Shipstar

Bowl of Heaven #2

by Gregory Benford, Larry Niven

Science fiction masters Larry Niven (Ringworld) and Gregory Benford (Timescape) continue the thrilling adventure of a human expedition to another star system that is jeopardized by an encounter with an astonishingly immense artifact in interstellar space: a bowl-shaped structure cupping a star, with a habitable area equivalent to many millions of Earths. And which, tantalizingly, is on a direct path heading toward the same system the human ship is to colonize.

Investigating the Bowl, or Shipstar, the human explorers are separated—one group captured by the gigantic structure's alien inhabitants, the other pursued across its strange and dangerous landscape—while the mystery of the Shipstar's origins and purpose propel the human voyagers toward discoveries that transform their understanding of their place in the universe.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Space Opera, Aliens, Hard Science Fiction, Audiobook, Space

416 pages, Hardcover

First published September 8, 2014

About the author

Gregory Benford is an American science fiction author and astrophysicist who is on the faculty of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Irvine.

As a science fiction author, Benford is best known for the Galactic Center Saga novels, beginning with In the Ocean of Night (1977). This series postulates a galaxy in which sentient organic life is in constant warfare with sentient mechanical life.

Reviews

[Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was just wondering to myself the other day... "Just where has all the regular adventure in unique/impressive/mindblowing SF environments gone?"

I mean, it used to be around all over the place. Often it was a rush to see who would out-do the other, throwing out mind-blowing concepts and super huge technological artifacts that must be figured out and/or survived.

Remember Rendezvous with Rama? Eon? Ringworld? The Integral Trees? Revelation Space? Startide Rising? Ring?

Quick note: two of these great classics were written by Larry Niven, co-author to this book. Respect!

So then, when I come around to reading these two books in preparation for my ARC of Glorious, the third book in the series, I'm struck by just how much I've MISSED this particular genre. I either have to slog through Mil-SF books to get a feeling for it or I have to go back in time to another day when ADVENTURE used to mean something.

But here it is. Adventure, discovery, a wide swath of weird and diverse aliens both biological, silicate, and ELECTROMAGNETIC, all surfing a mobile STAR with a bowl that happens to be HALF of a DYSON SPHERE. For those who may not get the concept, it's enough landmass to fill millions of Earths with perfectly livable climates. It's BIGGER than the star. Sound a bit like Ringworld? Well, this is bigger. And no Pak. I love how these two authors manage all the idea-wrangling, the concepts, and the complicated (if flawed) adventure. I won't say I loved the characters, but I didn't hate any of them and besides, the wildlife is INTENSE. Orbital bombardment from pufferfish? Time-like lances? Nutty elephant-sized birds who think they're all that because they've somehow been left in charge of the zoo?

Well, they have another think coming. :)

The strength of this novel, and the one before it, is that it doesn't rest on the ideas already presented. It keeps coming up with interesting events and peoples and SF objects.

I MISS this.

I remember loving how much better characterization has gotten over the years with newer SF, too, but I didn't mean we ought to give up on the BIG CONCEPT pieces! :)

[Peter Tillman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Off to a shaky start, but at p.110 (of 468, mmpb) I'm getting into it. The (apparent) dominant race in the Bowl are brilliantly-feathered dinosaur descendents! Who may be descended from Old Earth ancestors? The fingersnakes are a hoot, and doubtless a Niven contribution. So it looks like a step up from the so-so series opener, that I read back in 2012.

OK, at p. 333 the book is headed for 4+ stars unless it really falls apart in the last 130 pp. My kind of book! I've already ordered #3 from the library to be prepared. Decent, well-written hard-SF that makes scientific sense & hangs together as fiction is a rare commodity. The sense-of-wonder stuff is a bonus. Benford & Niven rock! The Folk, the Master Race of the Bowl, descendants of Earth Jurassic smart-dinos, cruised back to Sol system in the Cretaceous. In the process, they disturbed our outer shell of comets & such, the Kuiper Belt -- and inadvertently sent the Dino Killer crashing to its rendezvous with Chicxulub. Yes, they killed their own genome-line! Not their smoothest move . . .

Since I kept no notes, IDK why #1 didn't grab me. Not that 3 stars is a bad book: far from it! Maybe I wasn't in the mood for it? Read in 2012, so who knows? And what's happened to the Private Notes section that we used to get, that I use regularly for notes to myself. Stop screwing around, GR people!

As I hoped, Shipstar came to a bravura finish, with a nice lead-in to the concluding volume, GLORIOUS. Yes, the good starship SunSeeker is bound for Glory! Which, from the hints dropped in the concluding chapters, will be a very strange place indeed. 4.4 stars! And I will plan to reread it down the line. But first: GLORIOUS!

