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Alien Island #2
Alien Main
On screen, the city lay shimmeringly beautiful in the morning sun. For a suspenseful moment we contemplated the confidently proud splendor, the towers and spires reared high, the orderly veins of traffic radiating to the city’s horizons, the comic clusters of scurrying transportation microbes, the buildings of all descriptions arranged in a miraculous patchwork mosaic that only high civilization can achieve.
Suddenly a grotesquely misplaced sun filled the screen, and the city dissolved in its death glow as the nuclear storm broke over it with the fury of a smashing, incandescent fist. Towers and spires toppled, streets were obliterated, and the writhing landscape vanished in a convulsive eruption of smoke and dust.
Then we were shown a close-up view. The revelation that there were people down there came as a shock. Those unfortunate enough to survive the force of the explosion were incinerated in the hideous afterglow of radiation.
Even in death and torment, Earth’s people looked surprisingly human. I realized with horror that the world on the screen was part of MY history and that I was watching my ancestors die…
Suddenly a grotesquely misplaced sun filled the screen, and the city dissolved in its death glow as the nuclear storm broke over it with the fury of a smashing, incandescent fist. Towers and spires toppled, streets were obliterated, and the writhing landscape vanished in a convulsive eruption of smoke and dust.
Then we were shown a close-up view. The revelation that there were people down there came as a shock. Those unfortunate enough to survive the force of the explosion were incinerated in the hideous afterglow of radiation.
Even in death and torment, Earth’s people looked surprisingly human. I realized with horror that the world on the screen was part of MY history and that I was watching my ancestors die…
182 pages, Hardcover
First published July 1, 1985
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7 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 17, 2025
I could not find the first volume to this book (Alien Island), but I came across a first edition of Alien Main with the plastic still on the jacket and was intrigued that the author (T.L. Sheerod) wrote in the Forward that due to health issues, he had no desire to write anymore, and sadly, he passed away during the writing of his sequel novel.
It was Lloyd Biggle, Jr, who took over the finishing of this story.
If you're looking for hard, technical science fiction, you might want to look elsewhere. But if you're in the mood for a fun, fast-paced adventure that absolutely refuses to get bogged down in details, then Alien Main is a blast.
This book reads like the best kind of pulp fiction. What I found truly funny and enjoyable is how much the authors skip over the nitty-gritty of the technology. It feels like the mantra was "If it needs to happen for the plot, it just happens."
For instance, the need to cross the entire world in the blink of an eye? No problem, they just do it—no complex physics lecture required. Need a highly specialized gadget, like a device that can blast out a spherical force field? Someone simply pulls it out of their bag like it's a keychain. This approach is wonderfully efficient and lets the story maintain a breakneck pace.
Despite (or perhaps because of) the lack of scientific rigor, I genuinely loved the read. The setting—a post-apocalyptic, tribal Earth being revisited by the descendants of the aliens who ruined it—creates a great blend of high-tech and primal conflict. The overall vibe lands somewhere between the grand, galactic scope and adventure of Star Wars and the moral and diplomatic dilemmas you might find in Star Trek. It's a quick, fun, and purely entertaining piece of classic sci-fi.
It was Lloyd Biggle, Jr, who took over the finishing of this story.
If you're looking for hard, technical science fiction, you might want to look elsewhere. But if you're in the mood for a fun, fast-paced adventure that absolutely refuses to get bogged down in details, then Alien Main is a blast.
This book reads like the best kind of pulp fiction. What I found truly funny and enjoyable is how much the authors skip over the nitty-gritty of the technology. It feels like the mantra was "If it needs to happen for the plot, it just happens."
For instance, the need to cross the entire world in the blink of an eye? No problem, they just do it—no complex physics lecture required. Need a highly specialized gadget, like a device that can blast out a spherical force field? Someone simply pulls it out of their bag like it's a keychain. This approach is wonderfully efficient and lets the story maintain a breakneck pace.
Despite (or perhaps because of) the lack of scientific rigor, I genuinely loved the read. The setting—a post-apocalyptic, tribal Earth being revisited by the descendants of the aliens who ruined it—creates a great blend of high-tech and primal conflict. The overall vibe lands somewhere between the grand, galactic scope and adventure of Star Wars and the moral and diplomatic dilemmas you might find in Star Trek. It's a quick, fun, and purely entertaining piece of classic sci-fi.
May 13, 2025
Most of this must have been written by Biggle. The tone is very different from Sherred's "Alien Island" and the bulk of this, its sequel, is bloated and tedious and lacking humor. Disappointing.
February 3, 2022
The story drew me in after a slow start, and I enjoyed reading it. But it's exceedingly problematical in terms of both race and colonialism, and I would really only recommend it to people who are interested in it as the sequel to Alien Island.
October 8, 2020
I decided to write this review because try as I might, I could find no other reviews of it on the Internet, and I felt it deserved one.
