SOJALS rating:

Unrated (0/5)

I first read this in 1992 and most recently on the 24th March 2007

Space Forces commander Wilbur Jennings faces a Court Martial. Jennings murdered two of his own crewmen. To the military Jennings is without doubt more than temporarily insane. He's stark raving bonkers - he claims his crewmates were aliens and that's why he had to kill them.

Max Becker is called to defend Commander Jennings, but what he finds out makes him doubt his own sanity. Becker, With the help of his trusty and very cute computer hacker Jaimie Nchobe, will have to keep himself alive and uncover the mysterious truth about what happened aboard the spaceship Roosevelt.

Personally I doubted my own sanity for reading this novel through to the end. Perhaps it was that the hero had the same name as myself (that's the "Max" of course, not the ludicrously unlikely - unless you're a TV character or a tennis player - "Becker"). Perhaps I felt that commonality added gravitas and quality to the work. I was wrong. The book is rather bad, far from being SF, it is a detective thriller with some computer hacking thrown in. I really can't understand why the aliens were introduced at all. Unless of course the Publisher said "How can it be SF without aliens? I don't care what it's about. It needs aliens."

And why on Earth did he believe Colonel Lydell Stuart? Becker is clearly a credulous oaf. Hadn't he seen "The Invasion Of The Body Snatchers" or even "The Invasion Of The Body Snatchers", the 1978 remake.