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Great Ship #1
Dřeň
Galaktická loď větší než planetární světy, obydlená rozmanitou společností mimozemských ras, tajemné plavidlo staré miliony let, ovládané téměř nesmrtelnou lidskou posádkou, která ji objevila prázdnou na okraji galaxie. V samém středu se nachází celá planeta… Planeta, při jejímž průzkumu snad bude odhaleno tajemství původu Lodi. Ovšem tato naděje se střetne s krutou realitou, když se posádka lodi dostane na povrch a objeví svět připomínající peklo. Jejich přítomnost navíc pravděpodobně spustí rozsáhlé a nevysvětlitelné změny, jež mohou ohrozit samotnou existenci Lodi, včetně životů posádky a cestujících. Román Dřeň je samostatnou částí úspěšného cyklu, z něhož v českém překladu známe už několik kratších prací.
432 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
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January 28, 2019
Rating reboot
I’m upping my rating for this book with a star.
Why?
I find myself using this book as a benchmark more often than not, especially when reading novels about BDO’s. Marrow has stayed with me much longer than I originally anticipated, and it is quite literally (and literarily) haunting me. Oh, what secrets!
If you like big idea Science Fiction, you should consider giving this book a try. Marrow deals with an Ancient Jovian-sized Intergalactic Derelict Spaceship (now, this alone should be enough to pique your interest) that is intercepted by future humans and used to make a circumnavigation of the Milky Way. Over time they allow other alien races to join them on the structure, and it becomes a sort of habitation for billions and billions of beings (there are whole worlds and many, vastly differing, environments aboard). However: given the size of the ship, the deep interior, and core, has remained uncharted, until now.
A large portion of the plot details the exploratory efforts of a team of near-immortals and the mystery that they eventually find hidden at the ships core (the “marrow” of the title). Which, by the way, is a pretty thrilling discovery in its own right. It’s a difficult book to get your mind around, since the timeframe here is very, very far outside any normal frame of reference. For example, some plot events take place over thousands of years. It’s fascinating stuff, though, and any book with antagonists called The Bleak is liable to get my vote. Also, expect a lot of enigmatic tech and wonder; if this one doesn’t stretch your imagination a bit, I doubt anything will.
The reason for my original three-star rating, was the characterization. In hindsight, though, it’s not so much that the characters are poorly drawn, but they are extremely difficult to identify with, because of their nature. As you might imagine, given the context and size of the story, and all the different races involved, it’s a weird world envisioned by Reed here. The book is, inevitably, not without its faults; the author is, after all, playing in a fair-sized sandbox.
So, yes, this is one of those big concept, mind warping, sense of wonder, Science Fiction stories. Like I said, I’ve been using it as a benchmark, which indicates that, for me at least, it has managed to distinguish itself from a lot of the competition.
I’m upping my rating for this book with a star.
Why?
I find myself using this book as a benchmark more often than not, especially when reading novels about BDO’s. Marrow has stayed with me much longer than I originally anticipated, and it is quite literally (and literarily) haunting me. Oh, what secrets!
If you like big idea Science Fiction, you should consider giving this book a try. Marrow deals with an Ancient Jovian-sized Intergalactic Derelict Spaceship (now, this alone should be enough to pique your interest) that is intercepted by future humans and used to make a circumnavigation of the Milky Way. Over time they allow other alien races to join them on the structure, and it becomes a sort of habitation for billions and billions of beings (there are whole worlds and many, vastly differing, environments aboard). However: given the size of the ship, the deep interior, and core, has remained uncharted, until now.
A large portion of the plot details the exploratory efforts of a team of near-immortals and the mystery that they eventually find hidden at the ships core (the “marrow” of the title). Which, by the way, is a pretty thrilling discovery in its own right. It’s a difficult book to get your mind around, since the timeframe here is very, very far outside any normal frame of reference. For example, some plot events take place over thousands of years. It’s fascinating stuff, though, and any book with antagonists called The Bleak is liable to get my vote. Also, expect a lot of enigmatic tech and wonder; if this one doesn’t stretch your imagination a bit, I doubt anything will.
The reason for my original three-star rating, was the characterization. In hindsight, though, it’s not so much that the characters are poorly drawn, but they are extremely difficult to identify with, because of their nature. As you might imagine, given the context and size of the story, and all the different races involved, it’s a weird world envisioned by Reed here. The book is, inevitably, not without its faults; the author is, after all, playing in a fair-sized sandbox.
So, yes, this is one of those big concept, mind warping, sense of wonder, Science Fiction stories. Like I said, I’ve been using it as a benchmark, which indicates that, for me at least, it has managed to distinguish itself from a lot of the competition.
September 27, 2014
Marrow is the kind of huge in scope, imagination stirring, idea driven science fiction I love. This epic tale of an abandoned five billion year old ship of unknown origin and the strange society that evolves over hundreds of millennia once near immortal genetically modified human beings discover it calls to mind Asimov's Foundation series, Baxter's Xeelee Sequence and a touch of Forward's Dragon Egg.
Like those other works characterisation takes a back seat to ideas, characters whilst interesting are there primarily to drive plot and embody ideals, but when the size of the imagination that runs through these five hundred pages is so large and the concept so well formed that hardly matters and no amount of praise can do it justice.
From the steady paced scene setting, to the planet sized mass hidden within The Ship and the five thousand year quest to escape it undertaken by a few hundred trapped crew members, and the surprising eventual revelation of what the mass and The Ship actually are, Reed thinks BIG; amongst other things he describes hydrogen fuel tanks converted in to living spaces for an alien species, a new race of humans living on the outer hull of The Ship evolved in the harsh radiation of space, a complex and unchanging hierarchical structure and the inevitable flaws in such a system, the birth and death of a religious idea, an evolution of nanotechnology & human connectivity and many more wonder filled passages to flesh out his universe. It's an extraordinary read and a real pleasure journey of discovery and with several sequels written offers many more hours of satisfaction.
Like those other works characterisation takes a back seat to ideas, characters whilst interesting are there primarily to drive plot and embody ideals, but when the size of the imagination that runs through these five hundred pages is so large and the concept so well formed that hardly matters and no amount of praise can do it justice.
From the steady paced scene setting, to the planet sized mass hidden within The Ship and the five thousand year quest to escape it undertaken by a few hundred trapped crew members, and the surprising eventual revelation of what the mass and The Ship actually are, Reed thinks BIG; amongst other things he describes hydrogen fuel tanks converted in to living spaces for an alien species, a new race of humans living on the outer hull of The Ship evolved in the harsh radiation of space, a complex and unchanging hierarchical structure and the inevitable flaws in such a system, the birth and death of a religious idea, an evolution of nanotechnology & human connectivity and many more wonder filled passages to flesh out his universe. It's an extraordinary read and a real pleasure journey of discovery and with several sequels written offers many more hours of satisfaction.
September 29, 2015
I really wanted to like this book. It could be a great space-opera type story. However, I found this book quite irritating for several reasons:
1. Eternal, highly augmented humans behave and reason just like you and me. When people live for more than hundred thousand years, I expected bigger changes in culture, technology, relations.
2. Scales do not match. A spaceship as big as Jupiter controlled by several hundred people? Really?
3. Technology in this book is a mix of unexplained "magic" and mundane things we already have today. I find it unbelievable.
4. No logic. People frequently make wild "guesses", which others regard as valid scientific theories. This is not how science works.
4. Perhaps the biggest problem I have with this book, is the mythic creature that is supposedly is behind all this. This god-like creature makes this book more like fantasy, and not science fiction.
1. Eternal, highly augmented humans behave and reason just like you and me. When people live for more than hundred thousand years, I expected bigger changes in culture, technology, relations.
2. Scales do not match. A spaceship as big as Jupiter controlled by several hundred people? Really?
3. Technology in this book is a mix of unexplained "magic" and mundane things we already have today. I find it unbelievable.
4. No logic. People frequently make wild "guesses", which others regard as valid scientific theories. This is not how science works.
4. Perhaps the biggest problem I have with this book, is the mythic creature that is supposedly is behind all this. This god-like creature makes this book more like fantasy, and not science fiction.
April 5, 2014
Conceptually, this is an intriguing book. The notion of a mammoth spaceship older than Old, stuck on autopilot and navigating the universe, does dance the curiosity into a shivering ache of hope. When we discover that the ship contains vast and diverse environments able to sustain various species, our hope becomes an enflamed desire for all that is to come.
Marrow by Robert Reed tells the story of an ancient colossal vessel in possession of secret wonders. In the course of the narrative, the ship becomes a kind of party barge where countless aliens pay for passage. It's pure luck that humans are first to find the spaceship abandoned, and were able to claim salvage rights. The humans now must defend their prize, maintain the ship, and navigate the bureaucracy of such a sprawling command.
If nothing else, Robert Reed is ambitious and imaginative. He writes in a scale that shrinks the reader, forcing a reevaluation of proportional stability. And in this respect, I liked it. Having one's preconceived constants challenged and reforged is at the heart of SF. Oh that endless warmth of malleability, the endless soft grind of having the mind kneaded into new territories is delightful, but it's not enough in itself. Satisfaction requires a connection, which implies a partnering. In other words, the susurrus beauty of wind through cedars is only beautiful if the wind and tree come together. Or in this case, really cool concepts that promise aren't anything without interlocutors to navigate the concepts. And to my mind, this is where Robert Reed stumbles.
I failed to bond with any of the characters. I didn't care if any of them lived or died, though in this story, death has been all but eradicated. People live for millenniums, and they get up to some kinky stuff. There is violent interspecies sex, incest, and some mother/son relationships that'd make Sigmund Freud positively salivate. I mean, at one point a mother squats and pees in the dirt in front of her son in order to read his future from her pee dribbles (AWKWARD). But the mom does have a two-headed dragon, so maybe it's okay to pee away?
At the heart (almost said marrow) of this story, is the question of exploration. Do we look out, or do we look within? Inside of this huger than huge spaceship, is a planet. And inside the planet is... well if I tell you it's spoiling the magic of Marrow, and I don't want to do that. If you want that nugget, you'll have to dig it on up yourself.
In theory, the concept is great, but I need more. I long for characters to live and breathe on the page, feel fear, cry grief, and laugh their joy. It is the character that reacts to the situation, and it's this reaction that buoys the reader upon the tides of introspection.
Parts of this book are brilliant. Unfortunately those parts are too few and far between for my taste. I can't, in good conscience, recommend this unless you enjoy tedious science fiction that fizzles in the end like a damp party favour.
Marrow by Robert Reed tells the story of an ancient colossal vessel in possession of secret wonders. In the course of the narrative, the ship becomes a kind of party barge where countless aliens pay for passage. It's pure luck that humans are first to find the spaceship abandoned, and were able to claim salvage rights. The humans now must defend their prize, maintain the ship, and navigate the bureaucracy of such a sprawling command.
If nothing else, Robert Reed is ambitious and imaginative. He writes in a scale that shrinks the reader, forcing a reevaluation of proportional stability. And in this respect, I liked it. Having one's preconceived constants challenged and reforged is at the heart of SF. Oh that endless warmth of malleability, the endless soft grind of having the mind kneaded into new territories is delightful, but it's not enough in itself. Satisfaction requires a connection, which implies a partnering. In other words, the susurrus beauty of wind through cedars is only beautiful if the wind and tree come together. Or in this case, really cool concepts that promise aren't anything without interlocutors to navigate the concepts. And to my mind, this is where Robert Reed stumbles.
I failed to bond with any of the characters. I didn't care if any of them lived or died, though in this story, death has been all but eradicated. People live for millenniums, and they get up to some kinky stuff. There is violent interspecies sex, incest, and some mother/son relationships that'd make Sigmund Freud positively salivate. I mean, at one point a mother squats and pees in the dirt in front of her son in order to read his future from her pee dribbles (AWKWARD). But the mom does have a two-headed dragon, so maybe it's okay to pee away?
At the heart (almost said marrow) of this story, is the question of exploration. Do we look out, or do we look within? Inside of this huger than huge spaceship, is a planet. And inside the planet is... well if I tell you it's spoiling the magic of Marrow, and I don't want to do that. If you want that nugget, you'll have to dig it on up yourself.
In theory, the concept is great, but I need more. I long for characters to live and breathe on the page, feel fear, cry grief, and laugh their joy. It is the character that reacts to the situation, and it's this reaction that buoys the reader upon the tides of introspection.
Parts of this book are brilliant. Unfortunately those parts are too few and far between for my taste. I can't, in good conscience, recommend this unless you enjoy tedious science fiction that fizzles in the end like a damp party favour.
October 31, 2019
In the far future, humans discover a derelict starship the size of Jupiter, out on the galactic rim. They claim salvage rights, get some of the Great Ship's machinery running, and defend their claim against late-arriving aliens. The ship is very old, perhaps as old as the universe... and Big. Really BIG!
The new owners put the Great Ship into service as -- the galaxy's grandest cruise-liner! All life forms and sentients are welcome -- if they can afford the fare. By the time of our story, 50,000 years later, there are some 200 billion passengers and crew aboard, a fifth of the way through a leisurely circumnavigation of the Milky Way.
Then, a Mars-sized "planet" is discovered, somehow suspended at the very core of the Great Ship! A team of the Ship's best and brightest officers are sent to explore the mysterious "Marrow" -- and are stranded there by a wild energy-storm. Complications ensue and things, it turns out, are not as they seem. Imagine that! 😎
Humans of this age are heavily gene-engineered, long-lived, tough and very hard to kill. Indeed, the Master Captain, and many of her officers, have served onboard since the Ship's commissioning. So their perspective on long-term projects, and risk, is considerably different from yours and mine.
This may read like an E.E. "Doc" Smith adventure story, and it shares his, umm, non-rigorous treatment of basic science (but is much better-written). Marrow works best as mind-candy science-fantasy -- the grand sweep of events kept my suspension of disbelief intact until I started thinking things over for this review. I usually find dumb, sloppy science irritating, and Marrow suffers from this in retrospect -- but I still liked the book. I liked the bold, silly audacity of imagining a cruise-ship with 200 billion passengers, on a quarter-million year voyage! I liked the peeling away of layers of mystery from the Great Ship, only to find a new mystery, then another. I liked the ambiguous ending, in contrast to the tidy, often bathetic endings common to grand SF epics.
But you should be aware that Marrow is not to everyone's taste. The plot isn't coherent. The science is, well, not. And the book doesn't have a tidy wrap-up. He later turned the "Great Ship" idea into a long series (still ongoing, I think), of varying quality.
My 2001 review, which points out some specific (& pretty dumb) problems : https://www.sfsite.com/01b/mar96.htm
The new owners put the Great Ship into service as -- the galaxy's grandest cruise-liner! All life forms and sentients are welcome -- if they can afford the fare. By the time of our story, 50,000 years later, there are some 200 billion passengers and crew aboard, a fifth of the way through a leisurely circumnavigation of the Milky Way.
Then, a Mars-sized "planet" is discovered, somehow suspended at the very core of the Great Ship! A team of the Ship's best and brightest officers are sent to explore the mysterious "Marrow" -- and are stranded there by a wild energy-storm. Complications ensue and things, it turns out, are not as they seem. Imagine that! 😎
Humans of this age are heavily gene-engineered, long-lived, tough and very hard to kill. Indeed, the Master Captain, and many of her officers, have served onboard since the Ship's commissioning. So their perspective on long-term projects, and risk, is considerably different from yours and mine.
