It's been more than a decade since I first read this book. I just finished reading the exact same copy that I read way back then - a copy that was given to me by my friend who recommended it to me. He knew I was a skeptic and had read lots of books by Martin Gardner, James "The Amazing" Randi, Carl Sagan, and others, and surmised that I would find an intriguing story in the pages of this book. He was right.
This was my first book by Hogan and it hooked me on him. If I recall he was English born (London) and came to the US and became (oh, YUCK) a computer salesman for ITT, DEC, and others. He also sold life insurance for a while. From such a seedy string of jobs has risen this pearl.
The salient characteristic of this kinda science fiction is that it's so different from that of Harry Harrison (_Deathworld Trilogy_, _Stainless Steel Rat_) and Robert Heinlein (_Podkayne of Mars_, _Stranger in a Strange Land_). Those other fellows have these Indiana Jones type plots where characters are always doing things and fighting and plotting and so forth. And there's a little bit of that type of adventure in Hogan's books (this one, in particular), but his stories are much closer to the Asimov style (and even more Asimov than Asivmov)...because he's expressing an idea inside a story. The story is compelling not because it's an updated spaghetti western...it's compelling because the ideas in the story are compelling.
Two arch enemies, a 'psychic' conman named Karl Zamendorf (a surrogate for Uri Geller, it seems) and Gerold Massey, a skeptical professor of psychology (cross between Ray Hyman and James Randi?) are selected to go on a mission to (I think) Titan to investigate a new life form that's found.
These life forms are self-replicating machines who think they are created by The Creator, but who, in reality evolved from an early colony of self-replicating, non-sentient robots. Curiously enough these robots possess in great abudance some of the same virtues and vices possessed by us humans in similar quantity.
Eventually the adversaries Zamendorf and Massey (and their respective entourages) pull together to save the robots from themselves and from explotation by the corporate weenies back on earth. Four hundred pages of very entertaining fiction Ballantine has published for us. Worth every cent I paid for the book - in fact, worth every cent my buddy paid for it, as well!
I just realized, btw, that my buddy gave me another very nice book as a present and that I've never bought him anything. Now I feel like a rat. Unfortunately for me (and fortunately for him) he's probably read every book ever written so I don't reckon I could find a book present for him that he hasn't already gotten around to reading. Oh well, I'll think of something.
In the meantime, I got me a hankerin fer summera that there Hogan fella. He gives good read.
