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Hull Zero Three
A starship hurtles through space, its destination unknown. Its purpose? A mystery. Now, one man wakes up. Ripped from a dream of a new home, a new planet and the woman he was meant to love in his arms, he finds himself naked and freezing to death. The dark halls are full of monsters but trusting other survivors might be the greater danger.
307 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
362 people are currently reading
5125 people want to read
About the author
Greg Bear
228 books2,089 followersGreg Bear was an American writer and illustrator best known for science fiction. His work covered themes of galactic conflict (Forge of God books), parallel universes (The Way series), consciousness and cultural practices (Queen of Angels), and accelerated evolution (Blood Music, Darwin’s Radio, and Darwin’s Children). His last work was the 2021 novel The Unfinished Land. Greg Bear wrote over 50 books in total.
(For a more complete biography, see Wikipedia.)
(For a more complete biography, see Wikipedia.)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 730 reviews
November 23, 2023
What a mess this was. Bear's style of writing here is so foggy and confusing I had no idea what was happening half the time. It was next to impossible to picture what anything on the ship looked like, including the various horrors the narrator comes across, which made it next to impossible for me to become involved in the story on any level.
And I was so looking forward to another good "space horror" after the stellar Ship of Fools.
And I was so looking forward to another good "space horror" after the stellar Ship of Fools.
March 29, 2016
I'm the haunted house. My brain is the ghost here.
I fully expected this book to be awesome, and I was disappointed.
A ship is sent from Earth to colonize a new planet. Traveling through space for hundreds if not thousands of years, the passengers kept in cryosleep. Our narrator emerges from an amniotic sac, awakened by a little girl, who urges him to hurry. Disoriented, with no knowledge of his name or his history, our naked narrator flees from the various monsters and machines on the ship which seek to kill him. Following the little girl, chasing the heat, always seeking water, food and clothes (stripped off the dead bodies of less fortunate crew members), the narrator has no idea what is really going on. Together he and the little girl find other crew members who have survived, and they try to piece together what happened to the ship and how they can fix it.
...
Ever hear of the film PANDORUM? I highly recommend it. This amazing film starring Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster is eerily similar to this book - except much better executed.
PANDORUM isn't the only source material this is borrowing from. There were also strong elements of Annihilation and Resident Evil.
Perhaps I am just too well-versed in Sci-Fi to enjoy this book. Pandorum is so similar to this, and so much better - I couldn't stop making comparisons throughout the whole thing.
I also found Bear's writing style to be confusing and vaguely perplexing. Even when I was being provided with "explanations," I was still a little shaky about what was going on - and not in a fun, Jeff Vandermeer sort of way. His descriptions of the monsters - and alien-like people - were sorely lacking and left me unable to really form any sort of mental picture for them.
The characters are neither fleshed-out nor compelling.
The scary horror scenes are not effective. You can't get a clear picture of what's going on, for one thing. And for another thing, they lack any sense of urgency.
Tl;dr - Confusing and vaguely unsatisfying. Borrows heavily from Pandorum, and lightly from Resident Evil and Annihilation. I feel like all this has been done before - and better.
I fully expected this book to be awesome, and I was disappointed.
A ship is sent from Earth to colonize a new planet. Traveling through space for hundreds if not thousands of years, the passengers kept in cryosleep. Our narrator emerges from an amniotic sac, awakened by a little girl, who urges him to hurry. Disoriented, with no knowledge of his name or his history, our naked narrator flees from the various monsters and machines on the ship which seek to kill him. Following the little girl, chasing the heat, always seeking water, food and clothes (stripped off the dead bodies of less fortunate crew members), the narrator has no idea what is really going on. Together he and the little girl find other crew members who have survived, and they try to piece together what happened to the ship and how they can fix it.
...
Ever hear of the film PANDORUM? I highly recommend it. This amazing film starring Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster is eerily similar to this book - except much better executed.
PANDORUM isn't the only source material this is borrowing from. There were also strong elements of Annihilation and Resident Evil.
Perhaps I am just too well-versed in Sci-Fi to enjoy this book. Pandorum is so similar to this, and so much better - I couldn't stop making comparisons throughout the whole thing.
I also found Bear's writing style to be confusing and vaguely perplexing. Even when I was being provided with "explanations," I was still a little shaky about what was going on - and not in a fun, Jeff Vandermeer sort of way. His descriptions of the monsters - and alien-like people - were sorely lacking and left me unable to really form any sort of mental picture for them.
The characters are neither fleshed-out nor compelling.
The scary horror scenes are not effective. You can't get a clear picture of what's going on, for one thing. And for another thing, they lack any sense of urgency.