This may read like an E.E. "Doc" Smith adventure story, and it shares his, umm, non-rigorous treatment of basic science (but is much better-written). Marrow works best as mind-candy science-fantasy -- the grand sweep of events kept my suspension of disbelief intact until I started thinking things over for this review. I usually find dumb, sloppy science irritating, and Marrow suffers from this in retrospect -- but I still liked the book. I liked the bold, silly audacity of imagining a cruise-ship with 200 billion passengers, on a quarter-million year voyage! I liked the peeling away of layers of mystery from the Great Ship, only to find a new mystery, then another. I liked the ambiguous ending, in contrast to the tidy, often bathetic endings common to grand SF epics.
But you should be aware that Marrow is not to everyone's taste. The plot isn't coherent. The science is, well, not. And the book doesn't have a tidy wrap-up. He later turned the "Great Ship" idea into a long series (still ongoing, I think), of varying quality.
My 2001 review, which points out some specific (& pretty dumb) problems : https://www.sfsite.com/01b/mar96.htm
June 6, 2010
Reed thinks BIG in this book. Everything seems designed to overwhelm by sheer size, scope, spans of time, or level of ability, and it's difficult to not feel like a speck in comparison.
The Great Ship itself--a jupiterian planet carved and outfitted into a gigantic starship, found abandoned and wandering out of intergalactic space--stands with the Ringworld or the Rama spaceships in the field of Big Dumb Objects. The enormity of this concept drives me into intellectual and emotional vapor lock: the billions of passengers among thousands of species; the gigantic billions-year-old machinery and engines, all perfectly functional and yet devoid of a maker's mark; the intricacies of its habitats and features in the warrens sculpted into the planetary crust. This is a joy to read.
Even the characters are larger-than-life, these immortal, posthuman ship captains with bioceramic brains and a remarkable, engineered biology, as they adapt and rebuild technological civilization on a completely hostile hellworld, a five thousand year tale.
The Great Ship itself--a jupiterian planet carved and outfitted into a gigantic starship, found abandoned and wandering out of intergalactic space--stands with the Ringworld or the Rama spaceships in the field of Big Dumb Objects. The enormity of this concept drives me into intellectual and emotional vapor lock: the billions of passengers among thousands of species; the gigantic billions-year-old machinery and engines, all perfectly functional and yet devoid of a maker's mark; the intricacies of its habitats and features in the warrens sculpted into the planetary crust. This is a joy to read.
Even the characters are larger-than-life, these immortal, posthuman ship captains with bioceramic brains and a remarkable, engineered biology, as they adapt and rebuild technological civilization on a completely hostile hellworld, a five thousand year tale.
October 13, 2013
‘The Ship is home to a thousand alien races and a near-immortal crew who have no knowledge of its origins and or purpose. At its core lies a secret as ancient as The Universe.
It is about to be unleashed.’
Blurb from the 2001 Orbit Edition.
A ship constructed from the raw elements of a Jupiter-sized planet, five billion years old, enters our Galaxy some time in the far future. Humanity lays claim to it and so founds a mobile civilisation augmented by ‘passenger’ races who travel about the galaxy.
Mutated humans, the ‘Remoras’, like their namesake fish who live ion a symbiotic relationship with sharks, live on the exterior of the ship, effecting repairs to the hull and maintaining defences against asteroids and other dangers.
The Immortal Captain discovers a secret at the core of the ship, an iron planet the size of Mars which is racked with volcanic activity but sustains a diverse eco-system which has adapted to such Hellish conditions.
An exploratory group of sub-captains and scientists finds themselves stranded on the planet, which has been christened ‘Marrow’.
Robert Reed is an author new to me, although I’ll certainly be looking for more from him. Of course, I am presuming that Reed is a man, which may not be the case, as James Tiptree Jr (aka Alice Sheldon) could testify were she here to tell us, God Rest Her Soul.
It reads very much like a female writer. I’m reminded of Octavia Butler and Marge Piercy in terms of style and characterisation. Yes, it’s that good!
Reed paints vivid portraits of a cast of characters all of whom are virtually immortal, and he seems to have gone to the trouble of thinking seriously about how someone whose genes automatically kick in to repair all but the most fatal of injuries would behave and think.
Having endowed his humans with indefinite life-spans Reed is free to extend the timescale of his novel and so, perhaps as an ancient human would review her memories, occasionally leaps decades or centuries forward in time to catch up with the characters and resume the action.
The science is perfectly balanced against the human stories and never overwhelms one with techno hyperbole, although from what I can determine, the science is well-researched and clearly presented.
There is a poetry in this novel which renders it readable and adds a mythic quality which accentuates the backdrop of immense size, age, distance and timescale.
Interestingly, the three main characters are female, complex, ambitious and powerful. Their male counterparts, although in some cases just as powerful, tend to be psychotic, devious or simplistic, and not really as interesting.
There’s some neat plot twists and turns, some clever ‘wee thinky bits’ and teasingly brief glimpses of the ship’s alien and machine life-forms.
At heart though, it’s a book about being human and what the concept of immortality might actually mean in real terms.
If we incorporate into ourselves genes which will almost instantly heal even the most terrible of injuries, up to and including decapitation, how would that affect our sense of personal danger? What plans can we lay when we can expect a lifespans of upwards of a hundred thousand years?
This is what Science Fiction should be.
It is about to be unleashed.’
Blurb from the 2001 Orbit Edition.
A ship constructed from the raw elements of a Jupiter-sized planet, five billion years old, enters our Galaxy some time in the far future. Humanity lays claim to it and so founds a mobile civilisation augmented by ‘passenger’ races who travel about the galaxy.
Mutated humans, the ‘Remoras’, like their namesake fish who live ion a symbiotic relationship with sharks, live on the exterior of the ship, effecting repairs to the hull and maintaining defences against asteroids and other dangers.
The Immortal Captain discovers a secret at the core of the ship, an iron planet the size of Mars which is racked with volcanic activity but sustains a diverse eco-system which has adapted to such Hellish conditions.
An exploratory group of sub-captains and scientists finds themselves stranded on the planet, which has been christened ‘Marrow’.
Robert Reed is an author new to me, although I’ll certainly be looking for more from him. Of course, I am presuming that Reed is a man, which may not be the case, as James Tiptree Jr (aka Alice Sheldon) could testify were she here to tell us, God Rest Her Soul.
It reads very much like a female writer. I’m reminded of Octavia Butler and Marge Piercy in terms of style and characterisation. Yes, it’s that good!
Reed paints vivid portraits of a cast of characters all of whom are virtually immortal, and he seems to have gone to the trouble of thinking seriously about how someone whose genes automatically kick in to repair all but the most fatal of injuries would behave and think.
Having endowed his humans with indefinite life-spans Reed is free to extend the timescale of his novel and so, perhaps as an ancient human would review her memories, occasionally leaps decades or centuries forward in time to catch up with the characters and resume the action.
The science is perfectly balanced against the human stories and never overwhelms one with techno hyperbole, although from what I can determine, the science is well-researched and clearly presented.
There is a poetry in this novel which renders it readable and adds a mythic quality which accentuates the backdrop of immense size, age, distance and timescale.
Interestingly, the three main characters are female, complex, ambitious and powerful. Their male counterparts, although in some cases just as powerful, tend to be psychotic, devious or simplistic, and not really as interesting.
There’s some neat plot twists and turns, some clever ‘wee thinky bits’ and teasingly brief glimpses of the ship’s alien and machine life-forms.
At heart though, it’s a book about being human and what the concept of immortality might actually mean in real terms.
If we incorporate into ourselves genes which will almost instantly heal even the most terrible of injuries, up to and including decapitation, how would that affect our sense of personal danger? What plans can we lay when we can expect a lifespans of upwards of a hundred thousand years?
This is what Science Fiction should be.