[William Korn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two hard SF writers decide in a gigantic thought experiment to build a structure bigger than Larry Niven's Ringworld. Having succeeded in doing so, they went on two write two novels about it, populating the structure with a bewildering variety of successively more improbable life forms. Shipstar is the second of the books. They would have been better off had they just contructed the thing and called it a night.

Any attempt at such a grandiose project is fated to be either way too long or way too incomplete. The Bowl of Heaven and Shipstar managed to be both too long and too incomplete simultaneously. By sacrificing the management of the plot to overlong and overdetailed descriptions of the engineering of the structure and the biology of its inhabitants, the story itself became secondary and almost ireelevant.

We already know that Benford and Niven can do these things really well. They're both far beyond the time when they need to show it off. And they can both do better writing a story that holds its own as a story.

[Tim Hicks · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a Niven fan for a long time, but he's losing me. Not so much a Benford fan, but I respect his work and have read quite a bit of it. Smart guys.

Perhaps all that's wrong here is that I know these guys used to be capable of better, and maybe still are. These two books felt rushed (especially the sloppy first one) so maybe we're seeing the new reality of the publishing world. Maybe some "never mind that, meet your contract date!"

This collection of clever ideas was a chore to read, it really was. Clearly the authors had a mighty brainstorm to build their setting, and what a storm it was. It's a shame they felt they had to include every idea they thought of.

There were several points where we saw the equivalent of a guy falling from a great height to almost certain death and on the way down thinking, "Wow, less than 25 fps/s, the local gravity's not what we thought, and hey, I'm spinning, I wonder how the Coriolis effect works here. Let's see, the radiation from the jet imparts a SPLAT!"

Character development? Nah, sorry, we used all the time on the physics. OK, the Captain's not bad, we don't often see a captain who's human and sometimes doubts his decisions and may even be wrong occasionally. I still haven't decided about his "I have orders" when he's centuries from home on a one-way trip.

In book 1 we see a guy whose task separates him from his wife. Very shortly after, he's getting it on with a colleague. In this book, he and wife explain that in the field, it's all "What happens in the field stays in the field" with an air of "heh, heh, boys will be boys, won't they?" Don't need that.

Zest. More zest.

And hey, did you notice that Bemor's really smart? Don't worry, if you missed it they remind you every time he appears. Well done, maybe, because in the end it turns out that ... well, you'll see.

Asenath? Well, gosh, there always has to be an iron-jawed senior officer who's totally unreasonable and just wants to exterminate. Might as well have made her a Dalek.

Did anyone count how many times Cliff broke a rib?

Everyone's fueled by coffee, it seems, so I guess their dwindling resources included a source of fresh coffee beans, on a ship that left Earth somewhere between 80 and 300 years ago.

Ending? Not long ago I reviewed Reynolds' Absolution Space, in which he pulled the same trick. Spoiler coming, but I won't hide it because it doesn't deserve it. Big build-up. Crisis coming. How will they resolve it?
By introducing two new species, which even the dimwitted Folk must have known about but never thought to mention. To be fair, the authors did talk about how the existence of these might have been deduced by the keen reader.

There's a lot of number-tossing, mostly re the speed of the Bowl, and I'm sure the authors worked it all out. It was a tad overwhelming, though - and I'm an experienced reader of hard SF.

At one point Memor speculates on her brother's name: Bemor. "Be more". Suddenly she thinks in English?
His name to her is probably more like Graak-SQUAWK-rikka-tikka-WHEE, and doesn't mean anything remotely like "be more."

And finally the two decisions to fly up the jet. Well, sure, that's the obvious thing, isn't it? What could possibly go wrong? I get that they were in deep doo-doo at the time and pretty much had to gamble, but at the time other decisions might have made more sense. We know after reading the book that these decisions would have left them as a thin vapour, but THEY didn't know that.

Anyway, too many ideas, creaky plot that seemed rushed, poor characters, and a lame ending.
I recommend reading other books by these authors instead.

[Stewart Tame · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually haven't read Bowl of Heaven, so I was a little behind going into this. It wasn't too hard getting up to speed though. While there are some scenes I regret reading about without having first read them, it could have been worse.

So an interstellar ramjet has been sent to colonize a distant, Earthlike planet. Most of the crew are in cryogenic sleep when the ship encounters an anomaly: a spaceship the size of a solar system headed toward the same destination. And that's just the backstory.

The Bowl is huge–think half a Dyson sphere--and spins on its axis to provide something like gravity along the inner surface. An array of mirrors focus sunlight back upon the star in the center, causing an intense flare that acts as a jet–held in check by a sophisticated web of magnetic fields–venting through a hole at the “bottom” of the Bowl and propelling the whole business through space. Naturally, the Bowl is inhabited … by multiple races. Will they help or hinder the humans on their journey?

Again, this is pretty much backstory. Shipstar picks up with two teams of humans having escaped captivity from the Folk, a group of dinosaur-like aliens who appear to be in charge of the Bowl. Chapters alternate between the groups on the run and those still on board the ship as everyone tries to evade capture and figure out just what is going on.

