Manhattan is ripped off the face of the earth and sealed in a giant bubble by aliens; that bubble is hauled into the alien ship and placed on a large plain, surrounded by other bubbles. What's going on here? Are the aliens assembling an intergalactic zoo? Collecting souvenirs? Gathering their next meal?
Stith focuses on half-a-dozen or so human heroes (and one or two villains); all of his characters are appropriately heroic/stalwart/courageous or shifty/unscrupulous/scheming, as the plot requires. The heroes set out on a mission to escape their bubble and contact their captors while the villains, fearful that this mission can only make things worse, attempt to sabotage things.
There's not a lot of subtlety here; characters are paper thin, and the romantic relationship between the two principal hero characters is painful to read. But as cheesy sci-fi goes, Manhattan Transfer does have the virtue of moving swiftly along; Stith is at least trying to make the science plausible; and there are some unexpected twists involving the alien captors and their real motivations. It's not great literature, but if you're in the mood for mindless entertainment, you could do worse.
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