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Invader
After a 747 is attacked by a UFO, scientist Christian Nilstrom is called upon to develop a defense against what appears to be the first step of an alien invasion
- GenresScience FictionHorror
293 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1980
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
October 13, 2014
Even the loudest, proudest, most die-hard science fiction fan is not likely to know this title; but its an unjustly neglected treasure. A corking, ripping, cracking good story which at once harkens back to a 1950s story-telling approach but also transcends this entire literary sub-genre of UFO-contact fiction. It really, shoves aside all other works in that field. If this book had been made into a movie and not the vastly inferior 'Close Encounters'; contemporary pop-culture would have been re-written.
December 3, 2017
This is a remarkably pedestrian book. The word-craft is competent with a few (too few) gems, and the plotting is tight but traditional. Nothing wrong with any of that, but the characters are thinly drawn at best, and mere conveniences most of the time. It feels a whole lot like a pitch for one of those '70s-era "cast of all-stars" type movies, like 1979's Meteor, and might have been just that. It's a book that reads, to me, like a low-budget sci-fi flick.
It throws a bunch of characters at you, where "character" is defined as "name". Like "Joe Blow adjusted the dial." Sometimes you'll get little more than "Joe Blow, who worked as a fletcher during the War, adjusted the dial," but damned if it doesn't feel like a cameo for, I dunno, Jim Nabors or Harry Guardino or something. Sometimes those characters will come back later, I think. It wasn't always clear to me if we were meeting a new character late in the book or it was an old one mentioned once 100 pages earlier. Sometimes you'll get a lot of detail about a character who dies in the next paragraph.
That was all minor: Less minor, and what made it feel like a "B" movie was the ridiculous roles that the characters played in the story. The lead has little reason to be in charge of a multi-national project. His qualification is that he's the guy who thought of it first, basically. His love interest is a beautiful Russian girl who, for some reason, becomes the main PR contact—like a comms director—for the whole project, including handling all the media, including the American newspapers who, in 1981, might not be expected to deal with a Russian national as the mouthpiece of a project taking place in Arizona all that well.
Worse still, is the evil Russian girl, who acts as a foil to the project (among others), who is basically a rich, spoiled girl that—when the situation calls for it—suddenly becomes a hyper-competent murderer, taking out a US soldier guarding her (I guess they were alone in a shack and there was no one else around, or she eluded everyone else), and then later takes out an entire armored vehicle with a leap and a throw like it ain't no thing.
Then there's the choleric engineer/physics-guy who people literally can't stand throughout 80% of the book, and only put up with because he's so darn smart, who picks up the hot pop star like it ain't no thing.
Not great.
The worst parts are in some way its best parts, too, again like a B-movie. The moments of high drama are so comically overwrought that I was laughing, but the awfulness of them are among the brilliant parts of the effort.
It's plotted very well, though, and I did like it, warts and all. The authors understand the basics of creating tension, escalating it, making it seem like all hope is lost. The book is ripe for a sequel. Perhaps the late Albert Fay Hill's son David will pick up the gauntlet in a few years.
It throws a bunch of characters at you, where "character" is defined as "name". Like "Joe Blow adjusted the dial." Sometimes you'll get little more than "Joe Blow, who worked as a fletcher during the War, adjusted the dial," but damned if it doesn't feel like a cameo for, I dunno, Jim Nabors or Harry Guardino or something. Sometimes those characters will come back later, I think. It wasn't always clear to me if we were meeting a new character late in the book or it was an old one mentioned once 100 pages earlier. Sometimes you'll get a lot of detail about a character who dies in the next paragraph.
That was all minor: Less minor, and what made it feel like a "B" movie was the ridiculous roles that the characters played in the story. The lead has little reason to be in charge of a multi-national project. His qualification is that he's the guy who thought of it first, basically. His love interest is a beautiful Russian girl who, for some reason, becomes the main PR contact—like a comms director—for the whole project, including handling all the media, including the American newspapers who, in 1981, might not be expected to deal with a Russian national as the mouthpiece of a project taking place in Arizona all that well.
Worse still, is the evil Russian girl, who acts as a foil to the project (among others), who is basically a rich, spoiled girl that—when the situation calls for it—suddenly becomes a hyper-competent murderer, taking out a US soldier guarding her (I guess they were alone in a shack and there was no one else around, or she eluded everyone else), and then later takes out an entire armored vehicle with a leap and a throw like it ain't no thing.
Then there's the choleric engineer/physics-guy who people literally can't stand throughout 80% of the book, and only put up with because he's so darn smart, who picks up the hot pop star like it ain't no thing.
Not great.
The worst parts are in some way its best parts, too, again like a B-movie. The moments of high drama are so comically overwrought that I was laughing, but the awfulness of them are among the brilliant parts of the effort.
It's plotted very well, though, and I did like it, warts and all. The authors understand the basics of creating tension, escalating it, making it seem like all hope is lost. The book is ripe for a sequel. Perhaps the late Albert Fay Hill's son David will pick up the gauntlet in a few years.
July 19, 2018
I bought this book brand new in 1981 when it first came out. I still have it. I have read it a number of times over the years and always enjoy reading it time and again.
I would classify this novel as a contemporary military science fiction, and indeed, it might have been where the basic plot from the movie Independence Day came from!
From the back cover:
Destination Earth
It comes from a distant star. The Earth hangs before it in the vast blackness of space, vulnerable... and doomed. Unless Earth's major powers can unite behind the brilliance of one man - Scientist Christian Nilstrom - and devise a way to repel this mysterious unspeakable force.
They didn't know what it was.
They only knew what it wanted - Earth.
I would classify this novel as a contemporary military science fiction, and indeed, it might have been where the basic plot from the movie Independence Day came from!
From the back cover:
Destination Earth
It comes from a distant star. The Earth hangs before it in the vast blackness of space, vulnerable... and doomed. Unless Earth's major powers can unite behind the brilliance of one man - Scientist Christian Nilstrom - and devise a way to repel this mysterious unspeakable force.
They didn't know what it was.
They only knew what it wanted - Earth.
October 9, 2009
Found this in a box cleaning out a closet. Slightly dated, but was an interesting twist on UFO sightings, pending invasion/anihilation, and how the major countries of the world might react. Nicely paced with a decent plot.
March 24, 2023
Read this for the first time in the 8th or 9th grade - found a used copy on eBay. A fun, quick read.
December 2, 2017
Strange story of how an alien invasion might actually occur. Nice. =)
August 26, 2019
This book started out exciting, but eventually it went downhill. It wasn't what I was hoping for. I was disappointed.
January 10, 2024
Fun read. Quite the page turner.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews