Think a blending of Varley's MILLENIUM, Heinlein's FARNHAM'S FREEHOLD, and Bradbury's DARK THEY WERE AND GOLDEN-EYED. Nope. That's not quite it. But Cooper's SEA HORSE is a classic.
From the back cover:
Four men, four women. Were they pets, exhibits, or laboratory animals?
One moment all eight of them were flying from Sweden to England. The next, they were emerging from plastic coffins in the middle of a road that led to nowhere, on an unknown planet beneath alien stars. A well-stocked--but staffless--hotel, a supermarket, and the empty shells of two cars: These were the raw materials of their new life. The hows of it were immaterial. It was the whys which were so frightening.
The Stone Age tribesmen, the enigmatic knight in medieval armor, the fairy-like creatures in the sky, the impenetrable wall of freezing mist which hemmed them in--were these the stuff of dreams, or the hard facts of a new and menacing reality?
Above all, was this new life of theirs part of some unimaginable alien zoo, or was it perhaps a complex Operation Noah for the human race?
From the back cover:
Four men, four women. Were they pets, exhibits, or laboratory animals?
One moment all eight of them were flying from Sweden to England. The next, they were emerging from plastic coffins in the middle of a road that led to nowhere, on an unknown planet beneath alien stars. A well-stocked--but staffless--hotel, a supermarket, and the empty shells of two cars: These were the raw materials of their new life. The hows of it were immaterial. It was the whys which were so frightening.
The Stone Age tribesmen, the enigmatic knight in medieval armor, the fairy-like creatures in the sky, the impenetrable wall of freezing mist which hemmed them in--were these the stuff of dreams, or the hard facts of a new and menacing reality?
Above all, was this new life of theirs part of some unimaginable alien zoo, or was it perhaps a complex Operation Noah for the human race?
Copywrite 1969. My guess is that Cooper just jumped on the S/F bandwagon that was going on during this era of "The Race for Space." (I'm still scratching my head over the nifty title.) Real S/F buffs should have this stilted British author in their collection for historical purposes.
