Synopsis
Sent to investigate alien signals warning of the destruction of Earth by the malevolent Horch, a group of astronomers led by Dan Dannerman is taken prisoner by aliens with their own diabolical plans for Earth, but these aliens have underestimated the ingenuity of their human captives.
Reviews
It is late in the 21st century, and an Earth that has largely abandoned space exploration has just been contacted by intelligent extraterrestrials, who warn of other, hostile aliens on the way. At the same time, Joe-Dan Dannerman, a young undercover police operative, infiltrates the research establishment of his cousin to learn what she plans for an abandoned orbital observatory. The aliens have plans for the observatory, too, as Joe-Dan, his cousin and their oddly assorted company of astronauts discover when the aliens arrive. Captured by the ETs, these humans must survive their own personality clashes, alien technology and encounters with alien-made duplicates of themselves. When they are finally liberated, it is on a distant planet, short of food, weapons, medicine and knowledge, amid strife between both factions of aliens that poses a menace to humanity. The opening contains too many conventional dystopian elements; but, once the cast makes contact with the aliens, the story is conceived and executed with Pohl's usual acumen as this veteran author, who published his first novel in 1952, displays his skill at juggling ideas in the classic SF mode. The ending is oddly unresolved, unless this is the first volume of a series?which would not be bad news.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Award-winning veteran writer-editor Pohl (The Voices of Heaven, 1994, etc.) takes a hoary science fiction clich‚--alien abduction--and turns it on its head. In the near future, two brief strange messages from space aliens arrive on Earth, while in a US racked by pollution, crime, nuclear terrorism, and hyperinflation, Dr. Pat Adcock suspects that aliens have landed on her abandoned orbiting Starlab. To go and investigate, she puts together a team that includes herself, pilots Jimmy Lin and Martˇn Delasquez, old astronomer Rosaleen Artzybachova, and bodyguard Dan Dannerman (secretly a spook, he's also Pat's cousin). Starlab, they discover, is infested with weird alien devices--and then, abruptly, they find themselves thousands of light-years away, prisoners of alien ``Dopeys'' and ``Docs'' who are experimenting on them! According to the aliens, their Beloved Leaders need Earth's help against outlaw terrorist Horch. Seems that the two sets of aliens are fighting over who controls the ``eschaton,'' a time in the remote future when everyone who ever lived will rise again and live forever! Pat, Dan, and company learn that they are copies, their originals having been sent back to Earth with altered memories; still other copies have been subjected to horrible vivisection experiments. And the Horch add to the confusion by claiming that the Beloved Leaders are actually ruthless, planet-destroying tyrants. An impeccably crafted, absorbing, and enjoyable reworking of mostly familiar material that, while satisfyingly self-contained, seems perfectly poised for sequels. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
With aliens on the way to Earth, an oddly assorted group gathers at a New York observatory. Against the backdrop of a grim and finely detailed near-future world, a secret agent, the observatory director (his cousin), a Chinese astronaut, a retired professor, and a general from the (almost) sovereign State of Florida become involved in international intrigue, personal conflicts, and the long-awaited first contact with aliens who may be the direst enemies of humanity. Held in captivity by the aliens (who seem both friend and foe to Earth), the humans must maintain their sanity and their purpose under puzzling and repugnant conditions, including their captors' ability to construct duplicates of them. The aliens' involvement, along with their human prisoners, in an appalling interstellar war brings the story to an unresolved climax; more is to come. Pohl's sf mastery is again evident, as his deceptively simple style carries the action easily and hypnotically to a nonconclusion that has us gasping for more. Dennis Winters
On 21st-century Earth, the National Bureau of Investigation sends Dan Dannerman to spy on his cousin, Pat Adcock, director of the Dannerman Astrophysical Observatory. After strange visual messages are received from space, Adcock suspects an alien presence on her defunct space satellite and secretly plans a mission to recover and sell alien technology. This is one of the prolific Pohl's (Mars Plus, Baen, 1994) finest novels, combining first contact, the concept of immortality, and cloning. Highly recommended for sf collections.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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