The Asteroid Wars

The Grand Tour: Asteroid Wars #1-3

by Ben Bova

Omnibus edition containing:
- The Precipice (2001)
- The Rock Rats (2002)
- The Silent War (2004)

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Space Opera

982 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Ben Bova was born on November 8, 1932 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1953, while attending Temple University, he married Rosa Cucinotta, they had a son and a daughter. He would later divorce Rosa in 1974. In that same year he married Barbara Berson Rose.

Bova was an avid fencer and organized Avco Everett's fencing club. He was an environmentalist, but rejected Luddism.

Bova was a technical writer for Project Vanguard and later for Avco Everett in the 1960s when they did research in lasers and fluid dynamics. It was there that he met Arthur R. Kantrowitz later of the Foresight Institute.

In 1971 he became editor of Analog Science Fiction after John W. Campbell's death. After leaving Analog, he went on to edit Omni during 1978-1982.

In 1974 he wrote the screenplay for an episode of the children's science fiction television series Land of the Lost entitled "The Search".

Bova was the science advisor for the failed television series The Starlost, leaving in disgust after the airing of the first episode. His novel The Starcrossed was loosely based on his experiences and featured a thinly veiled characterization of his friend and colleague Harlan Ellison. He dedicated the novel to "Cordwainer Bird", the pen name Harlan Ellison uses when he does not want to be associated with a television or film project.

Bova was the President Emeritus of the National Space Society and a past President of Science-fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).

Bova went back to school in the 1980s, earning an M.A. in communications in 1987 and a Ph.D. in 1996.

Bova has drawn on these meetings and experiences to create fact and fiction writings rich with references to spaceflight, lasers, artificial hearts, nanotechnology, environmentalism, fencing and martial arts, photography and artists.

Bova was the author of over a hundred and fifteen books, non-fiction as well as science fiction. In 2000, he was the Author Guest of Honor at the 58th World Science Fiction Convention (Chicon 2000).

Hollywood has started to take an interest in Bova's works once again, in addition to his wealth of knowledge about science and what the future may look like. In 2007, he was hired as a consultant by both Stuber/Parent Productions to provide insight into what the world is to look like in the near future for their upcoming film "Repossession Mambo" (released as "Repo Men") starring Jude Law and Forest Whitaker and by Silver Pictures in which he provided consulting services on the feature adaptation of Richard Morgan's "Altered Carbon".

http://us.macmillan.com/author/benbova

Reviews

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think Ben Bova is overly melodramatic. Some of his ideas are very clever, and he writes in NEAR future stuff that seems fairly possible with a few wild-eyed ideas tossed in. His ultimate bad guy is literally deranged with plans of conquering space and nobody is 100% honest. There are ragtag miners, big business operators, liars, cheats, and scoundrels from all classes. Each installment in this omnibus is chocked full of one episode after another. There is no real building plot, but reads like a Science Fiction serial like Buck Rogers-- one cliffhanger after another. This tends to give the story a pulpy feeling, but doesn't give it any elements of greatness.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed this, but it didn't leave me wanting more, though I did have to renew my library copy to get through the whole thing (3 novels in one volume)

[Cathie Stumpenhaus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Re-reading this book after more than a decade and it no longer appeals to me. The unrelenting triumph of the bad guy over the “good” guys is too depressing. Removing it from my library.

[sean newhouse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic

[Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

_The Asteroid Wars_ combines _The Precipice_, _The Rock Rats_, and _The Silent War_ into a single volume, part of Bova's ambitious and entertaining "Grand Tour" novels and stories about humanity's exploration and colonization of the solar system. Bova has mastered the difficult art of writing a series of interconnected books with common characters and situations that somehow doesn't necessarily require reading them all, or in any particular order. Picking up any "Grand Tour" book is worthwhile.

[Aurel Mihai · Rating 3 out of 5]

This trilogy makes for perfect airplane reading. There aren't a lot of important characters to track, there's nothing too complicated going on, it's just a good ol' fashioned adventure of epic proportions set in space.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a Bad Story but I felt it was, over all, anti climactic. Some areas had good climaxes with lots of energy and build. The ending was very disappointing and left a lot unanswered.

[Andre · Rating 5 out of 5]

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