I read this book a long time ago, on a lark. It was part of the collection at our city's local library, and I was hoping for a good sci-fi book to read.
Alien Main is a sequel to Sherred's book Alien Island (which I have not read), and was completed post mortem by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.. The story's stage is set about a century after Earth erupted into catastrophic nuclear war, and is told from the point of view of Kera Jael, a representative of the Regez Anlf, an alien consortium, dedicated to peace and prosperity throughout the galaxy through trade, and one-time trade partner with Earth before the war. When it is decided to reopen communications with the remnants of the human population of Earth and possibly give help, Kera Jael, a descendant of humans, and her fellow Regez Anlf colleagues are sent to Earth to assess the damage ... and discover a great deal more than they bargained for on a world that is much emptier than expected, and with a legacy among its scattered tribes that is both tragic and insidious.
Alien Main, in my opinion, has not aged well, but it is by no means a bad book. In fact, I found it highly enjoyable, but not terribly inspired. It is, as it cannot help but be, a product of its time, with a plot that reflects the Cold War attitudes of the era during which it was written. The characters are sadly uninspired, and even Kera Jael, whom Biggle does as much as he can through her moments of introspection to give her depth, does not come off as anything special either. However, the story maintains just enough of a plot twist to make it unique and special, with the stakes growing surprisingly high near its end, and the introduction to the true cause of the war, which is both surprising in its uniqueness and almost laughable. It's truly the fine details of what would otherwise have been a cookie-cutter plot that makes this story stand out. As its preceding story was not well-recieved, I feel that perhaps Biggle gave this story's plot some much-needed nuance, so that in spite of the blandness of the characters, it truly is the plot that carries the story. Another plus is that it is very easy to read, and very easy to get into, and once the plot grabs you, it takes you for a very fascinating ride, in spite of its flaws.
I feel that in spite of the blandness of its characters, Alien Main makes for an entertaining read, just for the plot alone, and for a smattering of some fairly satisfying action sequences. It sort of comes off as something you could easily see translated into a higher-tier SyFy movie (take of that what you will), but I believe that any reader willing to give the story a chance will receive a pleasant surprise. It certainly surprised me. I read it twice, and will certainly be looking to get a copy of the book, which sadly, is long out of print.
Thank God for Amazon. :)
I read this book a long time ago, on a lark. It was part of the collection at our city's local library, and I was hoping for a good sci-fi book to read.
Alien Main is a sequel to Sherred's book Alien Island (which I have not read), and was completed post mortem by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.. The story's stage is set about a century after Earth erupted into catastrophic nuclear war, and is told from the point of view of Kera Jael, a representative of the Regez Anlf, an alien consortium, dedicated to peace and prosperity throughout the galaxy through trade, and one-time trade partner with Earth before the war. When it is decided to reopen communications with the remnants of the human population of Earth and possibly give help, Kera Jael, a descendant of humans, and her fellow Regez Anlf colleagues are sent to Earth to assess the damage ... and discover a great deal more than they bargained for on a world that is much emptier than expected, and with a legacy among its scattered tribes that is both tragic and insidious.
Alien Main, in my opinion, has not aged well, but it is by no means a bad book. In fact, I found it highly enjoyable, but not terribly inspired. It is, as it cannot help but be, a product of its time, with a plot that reflects the Cold War attitudes of the era during which it was written. The characters are sadly uninspired, and even Kera Jael, whom Biggle does as much as he can through her moments of introspection to give her depth, does not come off as anything special either. However, the story maintains just enough of a plot twist to make it unique and special, with the stakes growing surprisingly high near its end, and the introduction to the true cause of the war, which is both surprising in its uniqueness and almost laughable. It's truly the fine details of what would otherwise have been a cookie-cutter plot that makes this story stand out. As its preceding story was not well-recieved, I feel that perhaps Biggle gave this story's plot some much-needed nuance, so that in spite of the blandness of the characters, it truly is the plot that carries the story. Another plus is that it is very easy to read, and very easy to get into, and once the plot grabs you, it takes you for a very fascinating ride, in spite of its flaws.
I feel that in spite of the blandness of its characters, Alien Main makes for an entertaining read, just for the plot alone, and for a smattering of some fairly satisfying action sequences. It sort of comes off as something you could easily see translated into a higher-tier SyFy movie (take of that what you will), but I believe that any reader willing to give the story a chance will receive a pleasant surprise. It certainly surprised me. I read it twice, and will certainly be looking to get a copy of the book, which sadly, is long out of print.
Thank God for Amazon. :)
November 6, 2014
When the Earth is nearly destroyed it takes an alien civilization two centuries to launch an investigation as to the causes. Kera is assigned as leader of the expedition and when she reaches the system of Sol she uncovers a giant conspiracy.
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