For die-hard fans only.
Latest in the Giants’ Star series.
Hogan (Martian Knightlife, 2001, etc.) begins with a long, dry and almost impenetrable summary of the series’ backstory. The main narrative opens on Earth, where Dr. Victor Hunt, deputy director of physics for the UNSA (the successor to NASA) receives a call on his cell phone . . . from himself. Or, rather, from a version of himself who inhabits a parallel universe. He quickly realizes that only the Thuriens, giant inhabitants of the planet Minerva, can help him understand the exchange of information between two different universes. So an expedition from Earth is sent to Minerva, including senior UNSA scientist Christian Danchekker and his cousin Mildred, a liberal Australian political scientist Danchekker didn’t at all want to spend more time with. After a quick journey, the scientists find themselves involved in exploring the nature of the Multiverse, in which all possible variations on our world coexist. Various paradoxical events begin to occur as they set up the powerful Thurien machine meant to explore the problem. They eventually realize that alternate versions of themselves are emerging into the current reality, interacting with them, and then returning to their own world lines, unaware that anything strange has occurred. Meanwhile, back on Earth, the FBI is after Hunt for having dropped an insider trading hint to one of his friends based on information learned from his alternate self. Hogan plays interesting games with ideas from the cutting edge of physics, but his characters are predominantly mouthpieces and his plot moves at a glacial pace.
For die-hard fans only.Pub Date: May 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-7434-9902-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Baen
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2005
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A new edition of the by now classic collection of affiliated stories which has already established its deserved longevity.
Pub Date: Aug. 16, 1963
ISBN: 055338256X
Page Count: -
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1963
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