What if you find an alien ship drifting in the dark?

This author came and went in the late 80's-- but this story stands out because it gives the Sci-Fi reader that most BASIC Outer Space story: a group of people come upon some huge, dark, alien ship.

Now what do you do?

Exploration, terror and fear of the unknown as the survivors of a spaceship wreck come upon a dark hulk between the stars. And when they enter the ship, they activate certain basic functions that start the vessel to awaken. . .and act.

The beauty of this story is how the characters reflect off each other. Who is the coward? Who is the Scientific Know-it-all? What if the putative Captain is not able to assert Command? And then people start dying.

Good adventure reading for a late saturday night. ( )

A luxury space liner explodes. The survivors of one of the lifeboats come upon a derelict, alien vessel. Upon landing they are sealed in and discover the vessel isn't quite as dead as they'd thought.

The story plays out in classic horror movie fashion. A disparate cast of characters are thrown together in a spooky location. Through various circumstances a character or two will separate out and meet their fate.

I liked the writing quite a bit. Mr. Hovorka was very good at showing, rather than telling. Also, even though his characters don't have much depth, he at least gave them realistic reactions to the events of the story.

The biggest flaw of the book is its atmosphere, or lack of it. Though the story was straight up my alley, there was some sort of disconnect. The book really could have used some tension or dread. That was missing here. Though the author does a good job of describing the derelict, it never feels as spooky as I would have liked. The narrative was cold and clinical, which works well for sci-fi, but not so much for horror.

This was an interesting book with a promising setup. I liked the author's writing and would pick up other books if this weren't the only one he'd written. I enjoyed (re)reading it 20+(!) years after it was published, though in the end it was missing that something extra that would have made it a classic. ( )

"In space, there is no escape from the horror," reads the blurb on the cover of this 1988 science fiction potboiler. The art on the cover promises much; a tiny needle of a spaceship homing in on the derelict of the title, a hulking shadow of a spaceborne destroyer, complete with evil portholes for eyes and a gaping docking bay for a mouth.The similarities stop there, however; the derelict as described in the text reminds you more of the Satellite of Love from MST3K than a cetacean dreadnought. But, whatever, the point of the story is tried and true, used in countless disaster and slasher movies from the past few decades, not to mention The Real World and every other reality show ever made; take a handful of characters with disparate backgrounds and agendas, throw them onto a lifeboat when their cruise ship blows up, then force them into a maneating alien derelict and see what happens.You can figure out the rest; one by one the most likable characters get killed off or assimilated by the ship, (which needs living beings to operate, kind of like organic D-cells) leaving the more annoying ones to harass the heroine until the eventual final showdown and escape attempt.All this is fine and good, but it would have been better if the characters were actually stranded on the derelict and had no where else to go. As it is, they park their perfectly-functional lifeboat in the hangar and use it as a base camp, which always gives them a safety net and ratchets down any potential tension.But, that's what you get for reading cheap and trashy books. ( )