Tl;dr - Confusing and vaguely unsatisfying. Borrows heavily from Pandorum, and lightly from Resident Evil and Annihilation. I feel like all this has been done before - and better.
October 16, 2013
Mystery in Space!
Poor Teacher. He wakes up cold and naked and without a memory, his only companion a mean little girl, on board a gigantic spaceship called “Ship”… whatever should he do? Why, he should move forward of course, forward, ever forward! Otherwise gigantic monsters out of some monster’s imagination will collect and/or devour him. He needs to figure out who he is, what his purpose may be, and what the heck is happening with Ship, or he’ll die. And so begins his brief and rather frenetic adventure. Or rather, his “adventure” – because this is less of an adventure and more like a nightmare that he cannot escape.
Greg Bear is one of the most respected ‘hard science’ writers of science fiction currently working. He’s probably some sort of genius scientist in his spare time, like Alastair Reynolds. But I didn’t really get a sense of hard science being central to the story. Nor, unlike other reviewers, did I feel this was an exploration of a Big Dumb Object. All the pleasures of both things are there, certainly. Fascinating science that makes my head spin and a BDO that is awesome in scope and also functions as a terrible haunted house in space, full of deadly traps and creatures just waiting to kill off poor Teacher. Again and again. Sorry, that last sentence was spoilerish – but in an ambiguous way that makes you want to read this book, right?
Despite the hard science and the BDO, I think the author is mainly interested in exploring things like Identity and Memory. The novel and its protagonist continually contemplate what makes us who we are – whether it is how we act in the here & now or whether it is about what we have done in our lives, our context, our relationship to ourselves, and how those things impact how we move forward. Ever forward! Teacher is a tabula rasa, which can prove frustrating at times and amusing at other times – particularly when he realizes he has just said or thought a word that is new to him. But I think that Teacher, whether frustrating or amusing, is mainly a blank slate so that the reader can contemplate what is needed to fill in those blanks.
The novel is fun but it is also surprisingly cerebral. It has action and wonder and mystery and it has some endearing characters and it has plenty of fearsome beasts, all of that fun stuff. But this is more of a novel of contemplation than one of adventure. The protagonist is ever moving forward, trying to survive… but I spent most of my time musing on all the moving parts that make up a human, that create the human condition itself. I think that that is exactly what Bear intended when writing Hull Zero Three.
Poor Teacher. He wakes up cold and naked and without a memory, his only companion a mean little girl, on board a gigantic spaceship called “Ship”… whatever should he do? Why, he should move forward of course, forward, ever forward! Otherwise gigantic monsters out of some monster’s imagination will collect and/or devour him. He needs to figure out who he is, what his purpose may be, and what the heck is happening with Ship, or he’ll die. And so begins his brief and rather frenetic adventure. Or rather, his “adventure” – because this is less of an adventure and more like a nightmare that he cannot escape.
Greg Bear is one of the most respected ‘hard science’ writers of science fiction currently working. He’s probably some sort of genius scientist in his spare time, like Alastair Reynolds. But I didn’t really get a sense of hard science being central to the story. Nor, unlike other reviewers, did I feel this was an exploration of a Big Dumb Object. All the pleasures of both things are there, certainly. Fascinating science that makes my head spin and a BDO that is awesome in scope and also functions as a terrible haunted house in space, full of deadly traps and creatures just waiting to kill off poor Teacher. Again and again. Sorry, that last sentence was spoilerish – but in an ambiguous way that makes you want to read this book, right?
Despite the hard science and the BDO, I think the author is mainly interested in exploring things like Identity and Memory. The novel and its protagonist continually contemplate what makes us who we are – whether it is how we act in the here & now or whether it is about what we have done in our lives, our context, our relationship to ourselves, and how those things impact how we move forward. Ever forward! Teacher is a tabula rasa, which can prove frustrating at times and amusing at other times – particularly when he realizes he has just said or thought a word that is new to him. But I think that Teacher, whether frustrating or amusing, is mainly a blank slate so that the reader can contemplate what is needed to fill in those blanks.
The novel is fun but it is also surprisingly cerebral. It has action and wonder and mystery and it has some endearing characters and it has plenty of fearsome beasts, all of that fun stuff. But this is more of a novel of contemplation than one of adventure. The protagonist is ever moving forward, trying to survive… but I spent most of my time musing on all the moving parts that make up a human, that create the human condition itself. I think that that is exactly what Bear intended when writing Hull Zero Three.
April 8, 2013
Part survival horror, part Science Fiction exploration novel, Hull Zero Three may have an old-fashioned streak but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Not since Non-Stop has a generation ship story so gripped me. I’m saying ‘generation ship’ as opposed to ‘big-dumb-object’, because, frankly, we know what Ship is from the start.
