Sometimes the really big thing in science fiction is a Really Big Thing. Here I’m talking about construction projects that make the Great Wall of China look like a Lego starter set. Never mind being visible from orbit; any halfway-decent Really Big Thing can easily perturb other objects in orbit—and most fill up their own orbits.
There’s a whole subgenre of SF that deals with Really Big Things. We call this subgenre “Bigger Than Worlds,” after the title of an essay by Larry Niven that appeared in the March 1974 issue of Analog.
Some trace Bigger Than Worlds stories to the early 1300s and Dante’s Divine Comedy. Isaac Asimov in particular argued that Dante’s elaborate Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven were constructed worlds. In standard science fiction, though, the honor of first on the scene goes to Olaf Stapledon, whose 1937 novel Star Maker featured artificial planets and even what we today call Dyson spheres (immense structures enclosing entire stars). In 1962, Hothouse by Brian Aldiss described a far-future Earth linked to the Moon by enormous spiderwebs, and Robert Silverberg explored a Dyson sphere in Across a Billion Years (1969).
It wasn’t until 1970 that the subgenre really came into its own, with the publication of Larry Niven’s Ringworld. This story of a literal ring around a star, with a million times the habitable surface area of the Earth, took the field by storm. It wasn’t long before tales of other Really Big Things were all the fashion. Huge artificial worlds showed up in the work of Arthur C. Clarke (Rendezvous with Rama, 1973, and later sequels), Jack Chalker (Midnight at the Well of Souls, 1977, and sequels), and John Varley (Titan, 1979, and sequels). G. David Nordley took Analog readers to a big construct called Cubeworld in the serial “To Climb a Flat Mountain” (November and December 2009). And need I mention the moon-sized Death Star from Star Wars (1977)?
Dyson spheres featured prominently in Frederik Pohl & Jack Williamson’s Farthest Star (1975) and Wall Around a Star (1983) as well as Bob Shaw’s Orbitsville (1975) and sequels. A smaller sphere built around a black hole appeared in Tony Rothman’s The World is Round (1978). In his Cageworld series (starting in 1982), Colin Kapp gave us a whole series of nested Dyson spheres. Gene Wolfe used the Dyson sphere concept as the basis for his Book of the Long Sun series (1993 and after). In 1992, Star Trek: The Next Generation’s starship Enterprise visited an alien-built Dyson sphere.
Ringworlds also proved popular. As early as 1973 Harry Harrison used one to great effect in his satire Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers. Several Iain M. Banks novels have featured multiple ringworlds (and Dyson spheres), notably Consider Phlebas (1987) and Matter (2008). Banks invented what he calls “Orbitals,” which are sort of junior ringworlds with diameters only about the size of planets. In 2001, the mega-popular video game Halo took that idea and ran with it . . . all the way to the bank.
Surely the grandest ring-shaped structure in SF (so far) is Stephen Baxter’s Ring (1994), which is built of cosmic string and stretches across millions of lightyears.
Many different types of Really Big Things have appeared in science fiction. Thin structures looped around stars like spaghetti featured in Timothy Zahn’s Spinneret (1985), White Light (1998) by William Barton and Michael Capobianco, and Helix by Eric Brown (2007). In his 1981 pre-Discworld SF novel Strata, Terry Pratchett used the concept of the Alderson Disk, a huge disc-shaped platter with a star nestled in a hole in the center. My own Weaving the Web of Days (2004) involved a semi-living network stretching between stars in the Tarantula Nebula. Karl Schroeder’s Virga series (starting with Sun of Suns in 2006) presented a giant inhabited balloon the size of several planets.
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Hex
Allen Steele
Ace, 352 pages, $26.95 (hardcover)
iBooks, Kindle, Nook: $12.99 (ebook)
ISBN: 978-0-441-02036-2
Series: Coyote 6
Genre: Bigger Than World
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Hex
Allen Steele’s Coyote (as I argued in the September 2010 issue) has become one of SF’s beloved other worlds. Now Steele takes the Coyote series into Bigger Than Worlds territory, and forges new links between the Coyote novels and two associated works in the same universe, The River Horse (2007) and Galaxy Blues (2008).
Since Earth has become all but uninhabitable, Coyote (a moon of a gas giant orbiting 47 Ursae Majoris) is the main home of Humanity. Through centuries, the Coyote Federation has risen to become an established member of the galactic league called the Talus. Military and merchant ships, moving through stargate-like starbridges, have explored other planetary systems and established trade relationships with a number of alien races.
In all their exploration, though, Coyote’s people have never found another habitable world for Humanity to settle. The leaders of the Federation, acutely aware of how fragile a single planet can be, are desperate to find another potential home for the species.
Andromeda Carson, merchant captain, is bored with her job. Until, that is, a man from the government comes with interesting news. A reclusive alien race, the arachnoid danui, makes a strange proposal. They claim to know the location of an unoccupied world perfectly suited to human habitation, and they are offering that information for trade.
Andromeda and her crew take on a company of scientists and head off for HD 76700, the star system at the danui-provided coordinates. HD 76700 is something of a mystery; the star is surrounded by a dust cloud or nebula, and there is no sign of an Earth-sized planet.
As the human crew comes closer, they realize the true nature of the cloud, along with the reason for the lack of planets. The danui have used most of the planets in their system as raw materials to construct a sort of Dyson sphere surrounding HD 76700 at a distance of about 1 astronomical unit.
The conventional Dyson sphere, as presented in SF, is a solid shell around a star. HD 76700’s sphere is composed of an open network of billions of hexagons, each as far across as a small moon. As you’d expect, the filaments forming the hexes are biological habitats, each kilometers across. Different habitats are bio-engineered to support different races.
There is enough habitable space to house multiple trillions of beings; all of the races belonging to the Talus could easily move in. And in fact, many races are already represented—some have been there so long that their civilizations have collapsed, leaving their descendants wild and dangerous.
The trick of a successful Bigger Than Worlds story is giving readers a sufficient amount of time to explore the Really Big Thing, while not allowing it to overshadow the plot or characters. At the same time, the plot can’t be too complex or the characters and their difficulties too captivating, lest they distract from the exploration.
This is a difficult balancing act, and Steele pulls it off beautifully. The two primary mysteries—why the danui would build Hex to begin with, and why they invited the humans—both get satisfactory answers. Andromeda and her crewmates are compelling (Andromeda’s fractured relationship with her scientist son in particular). Meanwhile the exploration of Hex (the star of the show) is interesting and well thought out; the reward is worth the trip.
Steele leaves plenty of room (no pun intended) for a sequel.
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Embassytown
China Miéville
Dl Rey, 368 pages, $26.00 (hardcover)
iBooks, Kindle, Nook: $12.99 (ebook)
ISBN: 978-0-345-52449-2
Genre: Alien Beings, Other Worlds
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Embassytown
China Miéville has been making quite a name for himself in fantasy. In the last decade he’s won multiple awards, including multiple Arthur C. Clarke, Locus, and British Fantasy Awards, the World Fantasy Award, and a Hugo. His work has been nominated for just about every award in the field. Miéville specializes in something called “The New Weird,” an urban-flavored blend of fantasy, science fiction, literary fiction, and horror.
Now Miéville turns his not-inconsiderable talent to pure science fiction, and turns out an enthralling tale of alien contact, set in an enchanting city and told in truly magical language.
Avice Benner Cho grew up in the streets of Embassytown, a far-future city on an alien world that’s not habitable to humans. There are many intelligent alien races in Embassytown, including humans, and different parts of the city are set aside for different species. Humans are guests of the native Ariekei, an enigmatic race with an unusual language that few can speak. The relationship between humans and Ariekei is peaceful but tense, as neither race really understands the other.
As a child, Avice became involved in an incident with the Ariekei. She grew up and—in part because of the incident—left the planet for offworld adventure.
Now, decades later, Avice returns to Embassytown. She doesn’t speak the Ariekei tongue, yet she is now part of the language . . . the same childhood incident has become sort of half-living figure of speech. One of the few humans thus honored, Avice is bound to the aliens in a way that she doesn’t completely understand.
She soon learns that new humans are arriving in Embassytown, humans who don’t appreciate the delicate relationship between the two races. There is a new and unfamiliar ambassador, and things in Embassytown are beginning to spiral out of control. Avice knows that if it comes to war, the humans will be easily defeated. Yet she’s torn between supporting her people and doing honor to the Ariekei.
Embassytown is a well-crafted novel full of many wonders; it’s the sort of SF book that keeps teetering on the edge, as if ready to tumble into incomprehensibility—but it never makes that fall. Instead, it playfully stretches the reader’s perceptions just enough.
Definitely a book to enjoy. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself reading parts aloud, just for the pleasure of feeling the words on your lips.
