Customer Reviews

Operation Roswell: The Novel

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Kevin Randle's take on the Roswell Incident lends itself well to a sprawling potboiler of a novel. If you read it without an agenda, it is simply fun! If, on the other hand, you try to accept it as a fictionalization of actual events, then you will probably get embroiled in details and miss out on the enjoyment. Personally, I don't know if the Roswell Incident occurred, nor do I care. I have read enough about it and seen enough on TV to have a passing familiarity, so I never got lost in the novel. What I did enjoy was Randle's characterizations of Harry S. Truman and Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay. Putting two such powerful personalities in a closed room and letting the sparks fly was enough of a hoot to carry the rest of the book--even when I wasn't all that thrilled with the details.
For the record, there are two things that bothered me about Randle's research. First, was having a jet fighter in 1947 equipped with air-to-air missiles. Uh-uh. Our only jet fighter in 1947 was the Lockheed F-80 and it was equipped with six .50 caliber machine guns, and a very primitive radar ranging device for the gunsight. At that time, there were rockets that could be slung under a fighter's wings, but they were for air-to-ground use, and didn't enjoy anything near pin-point accuracy. Second, Randle does a fairly good job with a shoot-em-up near the end of the book, but spoils the scene by having the 'reek of cordite' hanging around after the shooting. Uh-uh. Cordite was used for only a very short time, well before 1947. At the time of the novel, the smokeless propellants were light-years ahead of cordite and had a very different aroma.
Those nits aside, I liked the book and plan to advise several of my friends to buy their own copy.

First off, I am not a believer in the Roswell "crashed UFO" story. There is no doubt in my mind that a rancher recovered some unusual debris from an aerial object in the New Mexico desert near Roswell in 1947. Similarly, there is no doubt in my mind that the source of the debris was a top-secret "balloon train" flight of Project Mogul, which was designed to investigate acoustical techniques of detecting Soviet nuclear explosions (remember, the Soviets had not yet tested an atomic bomb at the time). All of the recent hype about a crashed saucer and small extraterrestrial bodies found in the wreckage and alien autopsies and mysteriously silenced witnesses is, in my opinion, just that--hype.

With that said, I still found "Operation Roswell," taken simply as a science fiction tale, to be a good read. I had no trouble "suspending my disbelief" for the sake of the story. Author Randle does a good job of weaving together factual and fictional plot elements into--mostly--a rousing good yarn. His inclusion of real historical figures, such as General Curtiss E. LeMay and President Harry S Truman, adds verisimilitude, and the other characters are well-drawn, individualistic and interesting. I very much enjoyed about three-fourths of the book. However, I was disappointed with the "shoot-`em-up" ending. I agree with another reviewer who observed that Randle apparently had a hard time figuring out how to bring his story to a close, so he threw in an alien attack and some gratuitous gunplay that were in no way foreshadowed. Yes, the ending was a surprise, but not in a good way.

Still, on balance, "Operation Roswell" was a pleasant diversion. You don't have to be a believer to enjoy it. I recommend it if you're looking for an interesting "niche" science fiction story that nicely integrates elements of the real and the unreal in a reasonably exciting way.

Warning---Spoilers below!

I'm a huge fan of the UFO/Alien novels that have been coming out lately. Read the entire Area 51 series and loved every single book. Operation Roswell had all the key elements in becoming a great book until, I read the last couple of chapters. Disappointing is the least I can say about this story's ending. It was like he had no idea how to complete the book and decided "What the hell...I'll make them into blood thirsty Aliens. That would make a great ending and it catch the reader off guard!" No cigar, man. I had started to connect with the living Alien and the author was great in expressing how the Alien was feeling while being held captive. I really wish he had made it that they somehow communicated with it before he/she/it passed along. The author never quite explained where the blood thirsty aliens came from. Only the protaganist's speculation was explained. Nothing outstanding came out of the autopsies and I was really hoping for something groundbreaking to them. All in all, borrow this book from the library like I did. You'll be sorry if you bought it.

As for the truth behind what happened at Roswell, I really have no opinion either way. Although I do like this genre of book, the sort of 'what if' type of book in regards to UFO's, this book failed to deliver completely. It seemed like it was very jagged in its presentation, and above that, boring.

Each chapter seemed to start with the same basic intro, and ended on the same. It just wasn't a fun book to read.

In the summer of 1947, many people claim they witnessed unidentified flying objects soaring in the proximity of the White Sands nuclear testing grounds. The crafts show up on radar. As far as the American military is concerned, the UFOs perform operations light years ahead of anything the US Air Force can execute such as almost instant acceleration and deceleration and on a dime curve maneuvers.

President Truman assumes that the desert show is just that a clever hoax as he concentrates on the real menace, Stalin's Soviet Union. However, to ease concern, especially with an election next year, he assigns General Curtis to do whatever is necessary. Fire first and damn the consequences LeMay orders his pilots to shoot down one of the crafts. Soon luck occurs near Roswell as a triangular shaped craft with no wings crashes. Four dead humanoid aliens are inside, but one survived. Truman orders a full cover-up to prevent a public panic even as the craft and its occupants are taken to Nevada where LeMay insures a nuclear weapon remains on stand by alert.

OPERATION ROSWELL is a fun and plausible fictionalized account of the famous Roswell incident. UFOlogists and the ET crowd will enjoy this well written action thriller that uses real people to add to the feel of authenticity. Kevin Randle may be a believer, but he insures that doubting Thomas and Thomasina will enjoy the story line yet find the plot quite feasible, making this a novel for anyone who relishes the "truth is out there".

