Bowl of Heaven

August 6, 2012
SF doyens Benford (Chiller) and Niven (the Ringworld series) collaborate on a strong SF series launch. Something goes wrong with Earth’s SunSeeker space expedition, leaving the crew without enough fuel or supplies to reach their destination. Just as things get serious, they spot a curious phenomenon in space: an enormous bowl-shaped object, larger than any planet, cupping and half-encircling a star. Its inner surface is oddly Earth-like, and already inhabited. The Bird Folk watch the humans’ every move, trying to decide whether to allow them to colonize or kill them all. Much of the book is written from the point of view of Memor, the Bird Folk representative assigned to study the humans; Benford and Niven helpfully give her a soap opera of primate behavior to observe, as Cliff loves Beth but sleeps with Irma because she’s more convenient, and the various exploration teams bicker over leadership. While hardly groundbreaking, this is a solid work that will appeal to fans of classic hard SF.

October 1, 2012
The first full-length collaboration from Niven (Fate of Worlds, 2012, etc.) and Benford (The Sunborn, 2005, etc.), featuring a science-fiction trope, the Big Dumb Object--or, as the authors distinguish it, a Big Smart Object since it's dynamically stable, as opposed to passively stable like Niven's BDO, Ringworld. A sublight-speed starship heading for a habitable planet encounters an astonishingly vast structure: a bowl-shaped construct like a Dyson hemisphere, with a habitable interior surface larger in area than millions of Earths. Even more amazing, this Bowl is being steered towards the same destination as the starship, using an entire star as its engine! The starship needs supplies, so a landing party goes down to investigate. While attempting to gain ingress, the explorers become separated. One group, led by biologist Beth Marble, is captured by the structure's alien controllers, taught to communicate and interrogated. The other group, under Beth's partner, biologist Cliff Kammash, escapes into the Bowl's habitable interior, only to be pursued relentlessly by birdlike aliens. We learn from Memor, the chief alien investigator, that the Bowl has been wandering the galaxy for millions of years, capturing and enslaving other intelligent species and incorporating them into the Bowl's complex ecology--and their debate soon narrows into whether to domesticate the humans or simply exterminate them. There's plenty of gosh-wow value in the exploration of the object itself, while the plot develops along conventional lines. Unfortunately, the humans lack personalities, their interactions remain soap-operatic, and the quality of the writing reflects this. The aliens come across as too dimwitted and sluggish for the sophisticated technology they evidently control, although this may be intentional: A sequel, Shipstar, is promised. BDO or BSO, there's nothing wrong with the hardware; it's the wetware that's disappointingly deficient.

COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

October 15, 2012

An exploratory expedition to a star system with a potentially habitable planet discovers a strange structure apparently bound for the same destination. When a landing party attempts to investigate the object, which resembles an enormous bowl built around a star and is large enough to hold a population of millions, they discover that the structure is inhabited--and the natives are not particularly friendly. Part of the landing party become captives and test subjects, while the rest strike out on their own, attempting to rendezvous with their orbiting ship before they, too, are trapped. VERDICT First-time collaborators Niven ("Ringworld" series; coauthor, Beowulf's Children) and Benford (Timescape; "Galactic Center" series) have combined their award-winning talents for storytelling to create a series opener that should find a welcome reception from fans of the authors as well as those who love hard science and mental challenges.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.