May 12, 2020
9+ This was one of the most enjoyable SF-novels I have read in a while. I had read some short stories by Reed situatied in his 'Great Ship' universe and found those well constructed, easy to read, with a bit of bodyhorror thrown in and characters driven to extremes, that I like. So when I found this novel I had to read it. I was not disappointed. This was 'big idea'-SF to the max. The novel belongs to the 'BDO' (Big Dumb Object)-subgenre of SF, coupled with explortions of deep space and deep time, covering thousands of years. The characters that can take a lot of abuse and have eternal life as long as they are not vaporised completely, are defined by one or two characteristics, but most are sympathetic, their personalities defined most by their stance in relationship to the great ship they find themselves on. They do not really develop that much as characters even over thousands of years (which had an in universe explanation), but they serve their purpose well - which is to serve as tour guides in this absolutely fantastical setting: a Jupiter-sized starship coming from the blackness of space, now taken over by the human race and taken of course to tour the galaxy, taking on board diverse alien races as passengers. And this while the inner parts of the ship aren't even explored yet. The story starts when a group of captains is called to the inner part of the ship, where in an enormous chamber a whole planet is enclosed with its own atmosphere and life. It's one of the most interesting (and extreme) alien ecologies in SF and the sojourn of the captains on this planet and their Robinson Crusoesque building of a new civilisation with the sole purpose to return to the ship around them is the most thrilling part of the book. There's betrayal, war and people are cut up, burt to a crisp and regenerated. At the end it's not the characters that I will remember and read the next book in the series for. But the setting, the big ship, and its mysteries. That will stay with me. It's not as good as Rendezvous with Rama (the absolute classic in this type of BDO-science fiction) but it's certainly more memorable than the Rama-novels Clarke wrote with Gentry Lee. A good read from an author definitely knowing his trade. A treat for the fans of big idea-SF, not necessarily recommended for those wanting deep character exploration.
August 4, 2021
Science Fiction writers love big stuff.
Ships measured in kilometers? Lame. Neal Asher's Polity universe measures ships by comparing them to moons.
Humans living for mere decades? Please. The average pleb in Iain Banks' Culture novels lives 3-400 years.
Stories spanning a century or so? Spare me your generation-spanning litfic snorefests. A millennia is the blink of a cryo pod in SF.
Marrow takes all these very big things and supersizes them into a gigantic Big-Mac combo of SF - a ship so big it has a Mars-size planet at its core, humans that effectively live forever and a story that covers something like ten thousand years (I think - it was a little confusing at the start). Its a grande serving of big stuff, and while I enjoyed it I suffered the occasional bout of reader's indigestion trying to get it all down.
The story concerns an alien ship, a vast empty leviathan forged from the materials of a gas giant, that has been traveling the void between galaxies for billions (billennia?) of years. The ship is discovered by humanity, and having beaten the many other sentient races of our galaxy to this epic prize we crew it, populate it, figure out how to work it and eventually open it to visitors and residents from any and all species.
Soon the ship is home to billions of beings from hundred of species, becoming the most cosmopolitan place in the known universe. The great vessel drifts across the galaxy, collecting tourists, gaining passengers and occasionally losing whole species who decide to decamp elsewhere.
These myriad beings are led by an elite group known as the Captains, serving under one supreme leader - the woman who led the initial expedition to the vessel, who has ruled the ship for millennia since. Life aboard is generally calm and stable, the last serious mutiny having occurred millennia prior.
But of course, the great ship still has secrets, and a discovery of what lies in the core of the vessel will see a group of the best and brightest captains sent on a new expedition to discover why a planet the size of Mars sits in a vast vault beneath them. (The fact that an object as big as a planet could be missed gives you an idea of the scope of the ship)
The discovery of this secret sparks an exploratory mission that will plunge the great ship into uncertainty and chaos. I won't say more as it would spoil the surprise, but suffice to say some big stuff goes down, over a timeframe of about five thousand (!!) years.
And it's a pretty cool ride, full of interesting places, cool cultural stuff and insights into the functioning of the biggest, most mysterious artificial artifact in the universe.
While it's entertaining though, I felt myself feeling pretty detached from the protagonists by the end of the book, perhaps due to the overall big-ness of everything in the story.
The timeframe is vast, and by necessity it is hopped through in vignettes, showing change, progress, and the impact of earlier decisions. This worked in the sense of getting the plot across, but it distanced me from the story. I didn't feel much connection with the characters and came to sensethat the real central character of the book is the Great Ship itself. I never really cared much about any of the people in Marrow, or got excited about them while they traveled around areas of the ship that are much more interesting than they are.
Marrow reminded me a bit of A.A Attanasio's Last Legends of Earth, a story that, while interesting, felt like reading a retelling of a long and involved myth rather than an engaging novel. Like Attanasio's book there's also a touch of mysticism that creeps into Marrow, which isn't really to my taste.
It's still worth a look - the Great Ship is pretty cool - but in the end Marrow left me a little cold.
Three similies for 'big' out of five.
Ships measured in kilometers? Lame. Neal Asher's Polity universe measures ships by comparing them to moons.
Humans living for mere decades? Please. The average pleb in Iain Banks' Culture novels lives 3-400 years.
Stories spanning a century or so? Spare me your generation-spanning litfic snorefests. A millennia is the blink of a cryo pod in SF.
Marrow takes all these very big things and supersizes them into a gigantic Big-Mac combo of SF - a ship so big it has a Mars-size planet at its core, humans that effectively live forever and a story that covers something like ten thousand years (I think - it was a little confusing at the start). Its a grande serving of big stuff, and while I enjoyed it I suffered the occasional bout of reader's indigestion trying to get it all down.
The story concerns an alien ship, a vast empty leviathan forged from the materials of a gas giant, that has been traveling the void between galaxies for billions (billennia?) of years. The ship is discovered by humanity, and having beaten the many other sentient races of our galaxy to this epic prize we crew it, populate it, figure out how to work it and eventually open it to visitors and residents from any and all species.
Soon the ship is home to billions of beings from hundred of species, becoming the most cosmopolitan place in the known universe. The great vessel drifts across the galaxy, collecting tourists, gaining passengers and occasionally losing whole species who decide to decamp elsewhere.
These myriad beings are led by an elite group known as the Captains, serving under one supreme leader - the woman who led the initial expedition to the vessel, who has ruled the ship for millennia since. Life aboard is generally calm and stable, the last serious mutiny having occurred millennia prior.
But of course, the great ship still has secrets, and a discovery of what lies in the core of the vessel will see a group of the best and brightest captains sent on a new expedition to discover why a planet the size of Mars sits in a vast vault beneath them. (The fact that an object as big as a planet could be missed gives you an idea of the scope of the ship)
The discovery of this secret sparks an exploratory mission that will plunge the great ship into uncertainty and chaos. I won't say more as it would spoil the surprise, but suffice to say some big stuff goes down, over a timeframe of about five thousand (!!) years.
And it's a pretty cool ride, full of interesting places, cool cultural stuff and insights into the functioning of the biggest, most mysterious artificial artifact in the universe.
While it's entertaining though, I felt myself feeling pretty detached from the protagonists by the end of the book, perhaps due to the overall big-ness of everything in the story.
The timeframe is vast, and by necessity it is hopped through in vignettes, showing change, progress, and the impact of earlier decisions. This worked in the sense of getting the plot across, but it distanced me from the story. I didn't feel much connection with the characters and came to sensethat the real central character of the book is the Great Ship itself. I never really cared much about any of the people in Marrow, or got excited about them while they traveled around areas of the ship that are much more interesting than they are.
Marrow reminded me a bit of A.A Attanasio's Last Legends of Earth, a story that, while interesting, felt like reading a retelling of a long and involved myth rather than an engaging novel. Like Attanasio's book there's also a touch of mysticism that creeps into Marrow, which isn't really to my taste.
It's still worth a look - the Great Ship is pretty cool - but in the end Marrow left me a little cold.
Three similies for 'big' out of five.
June 27, 2009
The man is like a Larry Niven for this decade , perhaps the next as well. He blends concepts with ideas and a depth of character that I have not read in a very long time. His eye for detail and people is what makes this and all his stories so interesting and intriguing to read. I gave it a second reading early February this year (2009) and I still go wow when I finally finish the last page. I predict that he will become the next Gene Wolfe of science fiction.
