The Enemy Stars

This Hard Science tale of space exploration is a dark allegory on what it means to explore. In a time when matter transmitters are in use a team of selected people are "beamed" onto an earlier space launch that was intended for deep space in order to investigate a sun that had gone nova.

As in the old explorer days of wooden ships and expeditions of discovery, anything that can go wrong will and usually does. As the team go in for a closer look an overlooked possibility rears its ugly head and the ship is disabled. The matter transmitter will have to be built from scratch and then re-calibrated. The bulk of the novel is taken up with the psychology of four men faced with a life or death scenario cooped up with limited supplies and a bleak future.

The tale is a tribute to Kipling and his tales of exploration and adventure. The question that is looked at is, what is it that makes man explore? What is it he gains from hardship and death while seeking only God knows what?

Though the characters are a bit wooden and the beginning is taken up with introductions of the main characters, which slows the first third of the novel, once the action begins and it becomes a tale of survival it rolls along quite nicely. With a twist.