The Minervan experiment

The Giants Novels is an omnibus edition of the Giants series. This volume contains Inherit the Stars, The Gentle Giants of Ganymede, and Giants' Star. These novels were the first published by the author.Millennia before the Apollo project, mankind had reached Luna. As man returns to the Moon, he finds evidence of a prior human technological society. Moreover, he finds artifacts of another alien civilization on Ganymede, the largest moon of Jupiter.In Inherit the Stars, a survey party finds someone in a spacesuit within a cave-like hole in the Copernicus crater. The body was that of a human being who had died over 50,000 years ago. Apparently it had come from Minerva, the long destroyed planet between Mars and Jupiter.In The Gentle Giants of Ganymede, an alien spaceship has been found under the ice of Ganymede. Inside are found the remains of eight-foot tall entities who have been named Ganymedeans. Then the Shapieron, a fully operational Ganymedean spaceship, appears near Ganymede.In Giants' Star, the Shapieron leaves to search for the migrated Ganymedeans at a star in the constellation of Taurus. Before their departure, a message is sent from a human installation on the Luna Farside toward this star telling of the ship's departure and a response is received soon thereafter welcoming the crew to their new home. Although no other responses are received for some time, months later messages start arriving in English using standard communication codes from a source in the fringe of the solar system.These novels established the author's reputation as a writer of hard science fiction capable of inducing a sense of wonder. All three of these novels concern the use of the tools of science and technology to explore the past and present of other societies, one human and the other alien. They evoke the vicarious excitement of discovery, from gathering data to forming a consistent explanation.Highly recommended for Hogan fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of archaeological investigation of alien civilizations and first contact with such aliens.

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.

All of the giants novels stand alone as foul-proof stories, but I was most impressed by the original story; Inherit the Stars. The brief intro on the back had me captivated. I found myself following the events in the other books simply because of the strength of the main characters. The only fault I could think of was that Mr.Hogan went into too much detail on the biology of the other species and not enough into the structure of their societies. I know this was due to the two species he did cover remarkably well being the main characters for all the stories. But they were so different it becomes necessary to find out what other types of life the Thuriens have discovered in the last 25 million years. Role on the next book.