Captain William M. Corry of the American submarine U.S.S. Shenandoah must try to figure out why Americans stationed at the Pacific island port of Makasar are disappearing without a trace. Original.
George Harry Stine attended the University of Colorado in Boulder. Upon his graduation he went to work at White Sands Proving Grounds, first as a civilian scientist and then, from 1955–1957, at the U.S. Naval Ordnance Missile Test Facility as head of the Range Operations Division.
Stine and his wife Barbara were friends of author Robert A. Heinlein, who sponsored their wedding, as Harry's parents were dead and Barbara's mother too ill to travel. Several of Heinlein's books are dedicated one or both of them, most particularly Have Space Suit - Will Travel. Stine also wrote science articles for Popular Mechanix.
Alternates between excrutiating detail of the motivation behind every action, and obtuse Naval jargon, much of which I suspect is made up.
Written in the early 1990s, it tries to show how progressive the future Navy is by having women on submarines, but falls back to the sexist "leave the dangerous stuff for the menfolk." In one typical overwritten passage that seemed to run on for pages, the women explain why they don't mind having mysoginist call-sign labels assigned to them by their male colleagues, because it makes them "one of the guys."
Overt racism against Chinese and African peoples.
Questionable word choice, in the "I don't think that means what you think it means" variety.
I try to give leeway when characters make dumb choices, because real-life people make dumb choices all the time. But it strains credulity that when they encounter an as-yet unidentified sea species, their first assumption is that they must be space aliens.
They never actually accomplish their stated mission, to find out whey American nationals are disappearing from an African city. They make assumptions that are never verified.
And all of this could be excused, all of it, if the story wasn't so damned boring. Stine somehow made a first-contact story totally unineresting.
I liked the basic story although I'd like a more complete ending. There was a lot of ra ra America we are the best nonsense. Way too much military jargon. The fleeting comments of personal nature of the cast seemed fat handed and really added nothing. The 3 rating was a gift as I do like Scifi it's probably a 2
I don't know if what he writes about the navy in particular is valid, but overall he captures the military culture well. The characters are well developed for an opening book to the series. I'm gonna enjoy reading the rest!