James P. Hogan, 1941-2010

Sci-fi author James P. Hogan died a few days ago. I read his first novel, Inherit the Stars, in seventh grade, and it was a heck of a fun ride: modern-day lunar explorers discover a spacesuited corpse on the moon - he's fully human, and he's been lying in place for 40,000 years. A team is assembled to solve the mystery of "Charlie" and they manage to piece together a picture of his fully human, yet fully alien, civilization and culture. This leads to a now-familiar surprise about our origins on Earth.