I am more familiar with Niven's writing than Benford's, but the former's fingerprints are definitely all over this project. We have fully-realized aliens who actually act and think in seemingly true alien fashion. The Bowl is certainly similar to Ringworld in at least a few ways. The humans are multicultural without being flashy about it.

The Bowl and its inhabitants are fascinating. Even though I've had a few spoilers by reading Shipstar first, I still want to read Bowl of Heaven, just to see more of it. This is one of the better SF novels I've read in a while. Recommended!

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 Stars...Best line: Try to get all your posthumous medals in advance. This is a story that is both too short and too long. Earth's starship on the way to colonize a planet happens upon a great big bowl driven by a star. The Bowl of Heaven dealt with that meeting and the subsequent landing of some explorers on the bowl. This book finishes the tale. The humans get on the bad side of the "Folk", big, feathered creatures that run the bowl. The humans make friends with some other alien races and escape the clutches of the Folk for a while. Towards the end, there are many new aliens popping up, along with some battles between aliens and between aliens and humans. All gets wrapped up too quickly and too neatly, in my view. Took a star away for stoooopid history of the bowl makers. Have to spoiler where the bowl came from. What made me really throw up in my mouth a few times was not the constant f*#%ing preaching about the "Age of Appetite" (now) when we filled the air and oceans with pollution, seas rose, Manhattan goes underwater (good!), a real Soylent Green meme, etc. Have gotten used to this drivel for a while now. No, the thing that got me was the "intelligent" dinosaurs who remained on Earth living in harmony with nature, forsaking technology and limiting growth to minimum impact on the land. A dinosaur version of Earth System Governance Project or NRDC. And the poor buggers were just getting everything perfect when, BAM!, the global killer meteorite slammed into the Yucatan and messed things up for a while. Leading to the evolution of the stupid humans who just like to pave everything over and destroy Mother Nature. Seriously stupid part of the story.

[Clyde · Rating 4 out of 5]

This finishes the two-part story. (Read #1 first.)
Benford and Niven are champions at building humongously big alien structures. Unlike the Ringworld, which is a big dumb object, the Shipstar is a big smart object, with layers of intelligence. (You'll have to read it to find out what I mean by that. 😄) The characters are perhaps a bit wooden (the humans anyway), but the world building is spectacular. The authors really let their imaginations run wild with the non-human characters -- I particularly like the fingersnakes.
I quite enjoyed this story. 3.5 stars rounded up.

[Mitchell Friedman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. That was some hard science fiction. And I'm sure I missed tons. Alien aliens on a level that I've not seen outside of David Brin's Uplift series. Technologies on a scale that I had no way of telling where the science faded into hand-waving. Societies of multiple truly different sorts. A bit too hard to read. A bit too complicated. But definitely worth a reread and a deep discussion. 4.5 of 5.

[Gerhard · Rating 2 out of 5]

In a fascinating afterword, authors Gregory Benford and Larry Niven recount how they doodled around with the concept of the Bowl, which essentially is a ‘smart’ update of the latter’s Ringworld, the classic SF text about a Big Dumb Object.

That novel, of course, had an intrepid group of humans and aliens pick their leisurely way through the remnants of a fallen civilisation. The Bowl, on the other hand, is a dynamic object, a ‘shipstar’ embarked on an impossible journey; it is also crammed with a menagerie of natives, who are all getting restless.

I must say I enjoyed Bowl of Heaven far more than I did its sequel, Shipstar. The word ‘planetary’ gets used so often to convey a sense of distance and vastness in the object that, in the end, it becomes quite meaningless. I think the authors themselves kind of gave up on describing the magnificence of their vision in prosaic genre terms, for towards the end they resort to a series of pretty pictures.

The biggest problem here is the plot; or, rather, the lack of one. Now that the Bowl has been discovered, the sequel turns into a kind of travelogue as the merry band of humans and aliens below on the structure and onboard the Sunseeker attempt to unravel the structure’s myriad mysteries.

Of which there are many. And with every single one, Benford and Niven rationalise every ounce of wonder or intrigue out of it, by embarking on endless speculation and theorising that just benumbs the reader. All the characters merely become viewpoints in this scientific dialogue, rather than flesh-and-blood beings experiencing the Bowl as a living, breathing environment. Enough already. In the afterword, the authors mention how much of their calculations and ideas, including an entire timeline of the Bowl’s history, was not included in the end. Thank the stars, I say.

The main point of this sequel is to reveal the true origin of the Bowl, but this is hardly enough to sustain the entire novel. What I found far more intriguing and worthwhile is the rather staggering revelation about the planet Glory, the story’s end destination. The authors make no mention of a third volume, but I think they up the ante so convincingly in the end, that neither will be able to resist the challenge.

