"The Minervan Experiment" by James P. Hogan (1940-2010)

Publisher:   Garden City, N.Y. : Nelson Doubleday
Copyright:  1981

The Minervan Experiment is the collective title of a trilogy consisting of "Inherit the Stars", "The Gentle Giants of Ganymede", and "Giants' Star".

The first of the three novels revolves around a first contact situation, however with a bit of a twist. The first contact occurs on the moon, during a surveying expedition, when the work crew finds the mummified remains of an astronaut from 50,000 years ago. The first book in the series takes this as its starting point how goes on to explain the methods used to determine how the astronaut got there, where he came from, and why he looks so human.

The second book in the series follows directly from the first, and mainly concerns itself with the discovery on Jupiter's moon Ganymede of a crashed alien spacecraft that has been trapped in the ice for 25 million years. The investigation of this craft occupies approximate the first third of the book, but things take an unexpected turn when a ship full of the same aliens whose skeletal remains were found on Ganymede show up. The remainder of the book goes on to give a fairly good examination of how humans might actually interact with aliens (it does however involve humans that have evolved beyond the petty jealousies, political rivalries, and military stupidity that is present in the world today). Towards the end of this book the aliens, leave earth bound for what they hope is the new world where their descendants now live.

The third book is a little harder to briefly sum up, as it looks at the ramifications of how humans, and the aliens from book two interact with each other when a third party which is hostile to earth makes itself known (this isn't the best way to describe what happens, but I don't want to give away too much). This book does show that Mr. Hogan has done his research on politics and the military and I feel gives a good representation of how these groups might actually think.

I've read this trilogy quite a few times, and find it to be very enjoyable. The characters are very well written, and you can easily identify with the types of people they are. Good characterization is definitely the sign of an accomplished writer. I can remember what attracted me to this series originally when I first bought "Inherit the Stars" way back when, and that was the cover art which showed two astronauts digging up a skeleton in a space suit. I'd read some of Mr. Hogan work before but not much as this was one of his early books.

One anachronism that I found rather interesting in the series is that virtually everybody drinks and smokes. But when you take into account that the stories were written in the late 70s and early 80s, when smoking was more prevalent than it is today this is understandable, but still it does tend to stand out, at least in my mind.

Recommended to those readers who like science in their science fiction, as well as a good mystery as well.