June 14, 2025
One of my first favorite SF authors was Alastair Reynolds, who I first encountered through his novel *House of Suns*. It's a galaxy-spanning adventure which spans something like six million years from beginning to end, and the way its world is written made me fall in love with it. Since then, I've had a soft spot for books that take place over long time periods. That's why I started seeking out Robert Reed a couple years ago and picked up *Down the Bright Way* last year. It ended up being the third best novel I read in 2024 - it's a really good adventure that avoided all the cheap pitfalls I expect such wide-scoped narratives to fall into. Hence, I was pretty excited for Reed's most popular work *Marrow*. Unfortunately, I found this book steps into most of the traps I was pleased with *Down the Bright Way* escaping. It doesn't capture the same ethos or the same magic, and I definitely see myself seeking out more of his 90s work in lieu of more Great Ship material. I'm happy to explain why, but first, I want to write down what *Marrow*'s all about...
*Marrow* starts with a Jovian-sized alien spaceship entering the solar system and being colonized by humans led by a woman called the Master Captain. She has a little talk with a girl riding a whale in one of the ship's oceans, who says she feels safe in the Great Ship, and the Master realizes that they can sell passage (which promises safety) aboard the Ship to the galaxy's many citizens and just, well, float on down through the galaxy while everyone lives forever. We then jump forward by a million years to where that little girl is now one of the Master's many Captains, kind of like a souped-up police force. She's poised to advance up the ranks when she receives a message to go underground and meet in a fuel tank which a mysterious species used to inhabit. Upon arrival she meets hundreds of other Captains and even sub-Master Miocene, who are all then briefed by the Master herself on a world-changing discovery: a planet has been discovered at the core of the Great Ship. These Captains are sent down to investigate. But once they make it to Marrow to try and discover the ship's purpose, a kind of EMP wave from the ship tears through everything and destroys their settlement. They then have something like 50000 years before the waves go away or something (I don't remember the stupid explanation about buttresses and fields and whatnot), so the Masters start reproducing and creating a new civilization. ...
After this twist we get a glimpse of ...
I could've tried writing more detail in there because this book is over five hundred pages long and I could've dug deeper with my synopsis, but two things stopped me: 1) you don't have all the time in the world to read this and I don't have all the time to write it, and 2) the book is a little too messy to make going through the book and sorting things into an accurate chronology worthwhile. Plot threads are dropped, the ending is a bit unclear, and the roads to get there just weren't all that interesting or even memorable. It's only been a few weeks since I finished this book, but the ending is already a receding memory, and that's definitely not how things should go. I do remember feeling like Reed tried to do a bit too much here; he tries to track the evolution of without any meaningful level of detail to engage with, and introduce characters for them just to be waysided way too quickly. He introduces a lot of characters that don't feel important or like they get the resolutions they deserve. But despite feeling like Reed tried writing at too large of a scale for himself to keep track, the world felt, well, kind of small; I rarely think that a book is in fault for trying to do too much, but I do often think that authors are at fault for trying to bite off more than they can chew; Reed is at fault for that here.
The weird feeling throughout the plot isn't helped by the fact that the characters aren't all that interesting. They're distinct enough; Washen, Miocene, Pamir, Locke, Till, etc. all have distinct roles that doesn't necessarily feel like stereotypical archetypes (so, points to Reed for that), but they also don't feel that interesting. They're almost too reliant on their relationships to other characters to be interesting beyond that. Miocene is Till's mother. But Miocene doesn't seem like wonderfully developed character outside of those conventional feelings of motherhood, and there's the thought that after a million years, these characters all seem kind of unchanged. There are references to how some memories are forgotten and whatnot, but it all kind of rolled off my mind because Reed wrote a more engaging exploration of the same concepts in *Down the Bright Way*, which also deals with very old characters. There were quite a few things in *Down the Bright Way* that were missing from *Marrow*; for example, the motivational drive of *Marrow* and how the Master Captain just decides "we're going to rent out rooms on the Great Ship to random rich humans and aliens throughout the galaxy" without any mention of government or militaries wanting in on it seem naïve and even petty when compared to the interdimensional travelers in *DTBW* and their drive to stop an interdimensional threat to interdimensional existence. I didn't want to spend this whole review comparing these books because they're rather different from each other, but the characters in one and how they evolved over long periods of time and how that came out in the plot is much more effective than in *Marrow*, where the most noticeable growth is(...
This book also feels kind of small for what it is. It takes place over a million years, but most of the exciting change happens because of six of seven people and the way the story is told feels rather closed off. Now, earlier I argued that Reed bit off more than he could chew, which doesn't make since because *DTBW* successfully tackled really big things with only a small cast of characters, and you didn't hear me complaining about it then, but I think that the issues I have go beyond characters; the scale and the technology level of the entire backdrop just don't line up. So the humans inherit this ship which is probably billions of years old with that level of technology, and then they travel around the galaxy and presumably pick up more technology, and then have a million years to advance science within the Great Ship if they so choose, and... they don't seem to do anything with that. They're immortal, which should require some advanced technology, but that's thanks to leaps and bounds made before the book ever starts. When it takes years to make it through some rock (I don't care if it was fifty feet or 50000 kilometers thick at this point), I stop buying into the power structuring of your world. It just didn't make sense. There's awesome potential for worldbuilding here, but Reed largely squanders it. Sometimes, that happens... regrettably so. Now, the world was kind of interesting to me, and I didn't not enjoy reading this book because it's a fun enough story, but I came into it looking for a dazzling experience and instead got something that was okay. I think that if I had come into this wanting something fun with aliens that you don't have to think too much about, I wouldn't have minded it. But at this scale, and with the pedigree of some past books in your catalogue, you shouldn't be putting out just "okay" work, and while I was going to give this a 6/10 (three stars), I'm really debating a 5.5. But I think that it'd be due to expecting another *Down the Bright Way* and not wholly this book's fault; for that reason, I think I'll stick with the plan.
*Marrow* scrapes by an okay 6/10; I just wish I had more distinct things to say about it. It will please a certain reader, I just wish it could've pleased me. I'll be looking into some of Reed's earlier work next, I think (like *Black Milk* of *The Hormone Jungle*), but I'll try and return to the Great Ship when I find the books in the wild and feel I'm ready. Thanks for reading this review the whole way through, and I hope that you too visit the Great Ship when you're ready. I think there's room for different people to discover different things, and that's what I'm hoping for you...
*Marrow* starts with a Jovian-sized alien spaceship entering the solar system and being colonized by humans led by a woman called the Master Captain. She has a little talk with a girl riding a whale in one of the ship's oceans, who says she feels safe in the Great Ship, and the Master realizes that they can sell passage (which promises safety) aboard the Ship to the galaxy's many citizens and just, well, float on down through the galaxy while everyone lives forever. We then jump forward by a million years to where that little girl is now one of the Master's many Captains, kind of like a souped-up police force. She's poised to advance up the ranks when she receives a message to go underground and meet in a fuel tank which a mysterious species used to inhabit. Upon arrival she meets hundreds of other Captains and even sub-Master Miocene, who are all then briefed by the Master herself on a world-changing discovery: a planet has been discovered at the core of the Great Ship. These Captains are sent down to investigate. But once they make it to Marrow to try and discover the ship's purpose, a kind of EMP wave from the ship tears through everything and destroys their settlement. They then have something like 50000 years before the waves go away or something (I don't remember the stupid explanation about buttresses and fields and whatnot), so the Masters start reproducing and creating a new civilization. ...
After this twist we get a glimpse of ...
I could've tried writing more detail in there because this book is over five hundred pages long and I could've dug deeper with my synopsis, but two things stopped me: 1) you don't have all the time in the world to read this and I don't have all the time to write it, and 2) the book is a little too messy to make going through the book and sorting things into an accurate chronology worthwhile. Plot threads are dropped, the ending is a bit unclear, and the roads to get there just weren't all that interesting or even memorable. It's only been a few weeks since I finished this book, but the ending is already a receding memory, and that's definitely not how things should go. I do remember feeling like Reed tried to do a bit too much here; he tries to track the evolution of without any meaningful level of detail to engage with, and introduce characters for them just to be waysided way too quickly. He introduces a lot of characters that don't feel important or like they get the resolutions they deserve. But despite feeling like Reed tried writing at too large of a scale for himself to keep track, the world felt, well, kind of small; I rarely think that a book is in fault for trying to do too much, but I do often think that authors are at fault for trying to bite off more than they can chew; Reed is at fault for that here.
