ship. Their mission is to gather information about the mysterious aliens, the Laagi, who have been locked in battle with Earth for 200 years. In typically didactic Dickson fashion, the two disembodied human minds learn as much about themselves and each other as they do about the Laagi. Various implausibilities and an overworked serendipity aside, the tantalizing exploration of alien cultures moves this adventure forward rapidly as the protagonists keep readjusting and expanding their ideas to meet new, challenging situations.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.