Market Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: Tor Books; Reprint edition (April 15, 1988)
ISBN: 0812533259
Category(ies): SF
It's the 23rd Century. A colony fleet is on a multi-year journey to found the first extra-solar colony. But an alien race, the Ell, have a very strong interest in their destination.
Meanwhile, a department responsible for building a space colony need a work of art. A big, expensive one, to fulfil planning regulations. So they ask the Gnostic Computer System whether a particular possibility using high physics might work. In reply, it shows a stargate. And that humanity is already fighting an unannounced war.
sigh
This is a mess of a novel. The alien race are irritating, there is pretty well no characterisation, the society depicted is a mere sketch (our protagonist flee across the river into the unpoliced zones ... what? Where did those appear from?), and though I've read worse, I'm glad I paid no more than a quid for this.
Confused and dull
