Ship of the Damned

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

HX-Files strangeness and race-against-time action come together in this eccentric, gripping science adventure based on the Philadelphia Experiment, a real-life WWII attempt to render warships invisible. Fifty years after the war, neuropsychologist Dr. Wes Martin and co-worker Elizabeth Foxworth begin to investigate several people of various ages who are all dreaming the same dream--that they are wandering through an empty ship in the desert, a vessel whose passageways and rooms keep shifting like a living maze. When Martin links Elizabeth's mind with that dream world, Elizabeth discovers herself wandering a ship that seems much too real to be a fantasy. That's because it is real--it's called the Norfolk, and for more than 50 years it has been trapped in its own little pocket universe called Pot of Gold. The experiment that created Pot of Gold not only fused some of the Norfolk's crew with its metal superstructure, it gave the surviving sailors psychic powers. These so-called Specials are still ensnared on the ship, which is monitored by the Office of Special Projects. When the Nimitz, a modern-day aircraft carrier, disappears just like the Norfolk did, Special Projects leaders take action. They plan to insert a team of agents led by stone killer Nathan Jett into Pot of Gold to destroy the shipboard generators that have been keeping the Norfolk separate from the real world. Key to the plan is the one man who might be immune to the powers of the Specials--a retarded adult called Ralph, whom David fans will remember from his previous novel, Fragments. With just enough science to make the weirdness believable, and some well-rendered subplots, notably a surprisingly moving friendship between killer Jett and the supposedly expendable Ralph, David crafts a great summer read, a swift amusement park ride of shipboard battles, telekinetic showdowns and potential nuclear catastrophe. (Aug.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

School Library Journal

Adult/High School-Based on the legendary "Philadelphia Experiment," this journey into a supernatural realm is full of action, strange characters, and suspense. Apparently, the U.S. Navy was experimenting with electromagnetism in the 1940s when something went terribly wrong-the battleship USS Eldridge suddenly disappeared. It supposedly reappeared in Norfolk, VA, then returned to Philadelphia. Some sailors were severely burned, some had gone insane, and some had melted into the structure of the ship. Into this melee come David's protagonists from his novel Fragments (St. Martin's, 1997). Dr. Wes Martin and social worker Elizabeth Foxworth are again working with mind-melding techniques. Lack of replenishing REM sleep is causing some people to face certain death. When Elizabeth joins the experiment, she, too, suffers from the recurring dream of a ship stranded in a desert, with men fused to its sides until she is only days from her demise. The premise for this book is that the Eldridge inhabits a netherworld of space and time, and its survivors are ageless and immortal. Project Rainbow, as the original experiment was named, has become a top-secret government operation to prevent the "specials" from escaping into our reality and to destroy them. Many have been shown to be insane, with formidable powers, and have wreaked considerable damage on the "normal" world. Now a nuclear sub has disappeared into the green haze associated with the Eldridge, and Elizabeth, Wes, and a retarded adult find themselves within the psychotic world of the "specials." YAs will love this nail-biter.-Carol DeAngelo, Kings Park Library, Burke, VA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Clever but overlong and painfully convoluted science-fantasy thriller involving scientists, psychic powers, pocket dimensions, cold-blooded secret agents, super-secret organizations, and aircraft carriers. In a stand-alone sequel to his novel Fragments (1997), David takes as his starting point the conspiracy-theory-friendly urban myth, the Philadelphia Experiment, in which WWII-era government experiments are said to have made a battleship disappear. Here, the USS Norfolk has been vaulted into a pocket dimension, where its surviving crew has remained, unaging and imbued with psychic powers, for the last fifty years. While one secret government agency monitors and contains the force field that holds the ship and its crew, another exists to hunt down and kill the powerful telekinetic Specials who stumble back into our world. Funded by the mysterious and extralegal Kellum Foundation, Dr. Wes Martin has conducted experiments integrating individual minds. Now, with girlfriend Elizabeth Foxworth, he attempts to help a group plagued by identical nightly dreams of a mysterious multidimensional battleship—help he gives by inserting Elizabeth into the dreamers' minds. When the nuclear-armed aircraft carrier Nimitz is snatched out of our dimension by the psychics on the Norfolk, the government sends heartless killers Nathan Jett and Karla Compton into their dimension to terminate them, just as Elizabeth enters their dimension through dreams, later followed, bodily, by Wes. On the Norfolk, they encounter two warring factions, one led by a homicidal, mind-controlling, religious fanatic, the other by Walter Kellum, the scientist founder of the Kellum Foundation. After seeminglyendlessconfrontations, battles, psychic showdowns, captures, escapes, Armageddonish threats, interdimensional jaunts, and plenty of dei ex machina, the good guys win. Tying all these diverse elements together is an impressive feat—but that doesn't help the forced characterizations, pointless plot twists, and lackluster pacing.

From the Publisher

"A swift, amusement park ride of shipboard battles, telekinetic showdowns and potential nuclear disasters."-Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

"James F. David uses his background as a psychologist to unnerve a generation of readers."-The Washington Times