SOJALS rating:

Awful (1/5)

I first read this on the 16th July 2002.

An alien spacecraft crash-lands in New York and the world is dragged into the middle of an interstellar alien war.

The problem of course, is that we really don't know which side we should be on.

Colonel Robert Haywood of Air Force Intelligence is quickly on the spot to investigate the initial crash and in a spirit of international co-operation teams up with the lovely Soviet intelligence analyst Nadia Andrianova. Together they help to plan humankind's strategy to steer a safe path between warring alien fleets.

Secret trips to the moon, attacks on Antarctic bases and the obliteration of Denver fill up the pages in this entertaining and exciting (but old-fashioned) action novel for teenage boys.

Well it was readable and fun, and there's a little bit of a twist to the plot, classic teenage SF but not an SF classic. Oh, and the aliens are really ugly. Harry Harrison, has of course done much better work: "The Stainless Steel Rat" and "Make Room! Make Room!" (made into the memorable movie "Solyent Green") to name but two.

This edition included some superb, and superbly corny, illustrations, copyright Evan Ten Broeck Steadman. The illustrator has clearly gone to some effort, and with some success, to depict just how repulsively ugly these aliens are.