The novel opens in relentless fashion and then hurtles along at breakneck pace. The first person narrative is jerky, disjointed. Confused. It is perfect. Consider: the protagonist opens his eyes from “dreamtime” into what is easily the most hellishly disturbing space-ship environment I have ever read; he is immediately in mortal danger, and has to react, fuelled by instinct and adrenaline; it never lets up; there are bodies everywhere; blood on the walls; it’s really grim; the protagonist has amnesia; he is scared witless and as confused as can possibly be. Like I said, perfect. Bear does a remarkable job of placing the reader in the protagonist’s shoes (so to speak – the protagonist is naked when the story opens).
Ship is large, very large, and a multitude of environments feature in the story. In all this space, there is ample opportunity for drama and mayhem, as the protagonist treks (or flees) through the ship, trying to piece together what the hell has happened (or is still happening) and who the hell he is. He meets up with others along the way. Things happen. Revelations follow. What’s not to like?
It’s sense of wonder overload when the revelations start. The author pulls out all the stops and things get progressively weirder and weirder, saturating the whole story with breathless anticipation. Surprises follow one another in rapid succession and nothing, nothing is what it seems.
One last, but very important, observation: despite the tension and the terror, this is first and foremost a science fiction novel. Forget that, and you’ll likely be disappointed.
The novel opens in relentless fashion and then hurtles along at breakneck pace. The first person narrative is jerky, disjointed. Confused. It is perfect. Consider: the protagonist opens his eyes from “dreamtime” into what is easily the most hellishly disturbing space-ship environment I have ever read; he is immediately in mortal danger, and has to react, fuelled by instinct and adrenaline; it never lets up; there are bodies everywhere; blood on the walls; it’s really grim; the protagonist has amnesia; he is scared witless and as confused as can possibly be. Like I said, perfect. Bear does a remarkable job of placing the reader in the protagonist’s shoes (so to speak – the protagonist is naked when the story opens).
Ship is large, very large, and a multitude of environments feature in the story. In all this space, there is ample opportunity for drama and mayhem, as the protagonist treks (or flees) through the ship, trying to piece together what the hell has happened (or is still happening) and who the hell he is. He meets up with others along the way. Things happen. Revelations follow. What’s not to like?
It’s sense of wonder overload when the revelations start. The author pulls out all the stops and things get progressively weirder and weirder, saturating the whole story with breathless anticipation. Surprises follow one another in rapid succession and nothing, nothing is what it seems.
One last, but very important, observation: despite the tension and the terror, this is first and foremost a science fiction novel. Forget that, and you’ll likely be disappointed.
August 23, 2018
I think I did Greg Bear a disservice. I kinda avoided his more recent novels ever since Quantico and all the Halo tie-in novels because A: I wasn't all that interested in Quantico and B: I never played the Halo games.
Oh, I know, I know, SHAME ON ME... but then I saw the rating of this book in GR and thought... huh... maybe I ought to pass.
Well, that is a DEFINITE SHAME ON ME.
Why? Because Bear goes all out with the Hard-SF with a grand reprisal of the delightful Biopunk glories I tended to associate with him. Plus this is a total space opera horror with our MC waking without memories and losing skin to the freezing surfaces while a young woman tells him to ignore all the dying men in pods all around him.
Great opening. Sure, it might be like one or two horror SF movies you might have seen, but never mind that. Bear just opens there and turns this into an adventure on a very interesting HUGE spacecraft surrounding an ice moon it is consuming, all the bots and biological horrors seem to be out to clean up or destroy the newly awoken clones, and the rest is all pure mystery.
MYSTERY IN SPACE. :)
Great golly! If I was just reading this without knowing the author at all or knowing what great books he has written in the past, I would still probably rate this the same. It has elements of Indiana Jones with biological monstrosities on a broken Big Dumb Object that feels like that old movie The Cube, where sooooo many copies of the core characters keep getting ushered out like a respawn in a video game, where the whole damn ship is BROKEN and all we want to do is figure out WHY.
And Bear does it. He keeps things hopping and full of great descriptions and hints and images that would translate awesomely to the big screen or a full miniseries. Impalements, jumps, monsters, corpses galore, and nasty robots. :) Too awesome! And it's a straight adventure, too, starting out in the first part of the ship, Hull Zero One, barely surviving the trek across the almost destroyed Hull Zero Two, and praying there is safety and answers on Hull Zero Three.
And all the time, the spaceship revolves and revolves and does it's gorgeous interstellar thing. :)
Don't think that's all, tho. There's great introverted stuff here and his exploration of memory and identity gets full marks here just as it used to in, say, his Queen of Angels. This is chock-full of all the goodies and ambition I've come to admire in all his writing.
