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I'm looking for an old novel published in, I think, the late 60s or early 70s. The protagonist is a starship captain.

The novel begins with his trial for the possible destruction of an interstellar colony. The starship he commanded was to visit different colonies to see how they were doing. When he entered the system, another starship was detected leaving. They investigated the colony but found no one. The captain took a shuttle and detected a signal that guided him to a cave where he found a few survivors. However, they had been surgically/genetically modified into grotesque monsters (one eye instead of two, more arms and legs, etc). They begged him to kill them and he did. After the ship returned to Earth, he was placed on trial and forced to reveal this information.

The only other thing I remember is that the trial took place in San Francisco. There was also at least one sequel to the novel.

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  • Hi Welcome to Sci-Fi.SE... Could you please help us by changing the title to a more descriptive and 'searchable' one?
    – Möoz
    Sep 26, 2014 at 0:06
  • 1
    @Mooz - I was just thinking that.
    – Valorum
    Sep 26, 2014 at 0:13
  • My first thought was Star Trek - Menagerie (mainly the San Francisco connection). Not sure if that was novelised, though: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…
    – Nigel Ellis
    Nov 18, 2014 at 16:36
  • I used to own both this book and its sequel. I sold them years ago and can no longer remember the titles or the author.
    – Dosco Jones
    Nov 23, 2014 at 17:34
  • sounds a bit like Star Trek: Prime Directive but that was published in the 90s. The words you are using definitely sound like a Star Trek novel however.
    – NKCampbell
    Dec 16, 2015 at 20:23

1 Answer 1

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This question has been bothering me since it was first posted. This morning I had a flash memory of a book cover. Could you be thinking of the books in the "Venturer Twelve" series by Dan Morgan and John Kippax? I can't find any plot synopses anywhere, but perhaps you can find a picture of the cover that will help trigger a memory. Try these links:

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?7656

http://andrewdarlington.blogspot.com/2015/05/cult-sf-writer-john-kippax-science.html

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  • Here are links to covers of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th books in the series.
    – user14111
    Dec 19, 2015 at 3:18

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