From Publishers Weekly
Kidnapped by the alien Meta, college student Martin Wirth (nickname: "Zero") wakes up on another planet. The previous abductees call it "Fool's Hope" for its combative population of shanghaied extraterrestrials (31 different races) and its own poisonous wonderland of an environment. Is this a game, an experiment, some sort of punishment? No one knows, and the never-seen Meta aren't saying. To counter behavioral psychology professor Harmon Fiskle's warlike, imperial dreams, Zero mounts a multi-species expedition to a Meta progress station, seeking answers. This lively adventure does come to a rather moralistic ending, and Shirley's fertile imagination sometimes outstrips his descriptive powers; but the world he's created is a knockout, from telepathic Venus's-flytraps to the floating radioactive Current that instantly Twists a person into a grotesque parody of his inner fears and desires. Shirley is the author of the Eclipse trilogy.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Suddenly transplanted from Earth to an alien world to play a deadly game of survival against a host of creatures from distant planets, a group of humans elects to undertake a risky quest to transform the nature of the game itself. Shirley's (the Eclipse trilogy) imagination veers between the sublime and the grotesque in this nightmarish new wave version of humanity's search for meaning. While not for squeamish readers, this sf adventure is recommended for large sf collections. JC
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.