Where it doesn't succeed is not of consequence. On the whole, when compared to similar kinds of Space Opera SF, hard or otherwise, Bear's imagination is truly one to behold and love. I'm reminded of just how much stock I always put in his books.
I'm back.
I should never have doubted.
Oh, I know, I know, SHAME ON ME... but then I saw the rating of this book in GR and thought... huh... maybe I ought to pass.
Well, that is a DEFINITE SHAME ON ME.
Why? Because Bear goes all out with the Hard-SF with a grand reprisal of the delightful Biopunk glories I tended to associate with him. Plus this is a total space opera horror with our MC waking without memories and losing skin to the freezing surfaces while a young woman tells him to ignore all the dying men in pods all around him.
Great opening. Sure, it might be like one or two horror SF movies you might have seen, but never mind that. Bear just opens there and turns this into an adventure on a very interesting HUGE spacecraft surrounding an ice moon it is consuming, all the bots and biological horrors seem to be out to clean up or destroy the newly awoken clones, and the rest is all pure mystery.
MYSTERY IN SPACE. :)
Great golly! If I was just reading this without knowing the author at all or knowing what great books he has written in the past, I would still probably rate this the same. It has elements of Indiana Jones with biological monstrosities on a broken Big Dumb Object that feels like that old movie The Cube, where sooooo many copies of the core characters keep getting ushered out like a respawn in a video game, where the whole damn ship is BROKEN and all we want to do is figure out WHY.
And Bear does it. He keeps things hopping and full of great descriptions and hints and images that would translate awesomely to the big screen or a full miniseries. Impalements, jumps, monsters, corpses galore, and nasty robots. :) Too awesome! And it's a straight adventure, too, starting out in the first part of the ship, Hull Zero One, barely surviving the trek across the almost destroyed Hull Zero Two, and praying there is safety and answers on Hull Zero Three.
And all the time, the spaceship revolves and revolves and does it's gorgeous interstellar thing. :)
Don't think that's all, tho. There's great introverted stuff here and his exploration of memory and identity gets full marks here just as it used to in, say, his Queen of Angels. This is chock-full of all the goodies and ambition I've come to admire in all his writing.
Where it doesn't succeed is not of consequence. On the whole, when compared to similar kinds of Space Opera SF, hard or otherwise, Bear's imagination is truly one to behold and love. I'm reminded of just how much stock I always put in his books.
I'm back.
I should never have doubted.
February 9, 2012
I was very disappointed by this novel.
The cover is cool and suggests epic space-faring science fictiony stuff.
Too bad the story fell short.
Way short.
The novel offers an interesting technological premise (a space ship sent from earth on a 500-year journey, and all the challenges that would entail).
But I was bored. There was a lot of description of the innards of the ship, and after awhile I tired of the constant struggle to try and create a mental image based on the confusing descriptions.
The writing style was lacking as well. The tone was constantly slow and relaxed, like a genial grandfather reading a story to a grandchild with the intent of lulling the child to sleep. And given that half of this story involved people running around the innards of the space ship, being chased by things intent on killing them, such a benign tone is not appropriate.
Ultimately I finished the book because I kept hoping it would improve or get good. It didn't. Meh.
I'm reading Greg Bear's SLANT now and it is much better.
The cover is cool and suggests epic space-faring science fictiony stuff.
Too bad the story fell short.
Way short.
The novel offers an interesting technological premise (a space ship sent from earth on a 500-year journey, and all the challenges that would entail).
But I was bored. There was a lot of description of the innards of the ship, and after awhile I tired of the constant struggle to try and create a mental image based on the confusing descriptions.
The writing style was lacking as well. The tone was constantly slow and relaxed, like a genial grandfather reading a story to a grandchild with the intent of lulling the child to sleep. And given that half of this story involved people running around the innards of the space ship, being chased by things intent on killing them, such a benign tone is not appropriate.
Ultimately I finished the book because I kept hoping it would improve or get good. It didn't. Meh.
I'm reading Greg Bear's SLANT now and it is much better.
February 26, 2012
Greg Bear is a fine writer - no argument there whatsoever.
He's also a superb hard science fiction writer; his novels contain accurate science (factual and speculative). But he can do that in his sleep.
Where Bear strives to be a well-rounded novelist are in the following (in which he commendably makes great efforts):
1) Bear wants to depict compelling characters,
2) Bear wants to employ superiorly-constructed prose, and
3) Bear wants his novels to have a message; the underlying theme is intended to add depth to the novel - it doesn't indicate that Bear has left any action out of the book.
And in this book, Bear stuggles on 1), does adequately on 2), and largely succeeds on 3) for the reader that delves deeply.