[Zeta Syanthis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is absolutely /wild/. I don't know how to process it, but I hope someday I will.

[Traveling Cloak · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shipstar, the follow up to Bowl of Heaven and the second book in the series of the same name, is pretty close to perfect as sequels go. Authors Gregory Benford and Larry Niven expanded on Book 1 nicely by showing us more of the Bowl: it’s functions, processes, life forms, and history. We also learn more about the Earth crew as more of them are awakened, and their interpersonal relationships continue to develop. As the humans continue to fight for freedom, and the aliens try to hold on to their captives, the plot gets more intense and enthralling.

When I talk about expanding on information about the Bowl, that is not a statement to be taken lightly. One of the things I really love about this book is that it goes DEEP explaining the forces and dynamics that make the bowl work. It dives heavily into the physics of it, and as someone who really nerds out about processes and particles and electromagnetic forces I enjoyed being immersed in that knowledge.

This carries over to other aspects of the Bowl, as well. As the humans’ struggle to free themselves goes on with the help of other alien species present in the Bowl, the reader naturally learns more about these aliens and meets new life forms, as well. The fact that these life forms live much longer than humans makes for an effective plot mechanic because it turns into an easy way for the humans to learn more about the aliens as well as their history. Armed with more knowledge, the humans are better equipped to escape the Bowl. This give-and-take was an aspect of the book I found to be quite intriguing.

Shipstar spends more time on deck with the crew of the SunSeeker, as well, which is another way the authors have continued to developed the story. The reader gets to see into the minds of Captain Redwing and his mates as they assess the situation and formulate their own plan to help their captive colleagues. This is, again, another opportunity to explore the physics of the situation as the group further investigates the bowl and attempts to disrupt its stability. In my opinion, the commitment to making this book smart and full of explanations of the physics that makes everything work is one of the best aspects of the story.

While reading the first two books of this series, I have gotten the Star Trek feels. It is as if the Enterprise has docked on a foreign land on its way to exploring another planet and is attempting to rescue captured members of the crew. And because this part of the story encompasses two books, reading both books back-to-back was like watching a two-part episode with a “to be continued…” at the end of the first. I mentioned in my review of Bowl of Heaven (Book 1) that it felt more like classic fantasy than contemporary fantasy, and that continued with this book. I like that this series brings me back to that Star Trek state of mind. That is a big plus to me, because it feels like a bit of a throwback.

Shipstar is an excellent follow-up to Bowl of Heaven; not only does it expand on the universe of the first book properly, but the classic sci-fi writing style and episodic nature of the story split between the two books gives me the Star Trek feels, And I absolutely loved it. I continue to recommend this series for sci-fi fans. I have high expectations for Book 3, Glorious.

[Shawn Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is co-written with Larry Niven, author of Ringworld. Ringworld was one of those Big Object sci fi stories (like Rendevous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke, or stories about Dyson spheres). Ringworld wondered what life would be like on a ribbon that completely encircled a star on its equatorial plane. Shipstar asks a very similar question, only now the shape under examination is a bowl (a hemisphere) attached to a star that somehow propels it through space. When a colony ship of humans encounters it (they're both Glory bound, Glory being a habitable planet that has begun sending out some kind of message), the native races (who seem to have accumulated in the bowl) don't react well. I can't tell you why I started part two first, but I've now added part one to my reading list, because the characters (whether they be human, Bird People or Hanging People or Snake People or Silent People) are all very interesting. As is life on such an odd construct. Benford's sci-fi has long been a favorite, as he deals with travel through the black depths of space in inventive ways, and he and Niven make a winning team of hard and "soft" (diplomatic, social, language) science.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shipstar by Gregory Benford and Larry Niven is the second book in the "Bowl of Heaven" trilogy. This book is a hard science fiction novel set in a very far future. This book continues the story of mankind's effort to colonize a far-distant star by means of a sub-light arkship. They encounter a strange cup-shaped, artificial world, powered by a captive star. They stop to explore and encounter many creatures, some of which have ill intent toward the humans. To complicate matters their destination star also has an intelligence and it makes it very clear that it doesn't want the cup world or the humans to come calling. If you like Larry Niven's Ringworld books you should enjoy this trilogy too. I am looking forward to reading the final book in this trilogy, Glorious.

[Chichi · Rating 3 out of 5]

The beginning was a bit slow, but maybe it was because I read the first book sometime back and needed some time to get into it. The story and the characters developed well, and it has really interesting world building and cool alien descriptions. It was fun exploring the Bowl and learning about its physical structures and social dynamics.

[Michael Pryor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid, capable, readable.

[Leo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Shipstar is a fascinating novel in the contrast that it provides. On one side, Gregory Benford and Larry Niven have given us superb hard science fiction with multiple alien races coexisting on a single world.

