I thought this was boring for most of the book but it was also a good book. It was a straight up scientific science fiction with no confusion with added romance, or dramatic adventure. It took a bit to figure out what the philosophical bent was but once I did I appreciated what the author had done with the narrative. This is not an emotional or relational book at all but one that focuses on a mystery and the desire to solve it. ( )

Best hard sci-fi novel I’ve read to date! ( )

I couldn't get past the whole "evolution is wrong, God did it" thing to get into the book. Christians might enjoy this one, I could not. ( )

A sleeper classic, somewhat misrepresented by the pulp-ish packaging. In many ways, this reads better to me now than when I first read it decades ago. Yeah, there's the Unidentified Anomaly (the dead guy), the BDO (alien ship on Ganymede), arguing specialists of many stripes, and plenty of sense-of-wonder cues to make a good pulp, but Hogan did go a couple steps further here.

First, a couple of counter-indications. The frequent smoking, even on spaceships and in computing centers, is a really dated and awkward detail. Also, the chauvinistic lack of women in any professional role is partly anachronistic and partly just creepy. So, it seems JPH was truly a bloke of his generation all around: cigars and scotch for all the guys!

On the other hand, his presentation of what are effectively lap-top computers, on-line purchasing, and multinational corporations funding interdisciplinary research teams were pretty forward-thinking for 1977. Best of all, for me at least, was the focus throughout of scientists and administrators behaving right. Scientists get territorial and defensive, even punchy, about their theories and conclusions; teams reduplicate work because they weren't communicating across the hall, arguments go on and on. Like real research or conferences! And though there have been advances in all fields since the late 1970s, Hogan's presentation of evolution, physics, and linguistic reconstruction are pretty much bang on. I might not be fully at home with his attitudes, but he did his homework, and wrote science admin as he'd lived it.

There's a 50,000 year old dead guy on the moon, evidence of aliens in the Solar System, and human bases on a number of other worlds, but the real theme of this book is the researchers working the problem. That doesn't get old. ( )

Published in 1977, this novel is set in a twenty-first century which now looks wildly over-optimistic: worldwide demilitarisation, no environmental crises or religious fanaticism; instead, increasing global prosperity and all the collective talent and energy formerly wasted on the military (brains and technical expertise, the enthusiasm of youth and experience of age) now being channelled into purer pursuits—including manned exploration of the entire Solar System. Ahh, if only!
   The story begins at a company called Metadyne, where they’ve developed a device called the Trimagniscope which can produce magnified 3D colour images of the insides of any objects without cutting them open. They’ve been gaining an international reputation, but then one day are given an assignment which will test this device to its limits: a dessicated body, apparently human, has been found in a ravine on the Moon, a few miles from one of the new scientific bases. Shipped to Earth and radiocarbon-dated, it turns out to have been lying there for fifty-thousand years. There’s also its spacesuit, a range of equipment—and, in one knee-pocket, a small book far too fragile to open. Perhaps the Trimagniscope, though, can discover what’s written on its pages…
   This is a lovely idea to start from, and immediately I was thinking: ancient aliens? Or time travellers? The truth, though, turned out to be much more convoluted—improbably convoluted, and some of the science a bit dodgy too, to say the least. Also, if you’re one of those people who throw their hands in the air screaming, “Info-dump! Info-dump!” you won’t like this book one bit.
   I did like it. The writing itself is pretty laboured at times, and (unless it went completely over my head) I don’t think there’s anything deep here either, but it’s an entertaining read for all that. ( )