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Summary: The Giants Novels
Review: A fascinating story of a paradigm lost as the core of humanity seeks to answer the basic philosophical questions that have always plagued mankind. Where did we come from, why are we here, what's next, and are we responsible for our own destiny? Not since Olaf Stapledon wrote "Last and First Men" has anything tweaked my imagination of humanity's revelation to an alternative of mainstream science and psuedo-sciences.
I recommend reading Hogan's follow up to the trilogy, "Introverse" to gain an even higher sense of "what it's all about".
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Summary: The adventure of knowledge
Review: A masterpiece of the genre, a novel where the hero might be science itself and where the reader is kept interested thanks to an exquisite adventure named...knowledge.Hogan's language is unpretentious but enough to bring his brilliant thinking process to light. It is the kind of work that can arise the readers' interest in scientific topics such as evolution, geology, cosmic origins, sociology and many others. Inherit the Stars was James P. Hogan's first novel and established him as a fresh and important new voice in the hard Science-Fiction field, so much that Isaac Asimov enthusiastically praised him: "Pure Science Fiction...Arthur C. Clarke move over!".
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Summary: Just one word: Great!!!
Review: About 12 years ago I found "Inherit the stars" (or "Der tote Raumfahrer" here in Germany) in a waste basket. After reading a few pages I was totaly captured by the story and the characters.
Ever since then I tried to get more of JPHs books, but unfortunately they are out of print in Germany.
Luckily Amazon had most of the books ready for me. And I can just say: Get 'em and read 'em.
The giant novels are the greatest I have ever read. They even brought me to read (and certainly enjoy) english books, and as you may notice english is not my native language
Rating:
Summary: Made me wish I was a real scientist.
Review: 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.
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Summary: Great writing, flawless story
Review: Although it came around in the late 70s, I was recently recommended The Minervan Experiment (Same as The Giants Novels) by James P. Hogan by some guy I met on the bus. This book contains three separate novels: Inherit the Stars, The Gentle Giants of Ganymede, and Giants' Star. I am writing having finished the first book, and it is one of the best Sci-Fi stories I've read. When reading Inherit the Stars, I was immediately immersed in a flawlessly fabricated world that left no details unexplained. Even now, in 2002, it seems conceivable that what took place in the book could arrive by 2029. I even found myself believing that the story was true at times! Hogan's Inherit the Stars stands out among all of the sci-fi stories today. It seems to me that this book isn't popular anymore, but it really should be. Any reader of science fiction will enjoy this, young or old.
Rating:
Summary: inherent the stars
Review: as a young teen, I read this book and it changed the way I thought, not that this was fact-but as a possibility. The way of thinking,'what if?', that's this books perfection. This whole series is recommended, as is hogan's entire library. Hogan's arguments are both impossible and probable at the same time. READ ANYTHING HOGAN!!!!!
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Summary: Bestes SF-Buch - Wer hat deutschsprachige Ausgaben?
Review: Auch ich bin ein Fan dieses Autors, habe nur das Problem, daß ich kein Englisch spreche. Ich besitze "Die Riesen vom Ganymed" (mindestens zehnmal gelesen - und entdecke immer noch was neues) finde aber nirgendwo die beiden anderen Buecher der Reihe. Anscheinend gibt's die nicht mehr, seitdem der Moewig-Verlag in Pabel aufgegangen ist. Wer hat den 1. und 3. Teil auch in Deutsch bzw. den Sammelband, der zumindest in Amerikanisch erschienen ist? Wenn mir auch Hogan selbst nicht weiter helfen kann (ich hab ihn mit meinem Radebrech-Englisch angemailt) - Wer koennte mir die beiden Baende kopieren (egal was es kostet) bzw. für selbiges zuschicken? Ehrensache, daß ich die Kosten uebernehme. Ich freu mich auf eine Antwort Thommy/Simmern im Hunsrueck
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Summary: Old School SF - Bad binding on my copy
Review: Before I get into my somewhat lengthy list of complaints, I'd like to make it clear that for all ths books' faults, the Giants novels really are classic, solid science fiction. The ideas are really the main characters here, and they take you on a fun ride through a well-conceived speculative vision of our future and our past. That said, I have a few issues that might concern other prospective readers: In these novels, James P. Hogan writes a lot like Heinlein, only with a bit more science behind his fiction. He offers a very Utopian view of the future of earth, at least where men are concerned. Where women are concerned, though... Well, again he writes a lot like Heinlein. To be fair to Mr. Hogan, most of his later works are better on this score, but they're not under discussion here. In "Inherit the Stars" (the first of the 3 novels in this edition), for example, there is only one woman mentioned by name, and she's some kind of assistant. Her biggest contribution in the few pages of the novel where she appears, is to recognize that some alien writing is probably a calendar because it's in something the "looks like a diary". That's right, he introduced a woman to recognize the diary because it's obviously a "woman thing". Her reward for her contribution is a condescending smile of acknowledgment from one of the men who did the "real" work. Ugh. He also consistently refers to women as girls. The trend continues through the second novel ("The Gentle Giants of Ganymede"), though by "Giants' Star" (the last and best of the three) there are signs that Hogan has been thoroughly taken to task for his poor treatment of women in his novels, and he makes a certain amount of effort to redress the problem. That is not to say that he fully succeeds, but at least a couple of the main characters in "Giants' Star" are women who are more than just appendages to men, and one of the villains is partly identifiable as such because of his beastly treatment of women. Still, though, most of the women I know would have a great deal of difficulty enjoying the first two of the three novels because Hogan's writing is so aggressively chauvinistic in them. Also, my copy of this edition had a bad binding. Pages kept falling out, till by the end, I was left with a stack of loose ages and a separate cover. I don't know whether that's just a problem with my copy, or whether the whole printing has that flaw. My last complaint is that in "Inherit the Stars", the basic conclusions of the novel become blindingly obvious by about page 90, yet a massive organization of scientific geniuses then takes the next 90 pages to figure it out. Hogan's vision of the future is, as I mentioned, a sort of Utopian projection of 1960s Britain. Everybody smokes (even on spaceships - at one point, everyone's having brandy and cigars after dinner on a space outpost), cheap energy and a clean version of the atomic bomb have somehow made everybody stop hating each other (though "Giants' Star" does make some effort to make that plotline more plausible), and the world has become one big happy place, apart from a few bad apples who must of course be summarily dealt with. Just go with it. It mostly worked for Gene Roddenberry, so why can't Hogan do the same? If you can work past these issues, though, this some really solid "old school", almost-hard science fiction.
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Summary: Excellent "real science" fiction
Review: Besides developing a compelling plot and complete characters, Hogan (who was a scientist himself before becoming a writer) dreams up very plausible scenarios based on believable, though fictional, science. You find yourself nodding your head and thinking, "it could happen."
Rating:
Summary: good but not exactly great...
Review: Book 1 was very VERY good. Hard excellent science fiction here. Book 2 and 3 were good..but not as much as book 1 was. All in all this triligy is a MUST for any hard sci-fi fan.
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