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Australian pilot David Granger begins his military career flying missions in Vietnam, but a strange experience in the mountains leads to an encounter with an alien being that sets him on a mission to faraway planets to save an alien race. What starts out as a historical novel about a military career turns into a science fiction adventure fueled by newly acquired superpowers, interplanetary battles, and one all-powerful computer leading a quest to save the aliens of the planet Atlantis.
David is a gifted pilot, trained doctor, devoted husband, and sought-after political consultant at various stages of his life. He comes of age as a pilot during wartime in Vietnam and then the Falkland Islands, travels the world on a yacht, and eventually runs successful businesses. His life story is narrated as detailed vignettes of military life, career exploration, marriage, and fatherhood. All appears straightforward and realistic in the hands of Johnson who seems to be narrating a pilot’s life—heroic but ordinary—until Orack the supercomputer is introduced midway through the book. Suddenly, the realism of war and romance competes with alien intrigue, sometimes with uneven results. A genre tug of war begins to play out on the pages.
Orack’s alien world, mission, and backstory reveal glimmers of Johnson’s talent for writing science fiction and constructing fantastical adventures in space and on Earth. When Orack confers special powers on David, his squadron, and his family, the story is opened up to wild encounters of mind control, telepathy, and creative and intellectual superiority. Johnson, like Orack, seems capable of endless possibilities for creation without restraint.