The book is constructed in a way that we often see in modern sci-fi literature. Separate groups of individuals, from the first book, go through a series of adventures to meet in the end and achieve a common goal. In the first book, their adventures were much more interesting since the environments were new and wonderful. In Shipstar all these are not new anymore and lack any sense of wonder. Interactions with aliens are surprisingly unspectacular and all interactions between the aliens called Folk seem to be there just to hammer in how stupid and arrogant Folk are.

And, unfortunately, it is the Folk who are the main protagonists of this book. Among all the characters and species, the folk are the ones who experience the biggest disruption to their lives and come out of the book most changed. They are the protagonist that we are reminded to dislike at every line of dialogue they utter.

Then there is the biggest problem of this book from my perspective. Repetition. Lines and lines of information are repeated throughout the book, as if the book is written for the anecdotal goldfish with ten second memory. Character A finds out something from character B and then has to tell exactly the same thing to character C. Yes, people talk, if A and C meet, assume that they exchanged all the interesting information if they are cooperating. Or tell us that they did. Just realize that the rule of show don't tell does not apply when something was already shown. We are dealing with something close to technobabble here most of the time, and technobabble is not good for revealing character.

The engineering concepts are what saves this book and gives it two stars, the writing is a straight zero.

[Mouldy Squid · Rating 2 out of 5]

While there are some interesting ideas in this duology, most specifically the Bowl itself, these two novels fall far short of their promise. The main conceit (without adding spoilers) itself is a touch too unbelievable. Both books suffer from very poor editing where not only are character names incorrect, but entire sections dealing with the same events seem to have been written separately by each author and then inexpertly combined into a error filled mishmash.

While co-authoring can bring some interesting frisson to novels, co-authored books need to be consistent in tone, diction and narrative voice. BoH/SS has none of this. Anyone familiar with Benford's and Niven's work can easily pick out who wrote which bits. The effect is disjointed and uneven read particularly when each author attempts to write the same character at different points in the plot.

The plot itself is nearly non-existant. Basically the only point of any action taken by any of the characters is to tell the reader how huge, awe inspiring, magnificent the BDO is, and nothing other than wandering around the Bowl looking at things actually happens until the last two hundred or so pages of the second book.

The characters are as one-dimensional as they come, which is to be expected from Niven, but is a grave disappointment from Benford. I had absolutely no connection to anyone in the novel, nor did I care what their fates would be.

Everything about this duology gives me the feeling that no one, not even the authors themselves, really felt like producing a worthwhile novel. It is as if an editor at Tor books pitched the idea that Benford and Niven should do a novel together but didn't bother to get authors into the same room. It's tired, plodding and ultimately uninteresting.

Worth reading if you are a fan of Benford or Niven, but otherwise these two books are at best mediocre offerings from two luminaries of Science Fiction.

[Bruce McNair · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is volume 2 of the series that started with Bowl of Heaven. It picks up where the first book left off. This book is a complete contrast to the first book - the characters are more developed and the action more dynamic. It introduces new characters and creatures who provide more depth to the story - the Sil and the Finger Snakes are my favourites. The idea that life and intelligence can inhabit non-carbon lifeforms, although not new, helps to fill in some of the gaps in the story. I felt that the ending, although it ties up most of the story threads, leaves an opening for one or more sequels. The Afterword provides some perspective on the development of the story from both authors. This shines more light on some of the aspects of the Bowl and the backstory.

I could not help continually making the comparison with Niven’s Ringworld. But as indicated in my review of the first book, this story does not have the interesting, quirky characters that make Ringworld such a strong story.

Given that, in my opinion, the story was slow to develop in the first book, I feel it is a pity that this book does not have much of a recap of the events from the first book. In my opinion, both of these shortcomings might cause some readers to give up on the story prematurely. This is a pity as the action reaches new heights in this book, and I feel it would be appreciated by most SF buffs. I give this book a rating of 4 out of 5.

[Paul H. · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm so, so, so tired of horribly written sci-fi novels. Just so tired. Why is it that every sci-fi author writes at an eighth-grade reading level? Why does every talented writer on the planet (except for Gene Wolfe or whoever) end up writing literature instead of sci-fi? Why are sci-fi readers so terrible at reading? Why is "being well-written" like #11 or #34 on the average sci-fi reader's list of "important aspects of sci-fi novels"?

Let's take a page at random from Shipstar; page 215. There aren't many words per page, I'd say around 250. Let's count the clichés:

"they were all running flat out"
"sensing that something was up"
"the running figures meant trouble"
"there was an odd Zen-like grace to them"
"snapped him into focus"

To be clear, at this rate, there are roughly ONE THOUSAND clichés in this novel. Anyone who cares about the craft of writing, about creativity, the expression of ideas, language itself, etc., etc., does not have one effing thousand cliches in one of their novels. They just don't. This novel is garbage. Even the ideas could be better expressed as like a ten-page bullet list of half-formed concepts that Niven and Benford came up with while drinking. Science fiction, as a genre, deserves better writers.