Plotwise, the entire book is exploration of a BDO (Big Dumb Object) by an amnesiac narrator. Where it disappoints is in the unendingly numbing page after page of description. Little is explained - all that the reader needs to know is that our hero's on a big spaceship that's damaged and malfunctioning. Pages of description of various rooms and hallways add ambience, but most of this could have been shortened. There are better BDO books out there (Rendezvous With Rama, Ringworld) which avoid this tendency to become annoying and answer more questions about each individual detail.
The fact that Bear chose a narrator with no memory (and initially with barely a working vocabulary) makes things more difficult. In Ringworld, intelligent characters traveled about investigating, discovering, and making surmises about function. Bear's protagonist, Teacher (otherwise nameless for most of the book), has no such ability, so the reader plods through endless description without much enlightenment; what understanding does come only comes slowly.
Present tense and short choppy sentences may become tiresome but Bear sticks with it because the technique also helps accentuate the fact that the protagonist is caught in something he can't begin to fathom and is trying to survive moment by moment.
Some advice: be sure to understand aft & forward and inboard & outboard, and don't confuse them. Inboard takes you towards the core or interior of the hull, while outboard takes you to the skin of the hull. During spin, gravity is simulated by centrifugal force, so inboard is "up". Aft heads toward the back (or stern) of the hull, while forward takes you to the front (or bow) of the hull.
Each "hull" is a large double-ended pod; the spaceship is comprised of three of these hulls which are each strapped to a iceball moonlet (harvested from the Oort Cloud). Each hull is bilaterally symmetric (imagine a double-ended snub-nosed torpedo rounded on both ends) - the central part of the hull is where the strut makes connection and attaches the hull to the moonlet. While the moonlet is gigantic and dwarves the hulls, they in turn are very large and distances within each hull are usually measured in kilometers. Of course through the generations, the ship consumes the moonlet as fuel, so it is intended to dwindle.
While I was bored (and admittedly confused) throughout the book, I still rate it highly. Will it be confusing for you? No need - I was just looking for answers that truthfully weren't required. All I've told you in this review is enough to understand what's happening and where it's happening. Bear deals with the later, so you do get answers for that if you stick with the book long enough.
But the ship itself... you don't need to know every detail, so just let the book move forward. (I kept going back and rereading and became frustrated that more wasn't revealed, but the basics were all there, as I've related to you above.)
While at first I was bored and frustrated, and was going to give this book 2 stars (or perhaps 3 stars at most), I will say that the ending is quite well-executed, and adds lots of depth to the novel. I did enjoy the last parts of the book, and plan to read this again (likely skimming the first 2/3 next time and focusing on the latter 1/3).
Also, another reason why I boosted to 4 stars: there are lots of tidbits throughout the book that are profound statements about our all-too-ordinary human lives. While reading the book, ponder each generalization that Teacher makes and ask yourself if that describes you (in your journey through life, questing for answers), and you'll gain another level of appreciation for the book and its quite simple yet subtle messages about life.
Why not give it 5 stars? I really didn't get into the characters. Teacher was fine until we met others and realized that previous teachers had died in their attempts, and he was just the most recently decanted of these identical persons. And the other characters felt a bit distant or obtuse - the girl became annoying quickly and only got worse.
Worth a read, but wait until you've got time to immerse yourself in the novel so that you appreciate the last 1/3 in particular. And don't sweat the first part - let it flow as fast as possible and don't worry about any lack of answers early on. You don't need to go back and reread looking for absolutes in the beginning stages like I did.
Recommended with reservations, but still recommended.
He's also a superb hard science fiction writer; his novels contain accurate science (factual and speculative). But he can do that in his sleep.
Where Bear strives to be a well-rounded novelist are in the following (in which he commendably makes great efforts):
1) Bear wants to depict compelling characters,
2) Bear wants to employ superiorly-constructed prose, and
3) Bear wants his novels to have a message; the underlying theme is intended to add depth to the novel - it doesn't indicate that Bear has left any action out of the book.
And in this book, Bear stuggles on 1), does adequately on 2), and largely succeeds on 3) for the reader that delves deeply.
Plotwise, the entire book is exploration of a BDO (Big Dumb Object) by an amnesiac narrator. Where it disappoints is in the unendingly numbing page after page of description. Little is explained - all that the reader needs to know is that our hero's on a big spaceship that's damaged and malfunctioning. Pages of description of various rooms and hallways add ambience, but most of this could have been shortened. There are better BDO books out there (Rendezvous With Rama, Ringworld) which avoid this tendency to become annoying and answer more questions about each individual detail.