Harriet Klausner

It's pretty well done, if it drags a bit in places. I was reminded while reading of a (possibly apocryphal) story (that she swore really scared her friend) from my ex-wife that a friend of hers got lost at the Pentagon and happened into a room that was supposed to be locked but the door was open - and there in a glass cylinder of fluid was a creature like that described in Operation Roswell (though no mention of the fangs). I saw a UFO once myself when I was 15, walking outside one night with my mother. We saw it together.

I spent some time talking once, by accident really, with those two guys who said one of them had gotten abducted while out on a logging crew. Those guys said that inside the ship was nothing at all like the movie.

This story. Well, if that's how it really was, ...but that's hard to believe. Sort of a cross between "Gremlins" and night of the vampires fallen from outer space. Hard to fathom how an extraterrestrial could be adapted to our biology enough to use our blood for meals. And the energy dynamics of growing a living organism are highly endothermic - it takes quite a bit of energy. How could all those replicants have been grown like that? Seriously, the total blood volume of the few people identified wouldn't come close. The creatures seemed to just live on blood. Sure, you had 22 people listed as missing, but even then, that might give enough energy for maybe one critter. Although, who knows - maybe it's a designed critter. But even then, thermodynamics needs to add up somehow.

Seems implausible by the end. It doesn't answer how the creatures were killed. The hero watched the underground detonation of the a-bomb from a mile away, and is inside a tunnel that is connected to the complex that got blown? Hmmm. Well, perhaps possible if the blast sealed the tunnel shut, sinced it was circular. But if the hero lived, and the creatures were in the tunnel ahead of them all the way, as described, then the little vampire critter-kids survived too; they were tough little buggers for sure...

Kevin D. Randle is known primarily for his non-fiction books dealing with the U.F.O. phenomena (The Crash at Roswell, The Abduction Enigma), but has also written series of science fiction (Jefferson's War and The Exploration Chronicles).

When I saw that he had written a novel based on the purported U.F.O. crash at Roswell I had to pick it up. Though I tend to think that what crashed was an experimental weather balloon, I still have an interest in flying saucers. I figured since Kevin had both the background research from his non-fiction work and he had a number of fiction books under his belt, the combo in Operation Roswell should really be something.

On that, I was disappointed. The story is inherently fascinating. A craft not of this earth crashes outside of a tiny New Mexican town that just happens to be the home of the world's only nuclear bomber group. And though it is fiction, there is the tantalizing prospect that what you are reading might be true!

Unfortunately Kevin Randle is not a competent fiction writer. The writing tended to be simplistic and repetitive. For example: *On almost any other base, it would have been impossible to find drivers, that is privates or corporals, who had top secret clearances. But at the home of the only nuclear strike force in the world, many people, because of the 509th's mission, had top secret clearances. It made it easy to find drivers with the necessary clearances.* See what I mean? The entire book follows this pattern. Information is given, then over explained and repeated usually within one paragraph. As a result, the book felt overly long and plodding.

What's worse is that while certain things were repeated, details were almost always left out. All those little touches that would have given the book the flavor of the 1940's (things like what kind of car they were driving or what their clothes looked like, what song was on the radio or what have you) were always skipped. As a result, though the story takes place in 1947, you wouldn't be able to tell that if it weren't for the chapter headings and references to World War II. All of the little touches, slang of the time or references to what was then current pop culture that can give the best historical fiction a feeling of verisimilitude with the time they are presenting were missing.

Some folks don't like the too much description, but here there was almost none. It was especially unforgivable for the scene of the visit to the crash site itself. This should have been the centerpiece of the book. But even here detail was pretty light. Reading this, I wasn't sure: Were the aliens naked? If not, what were they wearing? These details are important. After all, we are being asked to accept and understand something not of this Earth. We should at least understand what they looked like. Description of the ship was handled a little better.

I had this book on my TBR stack for a while and was really looking forward to reading it. But as I got down to less than a hundred pages from the end I was so frustrated with it I considered tossing it aside unfinished.

I would consider reading Mr. Randle's non-fiction. I don't doubt he knows more about U.F.O.s and Roswell than I do. But if you are looking for a fictionalized account of that famous U.F.O. crash, I'd recommend Whitley Streiber's Majestic (and that one's no masterpiece either).

Kevin Randle, having examined everything known about the actual Roswell incident in his other books, has given us a fictionalized account in Operation Roswell, using just enough actual people (General Curtis LeMay and President Harry Truman, for instance) to make it seem plausible. At least, to make you wonder if it could have happened this way. What I liked about the book was that it started from a completely different point of view from the usual accounts of Roswell. The whole incident really hit the public when Jesse Marcel went public in the 1970s about the debris field, and about the cover-up, where his military bosses had him pose with a weather balloon, and put out the story that it was only a balloon, not a flying saucer, that had made the debris.

But of course, the real story begins long before that, when the craft itself was somehow brought down in the Arizona desert. We also know that "flying saucers" had been observed by the public and by the military prior to this incident. The author tells the story through the eyes of those who first found the crashed saucer and those who were tapped to investigate the crash. Behind the scenes, orchestrating the investigation, was General Curtis LeMay, who is shown as ruthless in his pursuit of enemies of the US. In his mind, aliens were the worst kind of enemies, and that attitude drives the story. Yes, the President knew about it, but he left the solution in the hands of Gen LeMay.

The aliens are interesting and very different from us, but we (and the book's characters) never learn much about them. We don't know where they are from or why they are here. While it's probably realistic to think we probably would be unable to communicate with beings from another planet, the unknowns feel like loose ends in this story. The ending is unsatisfying and while the story postulates that no one ever learns the real truth, it seems unlikely that the violent solution of General LeMay would escape detection.

Still, this is an imaginative story line and I enjoyed the book. I recommend Kevin Randle's book about the real Roswell, The Truth About the Ufo Crash at Roswell, for a picture of what we know about the real incident.