Aggressor Six

Several months ago I read a first novel by Will McCarthy and was impressed. The novel is AGGRESSOR SIX. This is a novel of alien contact and war. What makes it different from others of a similar theme is that physics actually plays a part. The aliens have a huge empire (still just a spot on the map) that has existed for eons. Long enough for the forces of the spiral arm to have stretched and split the collection of worlds. Lo and behold, almost next door they run into humanity which is also attempting to expand into the stars. The aliens attack and humanity loses. Word gets out to Earth that the aliens are on their way. It will be many years before they arrive. Many plans are hatched to try and deal with the aliens who have reached humanity's furthest settlement and wiped it out. One of these plans is to train soldiers to live and think like the aliens and thus hopefully come up with a way to turn the invaders aside. This is called an aggressor six; a six-member group that is at once a colony and a family. They train and train. Later they find out that they are only one of three sixes. The other two are a six of dolphins and a six of machine AIs. The dolphins kill some researchers and it is decided that the plan does not work. But the humans are close. The machines are VERY dangerous if you say the wrong thing to them, but the machines understand the aliens. The aliens are getting closer (still a year or so away from Earth).This is a novel that does an excellent job of creating alien aliens. Not just strange, but plausible in their own right. A wonderful book for fans of hard SF.

Aggressor Six is the first SF novel by the author. Several centuries in the future, Earth has settled the Solar system and established colonies in five other stellar systems using fusion-powered slow ships. All of the colonies, except Sirius, have FTL communications with Earth through massive ansible relays. Unfortunately, an alien invasion from the waist of Orion hit the Sirius colony first and, before the news could reach the other human planets by lightspeed radio signals, a second force hit the Wolf colony. The Waister ships, traveling at ninety percent of lightspeed, then moved against the Lalande colony and a scout group attacked the Solar System. The human government tried desperately to understand the alien technology and to find some way to counter or nullify the alien weapons. Using memory retrieval technology, they discovered much about the alien language and social structure. However, most of the alien technology was incomprehensible to human researchers.In this novel, one small group, Aggressor Six, is dedicated to understanding the aliens by learning to "live and think and spit like the enemy". Captain Marshe Talbott is the queen, Navy Lieutenant Josev Ranes is Drone One, Marine Corporal Ken Jonson is Drone Two, Lieutenant Sopho Yeng is Worker One, Sergeant Roland Hanlin is Worker Two, and Shenna is the Dog. All have had a Broca web implanted with the Waister language loaded and available to their own brains. Sheena, a Martian Retriever, has a vocoder on her collar to help her speak.Ken Jonson is the only one in the group that has ever had contact with the Waisters, although it has all been during firefights. One of the reasons that he has been selected is his prior interest in acting. At first, he keeps having post-traumatic shocks from his experiences while boarding a Waister ship and subduing the crew. Once he gets beyond the flashbacks, however, he starts trying to think, act and talk like a Waister. Soon the whole group is doing the same.Captain Talbott's superior, Colonel Jhee, is a by-the-book administrator and doesn't really understand the objective of the group. He threatens to cut their funds on several occasions and soon begins to wonder at their sanity. He also keeps information from them.Aggressor Six soon starts to produce assessments of enemy objectives, tactics and motives, but Colonel Jhee only wants to know where they will strike and when. He also wants that information yesterday. Whenever Talbott and the group try to explain the necessity of working through the available data, he threatens to bring them up on charges if they don't produce according to his deadlines.Then Aggressor Six learns that they are not alone, but that two other Aggressor Six groups have been established. Their Waister knowledge insists that they must face the other groups. Colonel Jhee blows his top and locks them into their quarters.This story is an interesting extrapolation of current techniques of assessing enemy poli

AGGRESSOR SIX is not only one of the best first contact stories I've ever read, it's also one of the very best first sf novels. The 'Aggressor Six' of the title is a group of five people and a Martian retriever trying to simulate, and thereby understand, the behaviour of an insectoid alien hive culture before it wipes out yet more human colonies. Intelligent and fast-paced, the novel had me completely hooked by page 2 and wouldn't let me go: the characters are interesting, the writing taut and economical, and the inherent tension would do credit to a Hitchcock movie. It amazes and saddens me that so wonderful a book is out of print, unfilmed, and so little known.

"One part STARSHIP TROOPERS, one part OUTER LIMITS-style psychological suspense... McCarthy cranks up the tension effectively. Recommended." -- Charles DeLint, Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. . "A short, fast-moving tale of human and alien psychology. The exploration... is well done and fascinating. I like McCarthy's details. Not many authors can create truly alien aliens, but McCarthy appears to be one of them." -- Janice M. Eisen, Aboriginal SF. . GET THIS BOOK BACK IN PRINT! Happy reading-- Pete Tillman