The fact that Bear chose a narrator with no memory (and initially with barely a working vocabulary) makes things more difficult. In Ringworld, intelligent characters traveled about investigating, discovering, and making surmises about function. Bear's protagonist, Teacher (otherwise nameless for most of the book), has no such ability, so the reader plods through endless description without much enlightenment; what understanding does come only comes slowly.
Present tense and short choppy sentences may become tiresome but Bear sticks with it because the technique also helps accentuate the fact that the protagonist is caught in something he can't begin to fathom and is trying to survive moment by moment.
Some advice: be sure to understand aft & forward and inboard & outboard, and don't confuse them. Inboard takes you towards the core or interior of the hull, while outboard takes you to the skin of the hull. During spin, gravity is simulated by centrifugal force, so inboard is "up". Aft heads toward the back (or stern) of the hull, while forward takes you to the front (or bow) of the hull.
Each "hull" is a large double-ended pod; the spaceship is comprised of three of these hulls which are each strapped to a iceball moonlet (harvested from the Oort Cloud). Each hull is bilaterally symmetric (imagine a double-ended snub-nosed torpedo rounded on both ends) - the central part of the hull is where the strut makes connection and attaches the hull to the moonlet. While the moonlet is gigantic and dwarves the hulls, they in turn are very large and distances within each hull are usually measured in kilometers. Of course through the generations, the ship consumes the moonlet as fuel, so it is intended to dwindle.
While I was bored (and admittedly confused) throughout the book, I still rate it highly. Will it be confusing for you? No need - I was just looking for answers that truthfully weren't required. All I've told you in this review is enough to understand what's happening and where it's happening. Bear deals with the later, so you do get answers for that if you stick with the book long enough.
But the ship itself... you don't need to know every detail, so just let the book move forward. (I kept going back and rereading and became frustrated that more wasn't revealed, but the basics were all there, as I've related to you above.)
While at first I was bored and frustrated, and was going to give this book 2 stars (or perhaps 3 stars at most), I will say that the ending is quite well-executed, and adds lots of depth to the novel. I did enjoy the last parts of the book, and plan to read this again (likely skimming the first 2/3 next time and focusing on the latter 1/3).
Also, another reason why I boosted to 4 stars: there are lots of tidbits throughout the book that are profound statements about our all-too-ordinary human lives. While reading the book, ponder each generalization that Teacher makes and ask yourself if that describes you (in your journey through life, questing for answers), and you'll gain another level of appreciation for the book and its quite simple yet subtle messages about life.
Why not give it 5 stars? I really didn't get into the characters. Teacher was fine until we met others and realized that previous teachers had died in their attempts, and he was just the most recently decanted of these identical persons. And the other characters felt a bit distant or obtuse - the girl became annoying quickly and only got worse.
Worth a read, but wait until you've got time to immerse yourself in the novel so that you appreciate the last 1/3 in particular. And don't sweat the first part - let it flow as fast as possible and don't worry about any lack of answers early on. You don't need to go back and reread looking for absolutes in the beginning stages like I did.
Recommended with reservations, but still recommended.
June 19, 2012
_Hull Zero Three_ is a pretty solid 3-star sci-fi story. It’s my first read of anything by Greg Bear, and while I wasn’t exactly blown away I’ll keep my eye out for other stuff by him in the future. The novel follows the first person account of a newly awakened passenger on a seedship headed towards a destination as yet unknown. The sequence that opens the novel followed by the disorienting waking of the passenger is well done and immediately immerses the reader into the dangerous world of Ship.
The majority of the novel plays out as a kind of scientific mystery tinged with horror as the newly awakened crewman, soon dubbed “Teacher” by his saviour, is immediately thrust into a race to find out not only the purpose of the huge ship he has found himself aboard, but the reason for why everything seems to have gone so horribly wrong. As Teacher and his growing group of companions race across the giant hull in an attempt to “follow heat” and live with a constant spin up and spin down of gravity to which they must become accustomed, they also have to avoid the Factors, giant creatures created by Ship to keep things in order…unfortunately that apparently also means terminating any human strays they find in the myriad passageways and compartments that make up the vast environment.
I personally thought that Bear let the survival elements of the story play out a bit too long. The final mystery as to what happened to Ship to place it in its current predicament was interesting and had a lot of potential...unfortunately the conclusion reached by Teacher as to the agency behind Ship’s difficulties, though very intriguing, seemed to come out of nowhere given the relatively sparse build-up given to the clues that led to his intuitive leap. I thought more fleshing out of that aspect of the story and a little less emphasis on the survival part would have been an advantage. Overall a fun read, though not earth-shattering by any means.
