1st line: "Ben Shore woke--and the long interior of the barracks-like building around him was still, moonlit dark."

It's funny to read this because it seems completely cliche now, almost like a parody of an SF novel...but of course in 1965 most of this was probably brand new and exciting!

What we have is General Ben Shore, who hijacks the just-finished "phase ship" (whose infinite probability drive is clearly what Douglas Adams was parodying with the Heart of Gold) so that he can go off to search for other planets for Earth to colonize instead of getting into a nuclear war.
He pretty much behaves like a 14-year-old the entire time, all OH IT'S SO TRAGIC I'M ALWAYS AN OUTSIDER and OH GOD I CAN'T BELIEVE THE CREW MEMBERS SAW ME CRY THAT ONE TIME WHEN ALIENS TOOK OVER MY BRAIN.
Oh and then he falls in love with the ship's nurse. I guess just because she was there, since they never had a conversation about anything personal, ever. ( )

Not terrible. But almost. I really had to push myself to finish it. It hasn't aged well. And the whole sub-plot about the main character's insistence of enforcing military discipline on the civilian crew of humanity's first faster-than-light spaceship as it explores the universe is eye-rollingly bad, as is his insistence on the need to show no emotions or feelings, keep the rest of the crew at a distance and bark orders at them rudely all the time. I think we're meant to sympathize with his shouldering this great burden of command which leaves him isolated and lonely, seeing it as a necessary sacrifice for the sake of all mankind. But really, its stupid. Overall the book comes across as a kind of proto-fascist Star Trek. ( )