Maybe it’s because many of the mysteries pertained to real fields of science and physics with which I am quite conversant, but I was able to solve most of the mysteries significantly before the characters did, but that did not make the reading any less enjoyable. I get very little out of a traditional mystery novel and trying to figure out “who done it,” but the mysteries and questions laced through a science fiction novel like Inherit the Stars fascinate me and are the main things that kept me turning pages – I finished both books together in about three days.
It’s a little ironic that I like this kind of book so much, considering that they are structured much like mysteries, and that is one of the few genres that I avoid.
I almost look for somewhat forgettable characters, negligible plots, and inconsistent world-building in books like this, because all of the attention is really on the ideas. Those are stories about people and societies, more than they are about big idea, what if questions. Hard science fiction seems to mostly be composed of gritty, character-heavy stories like The Martian or The Expanse, which just are not the same. Unfortunately, I don’t really know of any new science fiction that can properly be put into the same category as something like this. I believe there are six, but I’m not entirely certain what ground would be covered in the other four that wasn’t already covered in these first two, because I’m not really thinking of any unanswered questions left when I finished this book.Įvery time I pick up one of these classic-style science fiction novel, like Ringworldor Double Star, I find myself saying that a) I should read these sorts of books more often, and b) I wish that books like these were still written today. Warning: this post may contain spoilers for James P Hogan’s novel Inherit the Stars, composed of The Two Moons, and The Gentle Giants of GanymedeĪs the cover quote from Isaac Asimov indicates, this is one of the classics of science fiction, being the first two novels (which really should be read as one book, and are certainly of length suitable to doing so, which is why I will be reviewing them that way) in James P Hogan’s Giants series.
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