[Kathy Sebesta · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a Larry Niven collaboration, and basically what they've done is take Ringworld and turn it into a Bowl, then write about all the many aliens they run into. Frankly the whole thing was rather boring, and I'm a huge Niven fan so that was hugely disappointing.

There were a couple insights I'll share that have nothing to do with the story. Paraphrasing:

To survive is to compete successfully but the unit of survival is different at each of six time ranges. On intervals of years the unit surviving is the individual. On a time scale of decades the unit is the family. On a scale of centuries the unit is the tribe or nation. Millennia, the unit is the culture. For tens or more millennia the surviving unit is the species. On the range of eons the unit is the whole web of life.

[When we walk] we fall forward on one leg, then catch ourselves with the other. We're the only large animal without a tair that's mastered this. Two legs are dangerous without a big brain or a stabilizing tail.

[Michael Olson · Rating 1 out of 5]

The brightest spot in the book was the subservient races (Sil and finger worms). The Big 'Smart' Object was alright I guess, but really failed to invoke any wonder in me, perhaps over exposure to books with super scale environments has burned me out there.

That's my positives, the rest is just bitching.


It's not a good sign when the human internal narratives feel like reading a management self help book. The big bad alien culture wasn't much better, a lot of words dedicated to how their minds worked, but it really didn't line up with their behavior, they still thought pretty much just like us, and to make it all worse, in the end none of that really mattered.

The end was my real gripe, the 'they weren't really in charge' reveal was completely unsatisfying for a conflict set up across two books. To me a defining point for a great story is that it comes to a satisfying close, and a deus ex machina close is nearly the worst.

[Alien · Rating 2 out of 5]

2. Teil einer Triologie. Das Raumschiff von der Erde traf während des Fluges zu einem fremden Stern auf eine riesige Raumstation, die in dieselbe Richtung fliegt. Erkundungsexpeditionen trafen auf diverse ET-Rassen. Die Menschen wurden teils gefangen genommen.

Routiniert. Offenbar versucht Niven, an seinen Erfolg mit den Ringwelt-Romanen anzuknüpfen. Grösser ist mehr? Nach 90 Seiten habe ich immer noch das Gefühl, es wäre noch nicht richtig losgegangen. Es macht keinen Spaß, es funktioniert für mich nicht.
Dass es das 2. Buch einer Serie ist, erschwert das ganze natürlich. Ich kriegte aber keine Motivation, das erste Buch zu lesen.
Ich ließ das Buch monatelang rumliegen, konnte den Antrieb nicht aufbringen, weiter zu lesen. Also weg damit.

[Art · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well that was fun. A great double novel of a Smart Big Object, aliens and interplanetary travel. Recommended. No, highly recommended.

- read because it was co-written by my favorite sci-fi author Larry Niven

[Casey Dorman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bowl of Heaven and Shipstar
Two novels by
Gregory Benford and Larry Niven

I’m embarrassed to say I have never read any of Larry Niven’s classic Ringworld Series, but after reading his and Gregory Benford’s “Bowl of Heaven” and “Shipstar,” I certainly will. Published in 2012 and 2014, this series also includes “Glorious,” a third installation, published in 2020, which I’ve yet to read. All three are written by the hard-science fiction duo of Benford and Niven, the former a Professor of Physics (emeritus) at UC Irvine and Nebula award winner and the latter, one of the most well-established sci-fi writers alive.

The setting and the characters in “Bowl of Heaven” and “Shipstar” are bigger than life, although they are confronted by life-size humans, heading for “Glory,” a strange and distant star system that is radiating magnetic waves, which may or may not be messages, and its star is orbited by what appears to be a habitable planet, with conditions much like earth’s.

On the way to Glory, Sunseeker, a starship laden with a thousand mostly sleeping human occupants, encounters a giant, constructed object, an immense bowl as large across “the orbit of Mercury” harnessed to a central star, which it is pushing through space at a hefty fraction of the speed of the Sunseeker.

As it turns out, the bowl’s inner surface is occupied by a myriad of species, overlorded by bigger than elephant-sized “Folk,” which appear to be large, feathered, but ground-dwelling dinosaurs. When the Sunseeker sends crew to the surface to explore the bowl, some of them are captured and some escape. We are treated to the point of view of Memor, one of the ruling Folk, who is interested in examining the minds of these human “late-invaders” and assessing their suitability to be “adopted” as another species living on the bowl.

