The Forever Man

In a break from his heavy-going Childe series, Dickson offers a lighter and brisker-than-usual adventure. The hero is another military superman, but here starship fighter pilot Jim Wander is manipulated by scientist Mary Gallegher into a mental symbiosis with his beloved ship. Their mission is to gather information about the mysterious aliens, the Laagi, who have been locked in battle with Earth for 200 years. In typically didactic Dickson fashion, the two disembodied human minds learn as much about themselves and each other as they do about the Laagi. Various implausibilities and an overworked serendipity aside, the tantalizing exploration of alien cultures moves this adventure forward rapidly as the protagonists keep readjusting and expanding their ideas to meet new, challenging situations.