The majority of the novel plays out as a kind of scientific mystery tinged with horror as the newly awakened crewman, soon dubbed “Teacher” by his saviour, is immediately thrust into a race to find out not only the purpose of the huge ship he has found himself aboard, but the reason for why everything seems to have gone so horribly wrong. As Teacher and his growing group of companions race across the giant hull in an attempt to “follow heat” and live with a constant spin up and spin down of gravity to which they must become accustomed, they also have to avoid the Factors, giant creatures created by Ship to keep things in order…unfortunately that apparently also means terminating any human strays they find in the myriad passageways and compartments that make up the vast environment.
I personally thought that Bear let the survival elements of the story play out a bit too long. The final mystery as to what happened to Ship to place it in its current predicament was interesting and had a lot of potential...unfortunately the conclusion reached by Teacher as to the agency behind Ship’s difficulties, though very intriguing, seemed to come out of nowhere given the relatively sparse build-up given to the clues that led to his intuitive leap. I thought more fleshing out of that aspect of the story and a little less emphasis on the survival part would have been an advantage. Overall a fun read, though not earth-shattering by any means.
July 23, 2014
I checked the book on its publication day yesterday and I have to say I was hooked and Hull Zero Three hijacked my reading time. Very compelling stream of consciousness hard-sf and it just works, however strange the combination sounds; a great moving ending I was sad to leave the milieu of our heroes; the tale about a deep space huge ship hurling through space at 20% light speed and the humans "produced" on it for reasons that will be revealed keeps one guessing to the end. The book is a bit too short in some ways and I would have loved an epic tale with the characters/setting here
I will leave with a quote and add the full FBc rv hpefully in a couple of weeks latest:
"I don’t know which is more unsettling—meeting myself dead or meeting myself alive"
Here is the FBC review:
INTRODUCTION: "A starship hurtles through the emptiness of space. Its destination-unknown. Its purpose-a mystery. Its history-lost. Now, one man wakes up. Ripped from a dream of a new home-a new planet and the woman he was meant to love in his arms-he finds himself, wet, naked, and freezing to death. The dark halls are full of monsters but trusting other survivors he meets might be the greater danger. All he has are questions-- Who is he? Where are they going? What happened to the dream of a new life? What happened to the woman he loved? What happened to Hull 03? All will be answered, if he can survive. Uncover the mystery. Fix the ship. Find a way home."
Greg Bear is a famous name in sf and his novels of years ago (Eon is the most notable) were highlights for me at the time; while most are dated today, I still have a fondness for Moving Mars which has remained strongly in my memory and it is the only one of the author's older work I would recommend for today's readers; a novel of politics, love and revolution in a sfnal context, Moving Mars is less dependent on any particular sf trope, so it is one that has "time legs" imho.
Slant which takes place in Moving Mars' milieu may still be of interest too, though it never connected that well with me even at the time and it's very "cyberpunky" with the now dead subgenre's combination of prescience (social computing, Internet's pervasive reach and transformative power) and hilarious naivete (human nature, politics, history), cyberpunk being the Jetsons of the 90's and a perfect showcase for why and how sf dates so quickly.
FORMAT/INFO: Hull Zero Three stands at about 330 pages divided into three parts and quite a few short chapters, all with descriptive names. For most part the narration is first person stream-of-consciousness with the - "recently born" though as a a full grown man - narrator slowly discovering or "recalling" pertinent facts about the situation at hand while he essentially tries to survive moment to moment. The blurb above describes well enough the general set-up and part of the novel's enjoyment is discovering what's what, so I will not add more. Hull Zero Three is literary hard sf with a good dose of social commentary.
OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: "I don’t know which is more unsettling—meeting myself dead or meeting myself alive"
Hull Zero Three stands on its style first and foremost; if the stream of consciousness narrative that you can get a taste HERE entrances you as it has happened to me, than you will love it since if you keep reading, you will slowly understand what's what as well as you will get to know a fascinating set of characters.
It is true that the book is confusing for a good while and I found myself retracing the narrative several times when some new detail appeared that seemed implied earlier and I could not recall it, but that is natural since the narrator is confused himself and the book conveys this perfectly.
The hard sf stuff (ship capabilities, layout, conditions, artifacts) is also done superbly and we slowly fit the puzzle together with the narrator. From time to time, new words and later concepts and ideas pop-up - one of the novel's main conceits is that the narrator is imprinted before "birth" but recalls stuff if/when situations warrant - and the author handles this aspect very well, never slipping by using words that the narrator could not have known and were not mentioned before.
For its first two parts which cover most of the book, Hull Zero Three was a superb read that showed how you can combine a literary style with hard-sf and keep the reader turning the pages, but I was mixed about the last part that explains things. On its own it is well done and quite emotional, but I thought that it broke the novel's unity and its narrative balance, moving from immediacy and continual discovery, to a view from above and omniscience. This change stamped Hull Zero Three as a genre novel that conforms to the requirement of explaining (almost) all. And that did not work well for me since I would rather have had an ambiguous ending with the characters still facing the unknown, ending which if handled well would have been more in the spirit of what came before.
