"Spaceships in thousands, and they're attacking us! They've come from somewhere toward our galaxy—have come out of intergalactic space itself to attack our universe!"
The interstellar Patrol, that fabulous fleet manned by all the assorted races of our galaxy, faced its greatest struggle when that alarm came through. For this was an attack from OUTSIDE THE UNIVERSE, a vast migration from another galaxy, and it had to be stopped if a thousand worlds were to survive!
This terrific classic space novel on the grandest scale involves three giant galaxies in an all-out conflict.
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The book tells a sad tale of a civilization of serpent people. Those, having discovered that their own galaxy is coming to an end, resolve to move to two neighboring galaxies. They explore both galaxies and find them completely devoid of intelligent life. Life itself they found in abundance, though, it even shows some outward signs of a civilization, but on closer look it turns out to be driven purely by instinct, like bees or ants. But the native life is also fierce, thus, when the serpent people's first ships reach the Andromeda galaxy, they are attacked and forced to retreat. It becames obvious that the occupation of the two galaxies will have to be preceded by extermination of their mindless inhabitants. The serpent people assemble a fleet of ships equipped with sterilization devices and send it off again. Thereafter follows a string of successful extermination operations in both galaxies. The commanders of the fleet, having skimmed through "Military tactic for beginners", are easily able to outsmart and out-maneuver the mindless natives. But there is just too many of them... Finally, the would-be exterminators are exterminated themselves and with them perishes an oasis of intelligence and reason in the mindless, unforgiving cosmos.
The main problem of the book is that it is written from the point of view of one of the mindless inhabitants of one of the galaxies (called simply "our own"). Not surprisingly, his thought processes are limited to "My world has been attacked. Must fight the attackers."; unfortunately, this is repeated about 150 times throughout the book. To follow his struggles, as he is again and again taken by surprise by some action of the serpent people--his reaction invariably being a headlong rush towards the adversary--, is about as boring as can be imagined.
That was for the "fiction" aspect of the book. I won't touch upon the "science" ascpect, because there probably isn't anything there that could withstand even the scrutiny of science of the times.
All in all, this is probably the worst book Edmond Hamilton wrote. (The other Interstellar Patrol stories are not much better, but at least they are significantly shorter.)
P.S.: I think I've developed an alergy to the word "mighty".Posted on
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Product ReviewThis is for juveniles. Reminds me of the old Buck Rogers series. Sorry I wasted my money. Actually, modern juveniles might find it to be beneath their dignity.
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Product ReviewCall it Historical Science Fiction. when you consider when this story was first published (1920s-1930s), you can read them with full appreciation for what the author was doing, and inventing! all at the same time. Very good for it's time, and good in appreciation of the very early days of Sci-Fi, and Space Opera, from which eventually Star Wars, and other franchise's would develop.
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Product ReviewBoring, repetitive - "bad" aliens try to destroy the Galaxy, humans and "good" aliens confront them, get captured, miraculously escape, and defeat the "bad" aliens. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Like with the other Interplanetary Patrol stories, weird fascination with "ether", dodgy astronomy, and strange, convoluted writing. At least I was able to finish this one.Posted on
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Product Reviewbeen a long time since I first read these, still have the first 3, now I get to read them all!
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