10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Three Great Books In One, November 30, 2000
This review is from: The Giants Novels (Inherit the Stars, The Gentle Giants of Ganymede, and Giants' Star) (Mass Market Paperback)
Inherit the Stars starts on the moon sometime in the near future when astronauts find a dead body human body 1000's of years old. How did it get there? How could it be there? No one knows.
The writer then procedes, step by step, to explain how this could have happened. His science is so strong that, if I read this a few years in the future, I might believe it was actually happening. While the end of the book takes a few leaps of faith, (pun is intended), it all seems amazing real. It is a fun adventure written in the best traditions of science fiction.
The second book here, there are three in one combined in this book, is also great. It is a story about our first contact with creatures from another planet. Because these creatures had such a different evolutionary path from us, they are as much different, intellectually, as in their appearance.
The big difference in this story, as opposed to most science fiction, is how nice these aliens are. Earth falls in love with them and you will too. The writing, extremely optimistic about human nature, was a nice change of pace from most books of the genre. Since the violence here is at a minimum, the author uses a few interesting mysteries, unresolved from the first book, to maintain the series pace and tension.
The final installment in this series was fun too, but it took a different tact. The optimism expressed so nicely in the first two books is lost here. This world has government conspiracies and aggressive alien races. Violence, or its threat, is finally found in the series.
The science, as well, is a little closer to fantasy then science fiction. The first book "could" happen, at least it seems that way. The second story is a fantasy, but its discussions about evolution was great. The last book would be good anywhere, it jsut didn't fit in very well with the series. All are good though. All of them are worth reading.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hogan's 'Inherit the Stars'.....REAL science fiction, August 22, 1997
By A Customer
This review is from: The Giants Novels (Inherit the Stars, The Gentle Giants of Ganymede, and Giants' Star) (Mass Market Paperback)
Ever since I read this incredible book, no other
sci-fi novel ever came close to satisfying me. I cannot praise this book enough. All other so called sci fi books seem devoid of content and meaning compared to this one. I'm glad amazon has the other two books of the trilogy, because I've spent the last five years looking for them
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A fairly entertaining and very character rich trilogy, April 17, 2004
This review is from: The Giants Novels (Inherit the Stars, The Gentle Giants of Ganymede, and Giants' Star) (Mass Market Paperback)
The Giants Novels is a compendium of a trilogy of books by James Hogan, Inherit the Stars, The Gentle Giants of Ganymede and Giant's Star. (btw, I really appreciate Del Rey for publishing these in one book). All three are tightly coupled and deserve to be read together. The basic premise of the trilogy is man's discovery of his origins after a 50,000 year-old human corpse is found in a cave on the moon. This is followed by the discovery of a 20 million year old spaceship on Jupiter's moon Ganymede that contains both alien corpses and animal specimens that clearly came from Earth. It was very fun to follow our protagonist Vic Hunt as he works to come up with a plausible explanation for these discoveries and how they fit into man's evolution. Much of the speculation is made clearer by the arrival of a 20 million year-old spaceship full of live aliens who used to inhabit our solar system. Seems they had some technical problems and although they had only been gone for 20 years their time, relativistic effects delayed their return by 20 million years. Eventually we learn that the returned aliens are not the last of their species as their forbearers moved to another star system millions of years before. When they make contact with their long lost descendents events are put in motion that forces their ancient species to get help from Earth to combat the biggest threat in their history.
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