The weird feeling throughout the plot isn't helped by the fact that the characters aren't all that interesting. They're distinct enough; Washen, Miocene, Pamir, Locke, Till, etc. all have distinct roles that doesn't necessarily feel like stereotypical archetypes (so, points to Reed for that), but they also don't feel that interesting. They're almost too reliant on their relationships to other characters to be interesting beyond that. Miocene is Till's mother. But Miocene doesn't seem like wonderfully developed character outside of those conventional feelings of motherhood, and there's the thought that after a million years, these characters all seem kind of unchanged. There are references to how some memories are forgotten and whatnot, but it all kind of rolled off my mind because Reed wrote a more engaging exploration of the same concepts in *Down the Bright Way*, which also deals with very old characters. There were quite a few things in *Down the Bright Way* that were missing from *Marrow*; for example, the motivational drive of *Marrow* and how the Master Captain just decides "we're going to rent out rooms on the Great Ship to random rich humans and aliens throughout the galaxy" without any mention of government or militaries wanting in on it seem naïve and even petty when compared to the interdimensional travelers in *DTBW* and their drive to stop an interdimensional threat to interdimensional existence. I didn't want to spend this whole review comparing these books because they're rather different from each other, but the characters in one and how they evolved over long periods of time and how that came out in the plot is much more effective than in *Marrow*, where the most noticeable growth is(...
This book also feels kind of small for what it is. It takes place over a million years, but most of the exciting change happens because of six of seven people and the way the story is told feels rather closed off. Now, earlier I argued that Reed bit off more than he could chew, which doesn't make since because *DTBW* successfully tackled really big things with only a small cast of characters, and you didn't hear me complaining about it then, but I think that the issues I have go beyond characters; the scale and the technology level of the entire backdrop just don't line up. So the humans inherit this ship which is probably billions of years old with that level of technology, and then they travel around the galaxy and presumably pick up more technology, and then have a million years to advance science within the Great Ship if they so choose, and... they don't seem to do anything with that. They're immortal, which should require some advanced technology, but that's thanks to leaps and bounds made before the book ever starts. When it takes years to make it through some rock (I don't care if it was fifty feet or 50000 kilometers thick at this point), I stop buying into the power structuring of your world. It just didn't make sense. There's awesome potential for worldbuilding here, but Reed largely squanders it. Sometimes, that happens... regrettably so. Now, the world was kind of interesting to me, and I didn't not enjoy reading this book because it's a fun enough story, but I came into it looking for a dazzling experience and instead got something that was okay. I think that if I had come into this wanting something fun with aliens that you don't have to think too much about, I wouldn't have minded it. But at this scale, and with the pedigree of some past books in your catalogue, you shouldn't be putting out just "okay" work, and while I was going to give this a 6/10 (three stars), I'm really debating a 5.5. But I think that it'd be due to expecting another *Down the Bright Way* and not wholly this book's fault; for that reason, I think I'll stick with the plan.
*Marrow* scrapes by an okay 6/10; I just wish I had more distinct things to say about it. It will please a certain reader, I just wish it could've pleased me. I'll be looking into some of Reed's earlier work next, I think (like *Black Milk* of *The Hormone Jungle*), but I'll try and return to the Great Ship when I find the books in the wild and feel I'm ready. Thanks for reading this review the whole way through, and I hope that you too visit the Great Ship when you're ready. I think there's room for different people to discover different things, and that's what I'm hoping for you...
September 26, 2014
I did not like this book and it was torture to finish reading it. And the really bad thing is I started reading this book because it is a prequel to Reed's other book, Well of Stars". I attribute my dislike to the author's writing style. The book seems to me to fit better into the fantasy category instead of science fiction. I was one third through the book before it was revealed that the supposed humans were immortal and live thousands of years. But there is no explanation of how new births attain this same status. And later in the book we find out that if one is shot, cut, chopped up and killed, the person can be resurrected by some unnamed process. With just a skull people are brought back.
One of the several comments at the end of the book from other science fiction writers compared this book to the Rama books. This book does not even give a good description of the massive space ship that passengers and crew are in. In my opinion this book is far far from the quality of the Rama books. The book seems to describe over and over organized chaos. It leaves out details and does not describe the "science" behind happenings. The book infers certain things, happenings, etc, but does not give you a concrete description or answer on many points.
In the center of the ship is a place called Marrow which is a planet that we are told at first is very active volcanic. About 200 "captains" are stranded there and there is little or no life on the planet other than large bugs. Yet we are told in the story that the population of the planet over thousands of years increased to millions by eating bugs and synthesizing other foods, even though they had no means of doing that since they arrived in space ships and the ships were all but destroyed.
So in sum, my opinion is the story is just not believable as science fiction.
One of the several comments at the end of the book from other science fiction writers compared this book to the Rama books. This book does not even give a good description of the massive space ship that passengers and crew are in. In my opinion this book is far far from the quality of the Rama books. The book seems to describe over and over organized chaos. It leaves out details and does not describe the "science" behind happenings. The book infers certain things, happenings, etc, but does not give you a concrete description or answer on many points.
In the center of the ship is a place called Marrow which is a planet that we are told at first is very active volcanic. About 200 "captains" are stranded there and there is little or no life on the planet other than large bugs. Yet we are told in the story that the population of the planet over thousands of years increased to millions by eating bugs and synthesizing other foods, even though they had no means of doing that since they arrived in space ships and the ships were all but destroyed.
So in sum, my opinion is the story is just not believable as science fiction.
April 6, 2020
Everything in this BigDumbObject novel is HUGE: the Jupiter-sized starship with a Mars sized planet "Marrow" as the core; the multi-billion years of age of the Great Ship; the hundred thousand years old captains conquering and steering the Great Ship; the thousands of years covered by the story itself. So, if you're up for an Aristotelian drama (one place, one time, one action), than this is the complete opposite. The narration unfolds several dramas: One is the discovery of the core planet itself. The team of captains go down and find themselves cropped from the main body of the Great Ship. Over the course of 4,000 years, they have to rebuild a civilization that is able to bridge the gap from the core to the main body. The following story is a mutiny story and the search for missing captains in the endless voids of the interior of the Great Ship over hundreds of years. The last part is the war between the mutinous civilization and the rightful captains and the disclosure of the mysteries behind all that.
As I said: everything is huge - if the core is a planet, the second sheath is a Jupiter sized planet, then what might be the third shell around all that? Our universe?
The story doesn't start as a page turner but fascinates the reader with its sense of wonder. Later, it develops speed and at the end I just couldn't put it down.
I've read a couple of Robert Reed's stories located on the Great Ship series, e.g. his 2012 novella Eater of Bone or his 2014 novella Katabasis. This novel has been waiting for years on my TBR shelves. Now, I'm quite happy to have read the start of all those wonderful stories and I'm up to more.
As I said: everything is huge - if the core is a planet, the second sheath is a Jupiter sized planet, then what might be the third shell around all that? Our universe?
The story doesn't start as a page turner but fascinates the reader with its sense of wonder. Later, it develops speed and at the end I just couldn't put it down.
I've read a couple of Robert Reed's stories located on the Great Ship series, e.g. his 2012 novella Eater of Bone or his 2014 novella Katabasis. This novel has been waiting for years on my TBR shelves. Now, I'm quite happy to have read the start of all those wonderful stories and I'm up to more.
June 25, 2011
Marrow (2000) by Robert Reed.
Plenty of potential, very little delivery.
