The Great Race

Tom Clancy's Net Force Explorers #5

by Bill McCay, Tom Clancy (Series Creator), Steve Pieczenik (Series Creator)

The worldwide race to design a virtual spaceship is dangerously disrupted when someone tries to steal valuable technology and it is up to the Net Force team to find the culprits before real damage is done. Original. TV tie-in.

Genres: Thriller, Young Adult, Fiction, Science Fiction, Adventure

181 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published August 1, 1999

About the author

Under a variety of pseudonyms as well as his own name, Bill McCay is the author of more than seventy books, including such series as the Race Against Time, The Three Investigators, Young Indiana Jones, and Tom Clancy's Net Force. He has also worked with Stan Lee on Riftworld, a science fiction comedy-adventure set in the comics business. McCay has also written five novels based on the film Stargate. His fantasy short fiction has appeared in several anthologies and his Star Trek novel Chains of Command (cowritten with E. L. Flood) spent several weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.

See also William McCay

Reviews

[Jeroen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun book that I picked up mostly because I wanted a fun quick read to balance out some of my non-fiction reading. Basically I needed a distraction and this did the trick. I read it when it first came out. This YA series was a nice complement to the Net Force books that came out around the same time, (both) with a cast of interesting characters. This book follows Leif Anderson and his friends David, Matt, and Andy as they take part in a virtual reality space race for a Sci-Fi TV series produced by Pinnacle Production (A not so covert reference to Star Trek and Paramount Studios). It becomes clear that the race itself is at least part-way rigged as the different participants all follow the global parallels between the on-screen aliens and their Earth-based counterpart countries/cultures. But more appears to be going on as multiple contestants get sabotaged. Leif investigates.
It's a YA book and the mystery is not very deep, as it is pretty clear who the bad guys are. But there is at least one twist at the end of the book, though it had very little emotional impact for me.
I might revisit more of this series if I'm looking for a quick and fun read.

[Lorenzo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un gruppo di ragazzi decide di partecipare ad un concorso indetto da una società di Hollywood: progettare una astronave e guidarla in una gara svolta in un ambiente virtuale; il premio: partecipare alle riprese del telefilm e vincere una serie di computer di ultima generazione.
Ben presto si rendono conto che la gara è tutt'altro che semplice: le squadre sono pronte a tutto per vincere, in particolare una è disposta addirittura ad uccidere per impadronirsi dei preziosi computer al fine di studiarli per portare in patria (rimasta arretrata a causa di un embargo) importanti informazioni tecnologiche.
Colpi di scena, sospetti ed una ambientazione decisamente futuristica rendono questo libro di piacevole lettura,

[William Whalen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I tend to find it very distracting when a book takes a public figure or a copyrighted work and very thinly disguises it as something else. I understand they are working around legal issues but at least make the fictionalized version different enough, so your brain doesn't automatically adjust to the real item being imitated. "The Great Race" revolves around the TV show "Ultimate Frontier." Only those with zero familiarity of "Star Trek," could possibly mistake this for anything but a rename to avoid a lawsuit. The problem is that as I read about "Ultimate Frontier;" my brain is screaming "Star Trek." This completely pulls me out of the story.

[Justin Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

An enjoyable read, even though it is the first "techno thriller" I've ever read. It only gets three stars because it doesn't leave an impression. That is, when I put the book down, I don't really think about what I've read. It seems almost prophetic, however, that one of the bad spies in The Great Race is a fellow named Snowdon, and the biggest spy in contemporary news is a guy named Snowden.