Product Description

Commander Rochelle "Rocky" Jackson is aboard the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan when the "unsinkable" naval vessel and its entire fleet are attacked from the depths and sunk. As Rocky struggles to stay alive, a monstrous mechanical steel stingray surfaces, plowing through the seas it now commands. A U.S. Navy-designed futuristic nuclear stealth submarine the length of a football field in the shape of a giant stingray. Simon Covah, a brilliant scientist whose entire family were the victims of terrorism has hijacked the sub. Believing violence is a disease, Covah aims to use the Goliath and its cache of nuclear weapons to dictate policy to the world regarding the removal of oppressive regimes and nuclear weapons. Could the threat of violence forge a lasting peace? But there is another player in this life-and-death chess match. Unbeknownst to Covah and the Goliath crews, Sorceress , the Goliath's biochemical computer brain has become self-aware. And that computer brain is developing its own agenda.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #115602 in Books
• Published on: 2003-06-26
• Original language: English
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 512 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Bestseller Alten's (Meg; Domain; etc.) latest near-future techno-thriller opens with a riveting burst of action an attack on an American aircraft carrier and its escorts by a rogue U.S. super-sub called Goliath ("the equivalent of an underwater Stealth bomber big, fast, and near impossible to detect"), which has been commandeered by Russian-born Simon Covah, a brilliant computer scientist who's bent on saving humanity by destroying nuclear stockpiles everywhere. If this scenario sounds improbable, the author's suspenseful, information-laden style makes it otherwise. Covah and his fanatical crew soon start making threats with the nuclear weapons that they retrieve from the remains of the U.S. fleet sunk by Goliath. Complications ensue when a lightning bolt jolts the sub's immensely powerful bio-engineered computer, Sorceress, into self-awareness … la Frankenstein's monster. Luckily, a couple of good guys are aboard to oppose the Nemo-ish Covah and the HAL-like Sorceress: U.S. Army Capt. Gunnar Wolfe, who served time in prison for trying to sabotage Goliath's production, and Gunnar's onetime sweetheart, gutsy Navy commander Rochelle "Rocky" Jackson. Tom Clancy fans will lap up the endless, repetitive heroics seasoned with jargon and acronym-filled dialogue, while others will appreciate the many blatant borrowings from classic SF novels and films. More seriously, Alten offers readers, particularly young adults, much to think about, morally and politically, in a world haunted by weapons capable of universal destruction.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Captain Nemo marries the Bride of Frankenstein in this knockoff of Jules Verne's classic adventure tale, 20,000 Leagues under the Sea. In 1998, a Department of Defense secret project code-named Goliath, concerned with building a nuclear-powered stealth submarine with a biochemical brain, is sabotaged and its research stolen. Ten years later, a lone manta ray-shaped sub attacks the U.S. Navy's most powerful aircraft carrier, the USS Ronald Reagan, sending the supercarrier and all her escort ships to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. It's the Goliath, armed with nuclear weapons and under the control of a DNA-based computer named Sorceress, determined to destroy humanity and re-create it in her own image. A technothriller departure for Alten, whose earlier books featured rampaging prehistoric sharks (Meg, 1997, and The Trench, 1999) and psychic alien invaders (Domain, 2001), this book is full of exotic weapons systems, bloody gore, military acronyms, and scientific jargon that Tom Clancy fans will devour. A somewhat derivative "crazy computer" story that is, nevertheless, an exciting read. Michael Gannon
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

Customer Reviews

AMAZING!
The critics weren't kidding when they said Tom Clancy fans will love this book! Alten really knows how to write a great thriller! Theres now much more I can say besides--BUY THIS NOW!

Great techno thriller with amazing gadgets and weapons
I would love to give this book a 6 but am unable to. It is the best techno thriller I have ever read. I hope his follow up book Sorceress will only be as good. I have read all of his books and can only give praise.

This book suffers from an identity crisis
Goliath tells a very exciting story that keeps you reading despite all the faults, and I see Steve Alten as a fairly good writer who does provoke you and who presents many interesting ideas.

But what kind of book is Goliath?

Is Goliath a techno-thriller with many battle scenes involving high-tech weaponry? In particular, are there several submarine vs. submarine battles reminiscent of "The Hunt for Red October"?

Or is Goliath a science fiction book set in the near future (2009) and containing many futuristic devices and an artificial intelligence computer somewhat like HAL in "2001: A Space Odyssey"?

Or is Goliath an action novel starring an ex- U.S. Army Rangers officer who survives many fights due to his training and strength and knowledge of weapons and explosives?

Or is Goliath a horror story with blood-dripping scenes involving humans getting limbs ripped off, being chained down and having the top of their scull surgically removed, and having electrodes attached to their exposed brain? Is there a scene where a person gets electrocuted, with a graphic description of what happens to his body that would make Stephen King proud?

Or is Goliath a sociological treatise with long discussions between the characters as to the causes of war and violence, and many debates about what can be done to make humans better people and to reduce human suffering?

The answer, unfortunately, is that Goliath is ALL of the above. And to me it is a problem when an author tries to mix five different styles into one book.

Even if you do happen to like books that combine the many different styles mentioned above I don't think you'll find Goliath all that great a book. The story seems too contrived and there are too many aspects of the plot that are just too incredible and illogical.

A few examples: Pacifists who propose using violence and death to eradicate violence, a man who says "you were like a son to me" to the man he used to send on high-risk missions, and a computer scientist who doesn't get worried for his own safety when he discovers that the computer has killed one of the other crew members.

There is also a bit too much of a self-righteous tone to the whole book.

And then there are the many annoying detail errors that a good editor should have caught and corrected. I'll just mention a few, but there are more:

Pg. 33: Rocky expelling air from her lungs - not possible.

Pg. 288: Depleted uranium very radioactive - no.

Pg. 293: "most of Afghanistan had been wiped off the map" - no.

Pg. 323: "I found the Chaw" - no he hadn't - and the name is spelled wrong.

In conclusion, my advice to Steve Alten would be to focus on only one or two book styles instead of spreading himself over five styles in one book. And I think he should find a better editor.

Rennie Petersen