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Kea’s Flight
Erika Hammerschmidt and John C. Ricker
Lulu.com, 569 pages, $26.99
(trade paperback)
Kindle, Nook: $3.89 (ebook)
ISBN: 978-1-4583-9679-2
Genre: Psychological/Sociological SF
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Kea’s Flight
Kea was an unwanted mistake.
On twenty-fifth century Earth, genetic technology has made it possible for every parent to choose the exact characteristics desired in every child. In the process, however, many surplus embryos are formed. It’s illegal to discard them, so they’re frozen, packed on robot-controlled spaceships, and sent off into the universe.
Kea was a discarded embryo, one rejected for having genes linked to autism. She was never meant to be born—but then again, neither were any of the embryos on her ship. But mistakes happen, and Kea is just one of many unwanted children raised on a speeding starship.
None of it was every supposed to happen . . . and when the government finds out that it has happened, the result is predictable and inevitable: it becomes necessary to eliminate the embarrassment.
But this ship of talented, misfit kids has another idea. . . .
What makes this book so fascinating is Kea, her fellow autistic children (they range from those with severe autism to high-functioning types with Asperger’s Syndrome), and the society they’ve built in their ship. It’s long been observed that many SF heroes and other characters display characteristics similar to folks with Asperger’s—here’s a book that makes the connection explicit. You’ll see echoes of Heinlein’s Peewee Reisfeld, Asimov’s Arkady Darrell, and Panshin’s Mia Havero.
Is this self-published novel worth $26.99 for a trade paperback? That’s a question I could wrestle with. But at $3.89 for an ebook, it’s well worth the price of admission.
* * *
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A Beautiful Friendship
David Weber
Baen, 376 pages, $18.99 (hardcover)
ISBN: 978-1451637472
Series: Stephanie Harrington 1
Genres: Adventure SF,
Animal Companions, Teen SF
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A Beautiful Friendship
It could have been awful.
The latest gimmick in mundane fiction, particularly adventure/suspense, is to have bestselling adult writers produce tie-in books aimed at teenagers. James Patterson does it, Dean Koontz does it, Sherrilyn Kenyon, F. Paul Wilson, and John Grisham do it—can Danielle Steele and Nora Roberts be far behind?
If an SF publisher wanted to play this game, they’d go for the biggest name they have. They’d tie the new teen series into that author’s most successful adult series. They’d take an independent, beautiful teen girl and bond her telepathically to a sympathetic-yet-deadly alien animal . . . heck, why not go all the way and make it an alien cat? And they’d pit this girl and her cat-companion against an evil corporation in the defense of their bucolic and ecologically-balanced home world. Then they’d commit to spending $100,000 in a marketing campaign aimed at every hard-hitter in the teen book industry.
Awful? It could have stunk on ice!
Fortunately, David Weber is a good storyteller, and his teen heroine Stephanie Harrington is every bit as fun as her remote descendant Honor. I don’t know if teenagers will respond to marketing and buy this book like they’re supposed to, but Weber’s many adult fans will certainly enjoy the story.
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Time Travel
Paul J. Nahin
Johns Hopkins University Press, 200 pages, $24.95 (trade paperback)
Kindle: $9.99 (ebook)
ISBN: 978-1-4214-0082-2
Genre: Popular Nonfiction
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Time Travel
Someone at the Johns Hopkins University Press likes science fiction.
First it was The Science of Doctor Who by Paul Parsons, now Paul J. Nahin’s Time Travel: A Writer’s Guide to the Real Science of Plausible Time Travel. This is a new expanded edition of Nahin’s 1998 book Time Machines, brought up to date with current speculation in physics and cosmology. After an introductory history of time travel in the pulps, Nahin examines ten approaches to time travel, from hyperspace and wormholes to quantum gravity and parallel universes. He ends up with a helpful chapter called “Reading the Physics Literature for Story Ideas.”
For a book dealing with some heavy-duty concepts, Nahin’s tone is light and playful, a pleasure to read. Whether you’re a writer who wants to find a new time travel gimmick, or a reader who wants to appreciate what authors are talking about, you’ll find this book both fun and educational.
Don Sakers is the author of Dance for the Ivory Madonna and A Voice in Every Wind. For more information, visit www.scatteredworlds.com. Genre and series information is based on listings at www.readersadvice.com.
"The Reference Library" copyright © 2011, Don Sakers