I thought I'd try a selection from my local public library's "Books You May Have Missed" section, so I picked up Robert Reed's _Marrow_. The introduction struck me as "old school" science fiction, and sucked me right into the book. The story was captivating at first, but the characters' immortality doesn't seem to benefit the story in any way except to allow them to survive over geological periods of time. While that might seem to be an advantage to science fiction on a "grand scale," it saps the need for urgency on behalf of the characters.
_Marrow_ contains occasional profanity related to sexual activity. (Is it just me, or doesn't it seem like the language would change substantially over thousands of years, and that the words used as profanity several millennia from now [or by people who haven't had contact with Earth] WOULDN'T BE 20TH CENTURY SWEAR WORDS?!? --Just wondering.)
Not really worth the time and energy invested, so I'll probably add this author to my "Don't Bother Reading" list.
(18 Nov 2005)
Plenty of potential, very little delivery.
I thought I'd try a selection from my local public library's "Books You May Have Missed" section, so I picked up Robert Reed's _Marrow_. The introduction struck me as "old school" science fiction, and sucked me right into the book. The story was captivating at first, but the characters' immortality doesn't seem to benefit the story in any way except to allow them to survive over geological periods of time. While that might seem to be an advantage to science fiction on a "grand scale," it saps the need for urgency on behalf of the characters.
_Marrow_ contains occasional profanity related to sexual activity. (Is it just me, or doesn't it seem like the language would change substantially over thousands of years, and that the words used as profanity several millennia from now [or by people who haven't had contact with Earth] WOULDN'T BE 20TH CENTURY SWEAR WORDS?!? --Just wondering.)
Not really worth the time and energy invested, so I'll probably add this author to my "Don't Bother Reading" list.
(18 Nov 2005)
November 14, 2015
El punto de partida de ‘Médula’ es impactante, el de una gran astronave tan gigantesca que puede albergar planetas en su interior. Nadie sabe de donde proviene ni cuales han sido sus constructores. La Gran Nave fue construida a partir de un planeta aún más grande que Júpiter, pero no se sabe exactamente su edad, aunque se estima que pueda tener más de 6000 millones de años. Por su cercanía a la Vía Láctea, los primeros en hacerse con la Gran Nave son los humanos, que ejercerán el control desde entonces. Habitada por miles de millones de seres de múltiples especies alienígenas, este artefacto se dedica a circunnavegar la galaxia.
En cuanto a los humanos que constituyen el poder en la Gran Nave, que se hacen llamar capitanes, existiendo diversas jerarquías, pueden vivir eternamente y sus cuerpos pueden regenerarse cualesquiera sean sus heridas, gracias a la tecnología genética. Son prácticamente inmortales.
Todo parece transcurrir como siempre en la Gran Nave, entre albergar nuevas razas alienígenas y explorar la galaxia, sin preocuparse en exceso de qué es, quién la construyó y cuál es el objeto de esta colosal nave. Hasta que tras una exploración se descubre que en el centro de la nave puede haber un extraño planeta.
Con estos argumentos tan sugerentes, mis expectativas eran enormes. Y se han quedado en eso, en meras expectativas. Una idea colosal (pero tampoco tan original, ahí está ‘Cita con Rama’, de Arthur C. Clarke, entre otras), bastante desaprovechada. No he hallado ese sentido de la maravilla que tan patente debería estar en la space opera de este estilo, salvo algunos fragmentos. Los personajes son demasiado planos, no evolucionan, cuando se supone que personas que pueden vivir miles de años deberían tener una existencia lo suficientemente enriquecedora como para destacar. Y el argumento también adolece de la suficiente cohesión, con una parte central demasiado larga y aburrida. En general, la historia se centra demasiado en las luchas por el poder dentro de la nave. Resumiendo, esperaba mucho más.
En cuanto a los humanos que constituyen el poder en la Gran Nave, que se hacen llamar capitanes, existiendo diversas jerarquías, pueden vivir eternamente y sus cuerpos pueden regenerarse cualesquiera sean sus heridas, gracias a la tecnología genética. Son prácticamente inmortales.
Todo parece transcurrir como siempre en la Gran Nave, entre albergar nuevas razas alienígenas y explorar la galaxia, sin preocuparse en exceso de qué es, quién la construyó y cuál es el objeto de esta colosal nave. Hasta que tras una exploración se descubre que en el centro de la nave puede haber un extraño planeta.
Con estos argumentos tan sugerentes, mis expectativas eran enormes. Y se han quedado en eso, en meras expectativas. Una idea colosal (pero tampoco tan original, ahí está ‘Cita con Rama’, de Arthur C. Clarke, entre otras), bastante desaprovechada. No he hallado ese sentido de la maravilla que tan patente debería estar en la space opera de este estilo, salvo algunos fragmentos. Los personajes son demasiado planos, no evolucionan, cuando se supone que personas que pueden vivir miles de años deberían tener una existencia lo suficientemente enriquecedora como para destacar. Y el argumento también adolece de la suficiente cohesión, con una parte central demasiado larga y aburrida. En general, la historia se centra demasiado en las luchas por el poder dentro de la nave. Resumiendo, esperaba mucho más.
August 17, 2014
La principale qualité du "grand vaisseau", c'est qu'il se lit vite. On sait par conséquent qu'on sera vite sorti de ces 634 pages maladroites et parfois un peu abracadabrante. a première vue on dirait du sous Iain Banks pour le Pitch mais, loin s'en faut, sans le talent de l'auteur écossais.
Ce roman laisse même parfois des questions qui peuvent sembler superflues mais, il est plein de détails bizarres qui n'apportent rien à l'histoire et qui visuellement le font ressembler à un mauvais manga. Pourquoi ces uniformes miroitants par exemple ? ces personnages surdimensionnés qu'on imagine sortir de "Ken le Survivant" ? et ce temps absurde : pourquoi l'histoire se déroule-t-elle sur des millénaires, ça n'apporte rien, même si les personnages sont supposés être immortels, voir un peu trop. Même si l'intrigue sur Marrow s'était déroulé sur dix ans au lieu de cinq millénaires (cinq millénaires !!!! imaginez cinq millénaires !!)l'effet aurait été le même.
Sinon, quand l'auteur essaie de faire du sentiment, là on atteint un degré assez difficilement supportable de maladresse. il ne faut surtout plus essayer.
alors je ne sais as comment un tel auteur a pu remporter des prix Hugo. Faites que ce livre soit un de ses vieux projets de Lycée.
Ce roman laisse même parfois des questions qui peuvent sembler superflues mais, il est plein de détails bizarres qui n'apportent rien à l'histoire et qui visuellement le font ressembler à un mauvais manga. Pourquoi ces uniformes miroitants par exemple ? ces personnages surdimensionnés qu'on imagine sortir de "Ken le Survivant" ? et ce temps absurde : pourquoi l'histoire se déroule-t-elle sur des millénaires, ça n'apporte rien, même si les personnages sont supposés être immortels, voir un peu trop. Même si l'intrigue sur Marrow s'était déroulé sur dix ans au lieu de cinq millénaires (cinq millénaires !!!! imaginez cinq millénaires !!)l'effet aurait été le même.
Sinon, quand l'auteur essaie de faire du sentiment, là on atteint un degré assez difficilement supportable de maladresse. il ne faut surtout plus essayer.
alors je ne sais as comment un tel auteur a pu remporter des prix Hugo. Faites que ce livre soit un de ses vieux projets de Lycée.
January 7, 2016
An unfathomable huge space vessel appears in our galaxy. Humans claim it for themselves. The "Great Ship" is a universe of its own. At its core is a whole planet, aptly called "Marrow". During an expedition to Marrow things go very wrong.
-----
There are a lot of fascinating and intriguing things going on in this novel and quite a few disappointing ones. Just like the mysterious "Great Ship" has the planet at its core, the story too has the really good part at its centre: the story on the planet Marrow inside the "Great Ship" and the somewhat weaker story elements before and after that.
-Part I just seemed to sum up one wonder after the other, adding up one civilization after the other, one huge time lap after the other.
