SciFi, almost by definition, means that you will take things that are impossible (at least for now and the foreseeable future) and make a story about them that says they are possible. Time travel, or flying faster-than-light in a ship, or robots able to understand human emotions; all these ideas have been used to make interesting stories.

While Giants’ Star stands on its own, it is a continuation of Gentle Giants of Ganymede (which I have not read), and Mr. Hogan gives you a quick rundown in the story about the race of aliens (native to our solar system) that lived on a planet called Minerva. Through evidence found on Jupiter’s moon Ganymede, and our Moon, scientists had pieced together a history of earth that had the Ganymeans taking early man to their planet, teaching them, and making them a part of their society. While this investigation was happening, a spaceship arrives at Earth – with Ganymeans!

These travelers had left to study the possibility of heating up a star without destroying it, as the Sun had been cooling for millions of years and Minerva would soon become un-inhabitable. However, while conducting their test, there was a malfunction in their ships’ engines, and to top it off, the test went bad and was about to blowup the star, so they accelerated away at top speed, but still in the ‘normal universe’ so there was a major time differential – the trip there had taken only a few years, but the trip back took twenty five million years.

So the Giants left millions of years ago, thinking the ship they had sent out was destroyed in the resulting nova, leaving humans on Minerva, which later blew up in an apparent war between two factions of humans, and that the resultant debris became the asteroid belt, and somehow, our Moon. The humans on the moon were thought to have later escaped to Earth to start our world onto its present ‘wonderful’ society. And the Giants were thought to have left for another star (Gistar).

So humanity befriends and helps these Ganymede refugees, and sends them on to Gistar in hopes that it truly is the Giants’ new home. Shortly afterward they send a signal out to let the Gistar beings know that their kinsmen are heading that way (the ship is not able to send/receive signals while the gravimetric engine is engaged), not even certain that they are there. And since they are sending by standard radio, they expect nothing in return, so are surprised to get an answer after just a few hours!

Now we come to the new story – intrigue and deception, secret updates being sent from the moon to earth HQ, secret signals being transmitted between Gistar and the Moon, and the Earth. Humans pitted against humans in a war of wits. And whose side are the Ganymeans on? Who has been controlling Earth all these years?

A quote from the book, about half-way through:

“The last thing you want is an educated, affluent, and emancipated population. Power hinges on the restriction and control of wealth. Science and technology offer unlimited wealth. Therefore science and technology have to be controlled. Knowledge and reason are enemies; myth and unreason are the weapons you fight them with.”

While I found many parts of his “science” hard to swallow (mainly the artificially created toroid shaped black holes), Mr. Hogan does make an interesting story of this alternate evolution of mankind.

Charles Miller