Humans are unruly, clever, and dangerous, something that Memor and the other Folk find out when they try to capture the escaped crewmembers. Those who escape are only now and then able to communicate with Redwing, the Captain of the Sunseeker and ally themselves with various other species, some of whom are allies of the Folk and some of whom are resistant to the Folk’s control. As it turns out, the Folk are not the creators of the bowl, and neither are they its most powerful occupants. Above them are more mysterious “Ice-minds” and the “Diaphanous,” inorganic intelligences of space and energy who built the bowl originally and populated it with species it encountered on its journey across the galaxy and, now to Glory, the same destination as Sunseeker and its human occupants.

The two novels are the story of the tribulations of the human crews who are pursued by the Folk across the bowl until the higher minds eventually intervene and agree to collaborate on the journey to Glory. I presume “Glorious,” the next book in the series will be about the arrival of Sunseeker, perhaps followed by the bowl, at Glory and what the humans and the others find there. These first two books contain fascinating scientific imagination, bolstered by enough genuine phenomena to make them sound at least faintly plausible. The plausibility is greater with regard to the description of the physical and energy forces at play on Sunseeker and on the bowl, than it is with that of the various species that inhabit the bowl or the higher-level intelligences. Most of them think more or less like humans, their language translated into English (or “Anglish”) with some exceptions for nonverbal gestures and displays. That even stones, ice and photon streams are both minded and able to communicate their thoughts to humans, is a highly improbable form of panpsychism, which itself is improbable. However, such excursions beyond science add elements of mystery and wonder to a story filled with scientific-sounding concepts and, occasionally, digressions.

“Bowl of Heaven” and “Shipstar” are highly imaginative hard science fiction. The science, which may be grounded in real physics but is still profoundly speculative, revolves around the bowl itself and the Sunseeker. The most imaginative fun is provided by the various aliens, which, besides the feathered dinosaur-like Folk, include blimp-like flying fish that serve as airbuses, “spidows,” which are different forms of spider and crab-like predators, clawed, speaking snakes, talking rocks, proto-humans, and countless other species. The humans are resilient, sometimes quirky, and have definite personalities, who are real enough to make the reader involved and care about their fate, which is still undecided at the end of the second novel. Their story makes it a sci-fi adventure, not just a technical tour-de-force.

If you like science fiction that teaches you something, expands your imagination, and keeps you on the edge of your seat turning page after page, “Bowl of Heaven” and “Shipstar” are going to delight you. I can’t wait to read “Glorious,” the final (I assume) chapter in this saga.

[Eamonn Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘Shipstar’ continues the adventure started in ‘Bowl Of Heaven’ where the crew of SunSeeker encountered a solar system-sized bowl-shaped construct powered and propelled by its own sun. SunSeeker was a ramscoop spaceship en route from Earth to colonise a planet called Glory with the crew were mostly in cold sleep. The Bowl has been voyaging for millennia and seems to be run by a elephant-sized bird-like creatures called the Folk. They have captured other species which they call the Adopted, who inhabit and maintain the Bowl.

The Folk control the Adopted by indoctrination and, when necessary, pain or death inflicted by microwave bombardment. What works on the aliens doesn’t work on the humans but they re-tune to the correct frequency and it does. Folk Memor inflicts pain on Tananareve, her prisoner, to test the new wavelengths and when she has finished writhing in agony tells her it will help negotiations. She asked him if he would die for a cause. He says no, dying is pointless as if you die you cannot make use of the outcome of the act. She asks him if he would die for his beliefs and he says no, they might be wrong. A refreshing point of view in the age of the martyr.

As in ‘Bowl Of Heaven’, there is plenty of intelligent conversation between intelligent characters. This crew of scientists encountering a cosmic construct full of astonishing aliens gets involved in discussions about ecology, biology, engineering, palaeontology, sociology and much else. It’s certainly much more stimulating than listening to the conversation of real-life celebrity dingbats on television. The writers can pull off this tour de force because they are themselves both smart scientists. Why they even feature those gravitational waves which are making the news this past week! However, it’s by no means all chat and there is plenty of gripping adventure, too, as our heroes, in fear of their lives, are pursued by the Folk and aided by some of the Adopted. As the novel develops, the big picture just keeps getting bigger and ends up in the closing fast-paced chapters on a truly galactic scale.

The characters are a varied bunch. I particularly liked Captain Redwing, whose point of view we get to see now and again. In general, Beth and Cliff still dominate the storytelling though there is substantial input from others, most notably the alien Memor. Despite the fact that she inflicts pain on humans and kills some, too, the story manages to make her almost a sympathetic character. She is doing what she has to do within the constraints of her job and her extremely hierarchical society.

It’s generally nicely written and this volume seems to have more lush description than ‘Bowl Of Heaven’. Oddly, there are clumsy word repetitions here and there. I didn’t make note of them but, now and then, the same word comes up consecutively in a fashion not usual in polished English. Writers usually find a synonym for the next sentence. It’s not really a flaw, just a stylistic anomaly. One of the dangers with quest stories – characters journeying through strange lands – is that they can turn into an endless parade of wonders. There are a few slow spots in the middle where the story flags a bit but not for long.

