Review by Samuel Bush   —   August 8, 2003

About twenty-three years ago my father-in-law tossed a small paperback book to me and said, "Here, read this book! It's pretty good!"

On the cover was a painting, by the talented Darrell Sweet, of two spacesuited figures digging up a spacesuited skeleton on what looks like the moon. It was titled "Inherit the Stars" and in smaller letters below, "James P. Hogan." So I read it, and it was pretty good. And James P. Hogan has become one of my favorite authors.

The setting is the near future. The nations of the earth have beaten their swords into spaceships and redirected much of their resulting prosperity into increased funding for scientific research and exploration. A truly international space program has established permanent bases on the moon and sent expeditions to the outer planets.

Then one day a dead body clad in a space suit is found on the moon. Well, that shouldn't be too surprising. There is a lot of exploration going on there, after all, and accidents are bound to happen, right? The problem is, the unknown astronaut (dubbed "Charlie" by the investigators) has been dead for 50,000 years, and he is human in every way testable.

Thus begins a vast project to discover just who this man was and from whence he came. The answers to those questions might well topple many a cherished theory and change forever what we thought we knew about the origin of man and the history of the Solar System. And to find those answers, Greg Caldwell must coordinate a huge team of scientific specialists -- a task not too unlike herding cats. But then Caldwell is a genius in administration and in recognizing the right person for the right job.

Dr. Victor Hunt is temporarily borrowed from the Metadyne Nucleonic Instrument Company and brought into the "Charlie" project to set up the prototype of his newly invented Trimagniscope. The Trimagniscope can produce three-dimensional pictures of such things as the insides of bodies, or the pages of closed books. And that is just the sort of images the project is going to need if the puzzle of Charlie is ever to be solved. But Dr. Hunt, an accomplished physicist in his own right, also has insatiable curiosity and the knack of seeing the big picture.

I won't tell you any more about the story except that, If you are in the mood to read a novel with loads of exploding spaceships, slavering monsters, blazing blasters, or berserk robots, then don't read "Inherit The Stars" yet. Instead read one of Hogan's later novels, like say, "The Two Faces of Tomorrow." But when you are in the mood for a good mystery novel with a high coefficient of wow and new twists on old theories then "Inherit The Stars" is just what you'll need. This is a story of science and the gradual unraveling of a paradox wrapped up in a quandary hidden under an enigma.

For those readers with a somewhat cynical outlook on the world, this novel will probably seem a little bit naive. After all, the cynic would argue, in the real world we are hardly ever surprised to discover that some scientist or bureaucrat has stubbornly refused to let the truth get in the way of his political agenda or pet crusade. Not so in "Inherit the Stars." This is a story about the scientific method that you learned about in school and how it can and should work. The closest thing to a villain this book has is the abrasive but brilliant Dr. Christian Danchekker. Even he, though pedantic, stubborn, and dogmatic, is willing to rethink favorite old theories when faced with new evidence.

That's not to say that Mr. Hogan is naïve. In his later books he has demonstrated that he is quite capable of depicting just how cussed humans, machines, and even bureaucrats can be. But "Inherit the Stars" is mostly about how thrilling discovery can be, and how important the scientific method is. And those are valid lessons for every generation.

"Inherit the Stars" is James P. Hogan's first novel. It is also the first in a series of four books, now called the Giants novels. They include also "The Gentle Giants of Ganymede," "Giants' Star," and "Entoverse." All of them are worth reading. Also Mr. Hogan is thinking about writing a fifth book in the series that will be set in Charlie's world of 50,000 years ago. With "Inherit the Stars" Mr. Hogan started a career as a superb writer in the Hard Science Fiction genre and has kept getting better ever since.