Ben BovaRecensioner

F/SF

F/SF

F/SF

ISFDB 2544. OCLC 2822612. LCCN 76644242.

ISFDB 2550. OCLC 4938064.

SF. Pretty good story of scientific outpost at Jupiter that must try to do their work while the religious fanatics at home want to dismantle any scientific efforts that go against scripture.

Very good sequel to Moonrise as Earth rises up to declare war on the Moonbase.

Good hard SF on development of moon and family conflict in running Moonbase by corporation. Politics of viability of nanotechnology a good back story.

These are the sorts of stories I loved when I was in elementary school: smart kids starting life on a new planet. Adventure. A bit of mischief. Each story is intended to stand on its own, so some of the text gets a bit repetitive. But a kid isn't likely to care much if they notice. So do your kids (or, if you're a teacher, your class) a favor and read them these stories. Let them know the future is going to be fun!

Having read (listened to) this book for a second time, I'm raising my rating from three stars to four. This time around, I appreciated much more the characters' depth and the accurate science and presentation of Mars.

Orion chases the dark side through time to it's beginning...three times he encounters darkness and three times Orion must chase him some more. That repetitiveness made me think about putting the book away. But, I knew that there would be a kicker at the end. There was one. As always, Bova does a good job with the personal interactions. Wondering whether I should continue the series?

gypsy by poul anderson, and there were none by eric frank russell, profession by isaac asimov

What a disappointing book! I've never read anything by Ben Bova, but have heard a lot about him, so was really looking forward to this. While I wasn't expecting brilliant prose, what I encountered was shockingly poor. The premise is really interesting, which leaves me even more frustrated with the novel's problems, including: sexist depictions and narrative treatment of all the female characters; racist descriptions of non-European/North American characters; an irritating, repetitive, clumsily expressed obsession with age on the part of the protagonist; incessant, duplicative conflicts and arguments, as though the characters had forgotten each of the many prior instances of the exact same conversation and the resultant realizations; and last, but definitely not least, the most ill-informed presentation of "scientists" that I've ever encountered--this group makes the Scooby-Doo Gang seem like highly trained experts.

Great premise and plot ruined by clumsy juvenile writing and astonishingly sexist portrayals of all of the female characters.

Pretty standard soft sci-fi story that follows the typical arc: young genius with a dream overcomes bureaucratic roadblocks just in the nick of time...and of course there's a girl involved. But I like Ben Bova's easy reading style and the story is short enough to keep your attention.

My only interest in this anthology was to read A Slow Unfurling of Truth by Aliette de Bodard, so please read the following review with that in mind.

As far as i'm aware this is only currently available in the anthology Carbide Tipped Pens, which, for some reason unbeknownst to me, isn't available on Kindle: yes folks, it appears that the Luddites are at it again attempting their very worse to ruin life for us technologically advanced hominyds who read ebooks and love trees.   But, not to be outdone, i suggest that maybe you could get imaginative with your technologically advanced minds and dream up ways of how you may wish to obtain a copy to read.

And that was my first usage of "unbeknownst" on this website.   A lovely old word.   Some words are just too good to let fade away.

Oh yeah, it's supposed to be a review of the story, i know, i'm getting to it, but you can't get to the story until you actually have a copy to read so that had to be dealt with first.

So once again we're back with the Galactics and the Rongs and now instead of downloading/uploading dead people into V-Space they now seem to be able to take dead people and upload/download/re-sleeve them into new bodies.   Think Altered Carbon kind of thing but i've no idea how it's being done in Aliette's universe as that bit's not explained.

The problem with re-sleeving people is that after a period of time, especially if you lost touch with them, you may not be able to tell who a person was or wasn't.   This whole thing would obviously lead to whole new areas of crime with re-sleeved people claiming to be people who they aren't and claiming things to which they aren't entitled.   This then leads to a whole new occupation, that of people who ascertain the validity of re-sleeved people.

And so, that's where we are with A Slow Unfurling of Truth.   A Galactic has turned up claiming to be someone and it's very important that the Rong know if it's true or not, enter the Authenticators, a human and mindship pair working together to unfurl the truth.

