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Giants #3-4
The Two Worlds
Giant’s Star : The aliens from Ganymede bought with them answers that forever changed human history. Finally, humans thought they comprehended their place in the universe – that is, until they learned of the Watchers in the stars. Now Earth finds itself in the middle of a power struggle between a benevolent alien empire and an off-shoot group of upstart humans who hate Earth more than any alien ever could.
Entoverse : Jevlen is a rational society managed to perfection by immense super computer JEVEX – until now. Things are falling apart, people are changing, or being changed, and shutting down JEVEX doesn’t help. The changed behave as if they are possessed by demons. Meanwhile in a nearby, completely different universe, rationality is creeping into a world where magic has always held sway. Logic, the magic of this world, is beginning to work! Cause is actually leading directly to effect! What’s more, with the proper concentration and purity of mind, crossing over into a new, rational universe can be achieved. Jevlin is that destination, of course, and the collision is between not just worlds, but universes with completely opposing operating systems.
Entoverse : Jevlen is a rational society managed to perfection by immense super computer JEVEX – until now. Things are falling apart, people are changing, or being changed, and shutting down JEVEX doesn’t help. The changed behave as if they are possessed by demons. Meanwhile in a nearby, completely different universe, rationality is creeping into a world where magic has always held sway. Logic, the magic of this world, is beginning to work! Cause is actually leading directly to effect! What’s more, with the proper concentration and purity of mind, crossing over into a new, rational universe can be achieved. Jevlin is that destination, of course, and the collision is between not just worlds, but universes with completely opposing operating systems.
- GenresScience Fiction
864 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published August 28, 2007
93 people are currently reading
97 people want to read
About the author
James P. Hogan
114 books269 followersJames Patrick Hogan was a British science fiction author.
Hogan was was raised in the Portobello Road area on the west side of London. After leaving school at the age of sixteen, he worked various odd jobs until, after receiving a scholarship, he began a five-year program at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough covering the practical and theoretical sides of electrical, electronic, and mechanical engineering. He first married at the age of twenty, and he has had three other subsequent marriages and fathered six children.
Hogan worked as a design engineer for several companies and eventually moved into sales in the 1960s, travelling around Europe as a sales engineer for Honeywell. In the 1970s he joined the Digital Equipment Corporation's Laboratory Data Processing Group and in 1977 moved to Boston, Massachusetts to run its sales training program. He published his first novel, Inherit the Stars, in the same year to win an office bet. He quit DEC in 1979 and began writing full time, moving to Orlando, Florida, for a year where he met his third wife Jackie. They then moved to Sonora, California.
Hogan's style of science fiction is usually hard science fiction. In his earlier works he conveyed a sense of what science and scientists were about. His philosophical view on how science should be done comes through in many of his novels; theories should be formulated based on empirical research, not the other way around. If a theory does not match the facts, it is theory that should be discarded, not the facts. This is very evident in the Giants series, which begins with the discovery of a 50,000 year-old human body on the Moon. This discovery leads to a series of investigations, and as facts are discovered, theories on how the astronaut's body arrived on the Moon 50,000 years ago are elaborated, discarded, and replaced.
Hogan's fiction also reflects anti-authoritarian social views. Many of his novels have strong anarchist or libertarian themes, often promoting the idea that new technological advances render certain social conventions obsolete. For example, the effectively limitless availability of energy that would result from the development of controlled nuclear fusion would make it unnecessary to limit access to energy resources. In essence, energy would become free. This melding of scientific and social speculation is clearly present in the novel Voyage from Yesteryear (strongly influenced by Eric Frank Russell's famous story "And Then There Were None"), which describes the contact between a high-tech anarchist society on a planet in the Alpha Centauri system, with a starship sent from Earth by a dictatorial government. The story uses many elements of civil disobedience.
James Hogan died unexpectedly from a heart attack at his home in Ireland.
Hogan was was raised in the Portobello Road area on the west side of London. After leaving school at the age of sixteen, he worked various odd jobs until, after receiving a scholarship, he began a five-year program at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough covering the practical and theoretical sides of electrical, electronic, and mechanical engineering. He first married at the age of twenty, and he has had three other subsequent marriages and fathered six children.
Hogan worked as a design engineer for several companies and eventually moved into sales in the 1960s, travelling around Europe as a sales engineer for Honeywell. In the 1970s he joined the Digital Equipment Corporation's Laboratory Data Processing Group and in 1977 moved to Boston, Massachusetts to run its sales training program. He published his first novel, Inherit the Stars, in the same year to win an office bet. He quit DEC in 1979 and began writing full time, moving to Orlando, Florida, for a year where he met his third wife Jackie. They then moved to Sonora, California.
Hogan's style of science fiction is usually hard science fiction. In his earlier works he conveyed a sense of what science and scientists were about. His philosophical view on how science should be done comes through in many of his novels; theories should be formulated based on empirical research, not the other way around. If a theory does not match the facts, it is theory that should be discarded, not the facts. This is very evident in the Giants series, which begins with the discovery of a 50,000 year-old human body on the Moon. This discovery leads to a series of investigations, and as facts are discovered, theories on how the astronaut's body arrived on the Moon 50,000 years ago are elaborated, discarded, and replaced.
Hogan's fiction also reflects anti-authoritarian social views. Many of his novels have strong anarchist or libertarian themes, often promoting the idea that new technological advances render certain social conventions obsolete. For example, the effectively limitless availability of energy that would result from the development of controlled nuclear fusion would make it unnecessary to limit access to energy resources. In essence, energy would become free. This melding of scientific and social speculation is clearly present in the novel Voyage from Yesteryear (strongly influenced by Eric Frank Russell's famous story "And Then There Were None"), which describes the contact between a high-tech anarchist society on a planet in the Alpha Centauri system, with a starship sent from Earth by a dictatorial government. The story uses many elements of civil disobedience.
James Hogan died unexpectedly from a heart attack at his home in Ireland.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 25, 2017
Fantastic science fiction
May 7, 2024
The Kindle edition packages the 3rd and 4th books of the series (which I think was still only a trilogy when I first read the series back in the 90s). I enjoyed continuing the story, though it goes places I definitely didn't foresee . . .
May 11, 2008
This is the second two book omnibus of Hogan's past works is a good example of hard science fiction.
It's also not a very good example of how to write engaging characters, appropriately pace books, or avoid long philosophical and logical speeches to fill in plot holes and in lieu of any real action happening.
Didn't particularly like it. If you really really really like hard science fiction, go for it. Otherwise stay away.
It's also not a very good example of how to write engaging characters, appropriately pace books, or avoid long philosophical and logical speeches to fill in plot holes and in lieu of any real action happening.
Didn't particularly like it. If you really really really like hard science fiction, go for it. Otherwise stay away.
October 14, 2012
The first story in this book, Giants Star, gets 5 stars, but the second, Entoverse, gets 2 stars. Personally, I found the Entoverse story uninteresting, and it did not hold my interest as much as the first 3 Giants novels did. Perhaps at some point in the future I may read it again and will like it more.
July 6, 2016
Gave up, author's political leanings came through, and not to mention how badly he wrote women characters, were too much for me to continue.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews