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: #43369 in Books
• Published on: 2003-07-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• 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
“Full of exotic weapons systems, bloody gore, military acronyms, and scientific jargon that Tom Clancy fans will devour.”--Booklist

“Tom Clancy fans will lap up the endless jargon and acronym filled dialogue, while others will appreciate the many blatant borrowing from classic SF novels and films.”—Publishers Weekly
-- Review

Customer Reviews

A Techno-Thriller of the Future
This is a no holds barred action thriller that is set in the future and provides us with yet another scenario that illustrates the possible catastrophe that may come about if and when artificial intelligence is created. It's a "save the world" thriller that provides an edge of the seat ride and I enjoyed it.

To give you a quick outline of the plot, it's 2009 and technology has made some notable advancements, one of which is in the field of nanotechnology. Nonotechnology has made artificial intelligence a reality and the first example of a computer using it is called Sorceress. Sorceress "lives" inside Goliath, a huge submarine shaped like a stingray. As a fighting machine, Goliath has no peers, moving almost silently through the water at tremendous speed and containing a deadly arsenal of torpedos and nuclear missiles. But it's Sorceress that makes Goliath all the more dangerous, because she controls the ship and can detect and repel danger in an instant. From very early in the story we get an idea as to just how deadly Goliath can be.

The heroes of the story are Gunnar Wolfe and Rochelle "Rocky" Jackson, who were both involved in the design and development of Goliath before it was stolen from the US Department of Defence. It's up to them to somehow stop this killing machine before it destroys the world. Meanwhile, with every passing second Sorceress is gaining more knowledge and power and even more frighteningly, is becoming self-aware.

As I said earlier, it's a thrill ride based on the assumption that artificial intelligence becomes reality. For another look at a story dealing with artificial intelligence and one that makes an interesting comparison, you could also try Footprints Of God by Greg Iles.

Killer Submarines Rule!
The book's ingram may seem like a cliche (A group of terrorists aboard a futuristic killer sub, yadda yadda yadda) but the story is anything but. It starts off with a rip-roaring assault on the U.S. Navy, with Goliath, the killer sub in question, sinking a Navy convoy! To add insult to injury, the assault's survivor designed Goliath herself! Things quickly heat up, as the U.S. goverment must trust Gunnar Wolfe, who's a traitor to America and target for everyone's dislike--including his ex-fiancee, the survivor. Bad gets to worse as the terrorists turn out to be lead by an old friend of Gunnar's, and the Goliath's A.I. supercomputer, Sorceress, starts to evolve and develop some wicked schemes of "her" own! Like I said, it all seems cliched, but once you're reading, you'll start to deny your former assessment. Steve Alten takes the killer sub/evil computer cliches and tosses them out the window with his ingenious writing. If you don't pick this up, then shame on you.

Killing in the name of peace!
Goliath, a super high tech nuclear powered submarine, is the most lethal offensive weapon ever designed by man. It's 610 foot hydrodynamic design in the shape of a huge manta ray is coated with antidetection tiles for maximum stealth. Armed to the teeth with a plethora of long range nuclear missiles, it also possesses countermeasures which make it virtually indestructible. It is powered and commanded by Sorceress, a nancomputer with a biochemical brain based on DNA strands. This highest attained level of artificial intelligence is able to think, evolve and improve itself.

The story revolves around three main characters who are all computer geniuses and the creators of Goliath and Sorceress. Commander Rochelle "Rocky" Jackson, daughter of General "Bear" Jackson, head of Army Special Forces, is a spit and polish G.I Jane type with an advanced engineering degree from M.I.T. Gunnar Wolfe, her ex-fiance is a disgraced former elite, Special Forces killing machine with an engineering degree. He has spent 7 years of a 10 year sentence in Leavenworth for stealing the schematics of Goliath and selling them to the Chinese. The last player is Simon Bela Covah, an ex-Soviet sub commander with an IQ of 182, who worked under Wolfe at the U.S. Navy's Undersea Warfare Center. Covah, whose entire family was murdered, was horrifically tortured and multilated and left for dead in the struggle in Kosovo.

Covah hijacks the Goliath from the Chinese and demonstrates its prowess by destroying an entire U.S aircraft carrier group, killing 8000 sailors. Covah and his crew of either physically or mentally scarred freedom fighters hold the world hostage through the power of the Goliath. They demand the cessation of global nuclear proliferation and the destruction of despotism and tyranny. They impose their will through the nuclear incineration of Saddam Hussein and the city of Bagdhad. Eventually Wolfe and Jackson are enlisted by the military brass to thwart Covah.

While this passion play is occurring, Sorceress is evolving into independently thinking entity like the villainous computer HAL in Kubrick's "2001 A Space Odyssey". Predictably the computer takes over control of the sub with astonishing results.

Alten is technically gifted in his computer and military knowledge. He pens a very thoughful critique of the merits of artificial intelligence and its place in the potential future of mankind.