First, the good news.
It is doubtful whether you will find a more entertaining, informative story than the first eighty-five pages of Stargate. This is especially true if you are familiar with the works of Zecharia Sitchin (see July & August 1994 reviews). For instance, in the third chapter of Stargate, we find Daniel Jackson, our protagonist, giving a lecture to a gathering of renowned archaeologists and Egyptomologists on how the great pyramids of Egypt were not built. There is discussion of the remarkable mis-spelling of the name "KHUFU" and the supposed discovery of the mis-spelled name on three walls of the great pyramid by Vyse which Sitchin covers in some detail. The authors of Stargate have managed to give the entire incident the significance it deserves as a work of archaeological detective work.
Jackson, an Egyptologist playing out in left-field with his unorthodox ideas and theories, does not realize that some of his conjectures are on the verge of being proven as fact. Unknown to him, some sixty years before in 1928, nine-year Catherine Langford watched as her father's workman unearthed a number of strange artifacts from the sands of Egypt. One of those artifacts, Catherine discovered in consulting her copy of Ancient Egypt, was a depiction of the god Anubis, overlord of the Land of the Dead.
After attending his lecture, Catherine visits Jackson in his apartment and invites him to participate in a project requiring Jackson's formidable skills as a hieroglyphics interpreter and linguist. Jackson of course accepts.
And now, the big-government-cover-up-and-dirty-secrets news.
When Jackson arrives at the research site, he discovers it is controlled by the military. By the time we get this far in the story, Stargate has climaxed and now seeks shelter in the tried and true formula of mediocrity . What is left is the typical, run-of-the-mill hi-tech adventure game with the action-hero in constant peril; dumbfounded, amazed and intimidated but courageous natives shuffling around the action; and of course, the alluring, beautiful native girl who falls in love with one of the "strangers".