-The story on Marrow itself was really exciting though and here our protagonists finally became three-dimensional characters.
-It was really hard to finish the rest though, I couldn't connect with the story. I couldn't see enough of an engaging plotline. But I did finish it of course: I love Space Opera, love Reed's "Great Ship"-Stories, his strong writing.
This is one of his weaker novels though.
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There are a lot of fascinating and intriguing things going on in this novel and quite a few disappointing ones. Just like the mysterious "Great Ship" has the planet at its core, the story too has the really good part at its centre: the story on the planet Marrow inside the "Great Ship" and the somewhat weaker story elements before and after that.
-Part I just seemed to sum up one wonder after the other, adding up one civilization after the other, one huge time lap after the other.
-The story on Marrow itself was really exciting though and here our protagonists finally became three-dimensional characters.
-It was really hard to finish the rest though, I couldn't connect with the story. I couldn't see enough of an engaging plotline. But I did finish it of course: I love Space Opera, love Reed's "Great Ship"-Stories, his strong writing.
This is one of his weaker novels though.
January 8, 2009
A very very enjoyable book - i almost gave it a four. Truly, i could not put it down.
i decided to read it after being seduced by Reed's short stories, including two that take place on the same Great Ship that Marrow is set in. i guess the reason for the relatively low rating is that with five hundred pages and such a great premise, i was aware that more could have been done, and better. Unlike the very tight and engaging short stories, at times i was aware that Marrow could have been better, especially in terms of development of some of the secondary characters. Also, in a key scene near the end of the book, where the good guys out-maneouver the bad, i admit i just didn't get what was going on.
A long book raises the bar. While the Great Ship is intriguing, and a multi-millenia life-spans are awe-inspiring, and the whole "what's this all about" aspect kept me curious as hell, if it's going to be this length i need more character depth to get into.
i decided to read it after being seduced by Reed's short stories, including two that take place on the same Great Ship that Marrow is set in. i guess the reason for the relatively low rating is that with five hundred pages and such a great premise, i was aware that more could have been done, and better. Unlike the very tight and engaging short stories, at times i was aware that Marrow could have been better, especially in terms of development of some of the secondary characters. Also, in a key scene near the end of the book, where the good guys out-maneouver the bad, i admit i just didn't get what was going on.
A long book raises the bar. While the Great Ship is intriguing, and a multi-millenia life-spans are awe-inspiring, and the whole "what's this all about" aspect kept me curious as hell, if it's going to be this length i need more character depth to get into.
December 16, 2015
I wanted to like this - the idea is a good one with a giant ship of unknown origin and full of mystery. The introduction worked well and drew me into the story, but then it lost it. The first issue is that the story drags with some odd diversions that do little to strengthen the tale.
It's a shame really as the basic premise is good, but 500 pages later nothing is really resolved. There is a rich menagerie of aliens, but nothing is done with them. Humans are now effectively immortal which devalues the epic timescales involved in the journey.
I very rarely finish a book I don't like, especially one as long as this, but there are flashes of genius here. Unfortunately they don't develop into anything meaningful. A shame as it had some potential, but ultimately unfulfilling.
It's a shame really as the basic premise is good, but 500 pages later nothing is really resolved. There is a rich menagerie of aliens, but nothing is done with them. Humans are now effectively immortal which devalues the epic timescales involved in the journey.
I very rarely finish a book I don't like, especially one as long as this, but there are flashes of genius here. Unfortunately they don't develop into anything meaningful. A shame as it had some potential, but ultimately unfulfilling.
July 20, 2008
A world within a world set with the backdrop of an ancient spacefaring species. Excellent characterisation and concepts give this story a vertiginous vastness, both in physical and chronological terms.
March 4, 2010
Now this is why I suffered through KJM. Really colossal, in all senses of the word. But in the middle of the huge colossalness and hugeousity, Reed sneaks these little thoughtful moments of "what's it all about". Decorated with bizzare fungi and the like. Oh yeah, and good prose.
July 26, 2007
super great story with some awesome female charectors. pretty mind blowing.
October 8, 2010
This was an incredibly creative book. I enjoyed every page. This is a must-read, absolutely. I plan to look for other works by this author.
August 16, 2012
One of the most interesting science fiction I've read in a while. Very nice writing with a detailed plot that wasn't to complicated. I'm glad I found it.
August 11, 2012
I've long been a fan of Reed's Great Ship series and really enjoyed this novel, which has the galactic scope and time-frame which hard science fiction fans love.
September 18, 2017
world building better than the story...
May 18, 2023
I keep rereading this book. So many ideas that just tickle my brain.
September 6, 2023
As good a future epic as I could have hoped for. Reed takes big risks, with immense settings and spans of time, immortal humans and ancient histories, and he lands every one.
June 16, 2021
Well, the pages turned quickly in that one.
Marrow can't be faulted for its audacity: a Jupiter-sized spaceship of unknown antiquity, origin, or original purpose, speeding through the galaxy picking up various alien delegations as it goes, crewed by immortal humans, with a -very- geologically active world at its core. There were times when I felt the stirrings of awe.
But only stirrings. While very good as it stands, Marrow could have been something incredible. Reed's writing style is breezy, slightly strange, and just a little bit too jolly -even when describing the violent not-deaths that litter the novel- to properly suit what it depicts. The latter half becomes disjointed, jumping from one character to another (usually at the point of resurrection), as they split from one faction to the next in an utterly different part of the ship from where we last saw them, and usually hundreds -if not thousand... even millions- of years later. Worst of all, for me, is that a BIG trick was missed with the atmospherics. The location is simply astounding, we know this because we keep getting told that it is... and not shown. As we're told, not shown, that Deep Time is experienced: cities spring up, whole planetary populations, countless mortal lifetimes pass... but all the main cast -everybody in Marrow is immortal and almost limitlessly self-repairing- remain essentially the same (a reason is given for this, true, but only in passing, and almost as an excuse) - a fabulous oportunity for character development all but ignored.
I do recommend this novel to any SF reader, and will be continuing with Reed's oeuvre (and, indeed, the Great Ship series) - the concepts are just too damn huge to ignore, and he knows how to enthral... it's just that he isn't quite giving said concepts everything they deserve in Marrow.
Marrow can't be faulted for its audacity: a Jupiter-sized spaceship of unknown antiquity, origin, or original purpose, speeding through the galaxy picking up various alien delegations as it goes, crewed by immortal humans, with a -very- geologically active world at its core. There were times when I felt the stirrings of awe.
But only stirrings. While very good as it stands, Marrow could have been something incredible. Reed's writing style is breezy, slightly strange, and just a little bit too jolly -even when describing the violent not-deaths that litter the novel- to properly suit what it depicts. The latter half becomes disjointed, jumping from one character to another (usually at the point of resurrection), as they split from one faction to the next in an utterly different part of the ship from where we last saw them, and usually hundreds -if not thousand... even millions- of years later. Worst of all, for me, is that a BIG trick was missed with the atmospherics. The location is simply astounding, we know this because we keep getting told that it is... and not shown. As we're told, not shown, that Deep Time is experienced: cities spring up, whole planetary populations, countless mortal lifetimes pass... but all the main cast -everybody in Marrow is immortal and almost limitlessly self-repairing- remain essentially the same (a reason is given for this, true, but only in passing, and almost as an excuse) - a fabulous oportunity for character development all but ignored.
I do recommend this novel to any SF reader, and will be continuing with Reed's oeuvre (and, indeed, the Great Ship series) - the concepts are just too damn huge to ignore, and he knows how to enthral... it's just that he isn't quite giving said concepts everything they deserve in Marrow.
February 18, 2021
A lot of the big sci-fi ideas in this book are fun. The time scale is truly staggering. But, though I like the characters, they aren't deep enough and there aren't enough of them really to sustain a book this size. Marrow is like 90% thoughtful, lonely, high concept scifi and 10% action thriller and the two don't mesh super well. The first third of this book is the strongest. I would definitely consider reading other stories in this setting.
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