I really enjoyed the re-sleeving and V-Space aspects of the Altered Carbon books, and it's great to re-encounter this kind of thing being written by other writers, especially writers as good as Aliette is.   So yeah, would love to read a whole lot more of this re-sleeving V-Space stuff from Aliette in the future -- she's certainly created a big enough universe to shove a ton more stories into.

So onwards, onwards we read, and next up will be The Frost on Jade Buds.

About half way through this book, I was already thinking about my review and how I was going to slam this book. Funny thing happened between the middle and the end, it improved (albeit slightly) and I had a few second thoughts.

Look, this is a stereotypical Bova book. All the women are pretty, all the men are handsome and everybody enjoys sex - even if it's described in a sentence or two at most. There's a love triangle, family members that don't get along, and a protagonist's life long goal to try and make the whole thing hang together.

Personally, I'm bored with it. I feel like I've read the book over and over again, long before I get half-way.

On the other hand, I recently rated a Cherryh book a four star effort because it was exactly what I was hoping for - in other words, an awful lot the same as other books she's written.

So, even though I didn't like it, if you do like Bova, you might like this one. Otherwise, skip it.

Ben Bova is one of my favorite authors. Most of his books have gotten a 4 or 5 star rating from me. That being said, this book was just average. The plot wasn't very exciting, and didn't really "grab" me until the last 100 pages or so. It was very political, and outdated (It was written during th...

Excellent follow-up to Saturn. Although not as exciting and dramatic as the former, it was still a solid 5/5 for me! It was nice to see old characters return and their stories expanded upon.

Had to stop reading after plowing through a dozen dreadful chapters. I liked "New Earth" and thought this would be interesting, but no.

Had to stop reading after plowing through a dozen dreadful chapters. I liked "New Earth" and thought this would be interesting, but no.

336

Bova, Ben. New Earth. Tor, 2013. Grand Tour 21.
New Earth, which finally gets us out of the solar system, should have been a splendid capstone for Ben Bova’s Grand Tour Series. We begin as Gaia, our first manned interstellar spacecraft, enters orbit around New Earth, the extrasolar planet discovered in Farside. It seems odd to say about Bova, but he seems to have run out of steam in writing New Earth. The book is full of clichés and infelicities of style that the folks at Tor should have helped him eliminate. For example, do we need to be told ten different times that a character is wearing slacks? It is not as if they are important. It just seems that Bova has run out of descriptive words and details that matter. We are told about wonderful new technologies, but they are not examined with the precision Bova usually provides. The plot lacks tension—the aliens are all so nice I expected Mr. Rogers to show up any minute. Not all the news is bad. The novel does a good job of considering the reactions a team of scientists might have if they encountered aliens that seem too good to be true. But the philosophical discussion is not enough to keep a reader engaged. 3.5 stars.½

Bova, Ben. Farside. Tor, 2013. Grand Tour 20.
In Farside, Bova takes us back to the Moon, where the debate over nanotechnology continues. Could we use nanomachines to build an array of large telescope mirrors? His characters include a single-minded astrophysicist who only cares about his project. Because Bova cannot resist irony, he is blind but has limited vision using something like sonar artificially wired into his brain. The real work gets done by a young scientist named Trudy and a technician named Grant. Because Bova can’t resist an expected plot device, they are a romantic pair. There is also the usual skullduggery aimed at stopping the project. Bova always makes me wish GR allowed split grades—4 stars for ideas and plot. Three for characters. Rounds up to 4.

Bova, Ben. The Precipice. Tor, 2001. Grand Tour 8.
The Precipice is the first of the Asteroid Wars sequence in Ben Bova’s Grand Tour future history. It pits Dan Randolph, the environmentalist head of Astro Manufacturing, against the villainous Martin Humphries as they compete to take control of the nascent asteroid mining industry. The story is most notable for introducing his pilot, Priscilla “Pancho” Lane. As is often the case in Bova’s writing, the plot has believable near-future tech, tense action, and bad romantic melodrama. The Asteroid Wars is one of the better subseries of the Grand Tour and it is worth a read with all its flaws. 4 stars.