Reviewing loads of short stories, one forgets the pleasures of the big Science Fiction novel. The large frame leaves room for big ideas and big thinking. You simply cannot do this in the limited wordage of a short. ‘Bowl Of Heaven’ and ‘Shipstar’ are packed with science, philosophy, sociology and deep thought, all rendered through the medium of convincing human characters. The aliens are pretty convincing, too. All in all, it’s a nice piece of work.

Eamonn Murphy
This review first appeared at https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/

[Vladimir Ivanov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Намного лучше первой части!

Приключения землян на Полусфере Дайсона стали куда интереснее, описания туземных культур — детальнее. Существенно проясняется мотивация злодейских ящеро-павлинов (не спрашивайте!), подробнее раскрыта природа их бинарного мышления "сознание/подсознание" (привет Уоттсу, кстати), яснее становится сложнейший экологический баланс Чаши и цель ее миллионолетнего путешествия по спиральным рукавам Галактики.

Финальное противостояние землян с туземцами в очередной раз доказывает любимую нивеновскую идею, что даже самая мирная и заведомо безоружная звездная экспедиция обладает оружием чудовищной разрушительной силы :)

Ну и всякая экзотика, как же без нее: живые дирижабли, вакуумные цветы, ледяные разумы, плазменные разумы...

К сожалению, до системы Глории, откуда исходят загадочные гравитационные сигналы, авторы так и не добрались, так что, видимо, нас ждет третья часть цикла.

P.S. Книжка очень старомодная, видно, что написана немолодым белым мужчиной. Практически все герои в ней — белые мужчины-натуралы. В романе нет ни одного гея, ни одного черного, ни одного трансгендера. Если вас это напрягает, consider yourself warned.

[Sic Transit Gloria · Rating 2 out of 5]

The tour of the bowl continues with an introduction to the menagerie. Aliens of all shapes and sizes inhabit the bowl, and it is up to the protagonists to stumble into as many as possible. Don't worry about the bird aliens in pursuit; they lost all knowledge of facial recognition software, RFID tags, and computers in general.

Like the last book, Shipstar is not about the protagonists. It is about the world of the bowl. Whereas the first book was about how the bowl worked, the sequel is about the wide variety of intelligence that lives on the bowl. But I feel that the aliens are considerably poorer in design than the bowl.

I feel like Benford and Niven think intelligence is self-organizing, i.e. that given enough time, anything can eventually become intelligent. I'm not going to spoil everything, but let me just say, there is no way limbless, immobile rocks can become intelligent. Evolution just doesn't work like that.

Ultimately, while the bowl is very interesting and vaguely plausible, the aliens and the societies they live in just don't make sense. And that's bad, because that's what this book is all about.

[James Tucker · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have read both Gregory Benford and Larry Niven books before and picked this one up purely on their names. Turns out this is book two but I read it anyway. As with Larry Niven, Ringworld etc I knew I'd get huge concepts and structures created in the pages of this story. The premise of this new Bowl world was an interesting one with lots of alien creatures thrown in. It became a little like a Star Trek episode with stories happening on the ship as well as planet side ( Bowl side really ), good aliens helping and bad ones hindering. Lots of interaction between species and descriptions of the humans' fight and flight across the landscape except I wanted more physics and more concept stuff than fighting. Easy to pick up the story in book two and I will look out for book one at some point but fundamentally I didn't care enough about the characters and their struggle and so the book fell a little flat for me though I'm willing to admit that I may have missed out somewhat on not reading book one first.

[jedioffsidetrap · Rating 1 out of 5]

I accidentally started before realizing it was the second book in the series. But because it seemed nothing really changed from the first book, I didn’t bother reading it through, just skimming to see if there was any big pay-off or revelation.

There wasn’t for me. Seems like the bowl stopped at earth a couple times, once to pick up dinosaurs and then again for monkeys. Which is kinda cool but the reveals are really underwhelming. It’s all talk. As I said with the first book, there isn’t any wonder or excitement in this book either. Which takes some doing given the build-up. It all just fizzles out into logistics & science jargon & drama attempted with characters of no real depth.

Descriptions are also really weak—I had a hard time imagining based on the wobbly text. Seems they admitted defeat in this book by including several illustrations.

Feels like it was written by scientists or theorists, more interested in the ideas & tech and unable to write a compelling, multi-dimensional (no pun intended—only one universe in this book) story.

[Darth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good follow up to Bowl Of Heaven.
Will not be on many all-time lists - including mine - but was not bad.
Bogged down a good bit with the alien politics, but I guess they had to wriggle the non-prisoner landing team off the hook somehow.
Did not deal at all with the Glory questions (outside minor speculation) so I am guessing there will be another in this sequence.
I will likely read it, but probably will not rocket to the top of my list.