George Zebrowski, “The Omega Point” (1972) – This is a quick scifi read about Gorgias, close-to-the-last of his race of human-descended inhabitants of the Herculean cluster, who fought humanity and lost big time. The Herculeans are drawn roughly like standard fantasy elves- smaller, more elegant, more sophisticated than humans, but frailer and fewer. Gorgias has the best spaceship around and uses it to zoom around and do terrorist strikes- taking out a composer who wrote a suite about the Earth-Herculean war, zapping warp drive beacons, and so on. He’s being hunted by Kurbi, a sensitive earthling who wants to take his man alive, so as to reproduce the Herculeans. This is both as reparations for Earth genociding them and due to some theory that humans need a rival or other in order to grow, etc. Ultimately, this sort of philosophizing takes over the book. After Gorgias does his last stand, he’s absorbed into the collective unconscious or noosphere or whatever you want to call it, which is very seventies-trippy and, naturally, stored in the mind of an attractive alien lady. It feels both like Zebrowski, an old scifi (and Star Trek!) hand, both ran out of ideas and followed his vision i.e. whatever he was reading about at the time. For better and for worse, the sort of book published used to insert cigarette ads into, like my copy. ***’