Code of the Lifemaker - Hardcover

This is hard sf with wry humor by the author of the Giants series (INHERIT THE STARS, etc.). In the 21st century, a colony ship destined for Mars ends up on Titan. Its crew--including linguists, psychologists, parapsychology researchers, and a whole passel of soldiers-- encounters a strange race of beings: accidentally-evolved "robots," the offspring of an alien factory ship whose computers were addled by radiation a million years before. Newsday said, and I quote them because this is exactly what I like about Hogan's books, "Hogan skillfully draws the reader into a fascinating philosophical and theological debate, without ever forgetting he's supposed to entertain and tell a good story." (Don't ask me the difference between "entertain" and "tell a good story"; I'm not their editor! I thought journalists were supposed to not mince words...)

                                --Ellen Key Harris, Editor, Del Rey Books

go, a robot factory-ship flew too near a star unexpectedly gone nova. After suffering extensive damage, it continued blindly for millennia.

A million years passed...

Then, in the twenty-first century, a colony ship destined for Mars was surreptitiously rerouted to Titan...and only the leaders of the military industrial complex knew why.

In addition to its flight crew, the interplanetary transport carried parapsycholoy researchers, linguists, psychologists, representatives of industry, an ambassador...and elite military units from several Western nations. Clearly something was up.
But no one was talking!