All in all, Hull Zero Three (A+) is very good and I highly recommend it, but I still have this little regret that with an open ending it could have been one of the year's top novels for me; the explanatory last part brought it firmly into the genre camp and its expectations, rather than holding to the "convictions" of the first two parts that transcend sf.
I will leave with a quote and add the full FBc rv hpefully in a couple of weeks latest:
"I don’t know which is more unsettling—meeting myself dead or meeting myself alive"
Here is the FBC review:
INTRODUCTION: "A starship hurtles through the emptiness of space. Its destination-unknown. Its purpose-a mystery. Its history-lost. Now, one man wakes up. Ripped from a dream of a new home-a new planet and the woman he was meant to love in his arms-he finds himself, wet, naked, and freezing to death. The dark halls are full of monsters but trusting other survivors he meets might be the greater danger. All he has are questions-- Who is he? Where are they going? What happened to the dream of a new life? What happened to the woman he loved? What happened to Hull 03? All will be answered, if he can survive. Uncover the mystery. Fix the ship. Find a way home."
Greg Bear is a famous name in sf and his novels of years ago (Eon is the most notable) were highlights for me at the time; while most are dated today, I still have a fondness for Moving Mars which has remained strongly in my memory and it is the only one of the author's older work I would recommend for today's readers; a novel of politics, love and revolution in a sfnal context, Moving Mars is less dependent on any particular sf trope, so it is one that has "time legs" imho.
Slant which takes place in Moving Mars' milieu may still be of interest too, though it never connected that well with me even at the time and it's very "cyberpunky" with the now dead subgenre's combination of prescience (social computing, Internet's pervasive reach and transformative power) and hilarious naivete (human nature, politics, history), cyberpunk being the Jetsons of the 90's and a perfect showcase for why and how sf dates so quickly.
FORMAT/INFO: Hull Zero Three stands at about 330 pages divided into three parts and quite a few short chapters, all with descriptive names. For most part the narration is first person stream-of-consciousness with the - "recently born" though as a a full grown man - narrator slowly discovering or "recalling" pertinent facts about the situation at hand while he essentially tries to survive moment to moment. The blurb above describes well enough the general set-up and part of the novel's enjoyment is discovering what's what, so I will not add more. Hull Zero Three is literary hard sf with a good dose of social commentary.
OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: "I don’t know which is more unsettling—meeting myself dead or meeting myself alive"
Hull Zero Three stands on its style first and foremost; if the stream of consciousness narrative that you can get a taste HERE entrances you as it has happened to me, than you will love it since if you keep reading, you will slowly understand what's what as well as you will get to know a fascinating set of characters.
It is true that the book is confusing for a good while and I found myself retracing the narrative several times when some new detail appeared that seemed implied earlier and I could not recall it, but that is natural since the narrator is confused himself and the book conveys this perfectly.
The hard sf stuff (ship capabilities, layout, conditions, artifacts) is also done superbly and we slowly fit the puzzle together with the narrator. From time to time, new words and later concepts and ideas pop-up - one of the novel's main conceits is that the narrator is imprinted before "birth" but recalls stuff if/when situations warrant - and the author handles this aspect very well, never slipping by using words that the narrator could not have known and were not mentioned before.
For its first two parts which cover most of the book, Hull Zero Three was a superb read that showed how you can combine a literary style with hard-sf and keep the reader turning the pages, but I was mixed about the last part that explains things. On its own it is well done and quite emotional, but I thought that it broke the novel's unity and its narrative balance, moving from immediacy and continual discovery, to a view from above and omniscience. This change stamped Hull Zero Three as a genre novel that conforms to the requirement of explaining (almost) all. And that did not work well for me since I would rather have had an ambiguous ending with the characters still facing the unknown, ending which if handled well would have been more in the spirit of what came before.
All in all, Hull Zero Three (A+) is very good and I highly recommend it, but I still have this little regret that with an open ending it could have been one of the year's top novels for me; the explanatory last part brought it firmly into the genre camp and its expectations, rather than holding to the "convictions" of the first two parts that transcend sf.
December 29, 2010
It's rare that I finish a book and really truly have no clue what I just read.
I spent the first 70 pages or so irritated with the book. The next 200 or so sorta into it, waiting for a twist that never came in the final 40. It was both trying too hard to be unique while ending up being very samey and similar to a lot of the stuff I've read before.
I was really excited for this, so part of the problem may have been that I set a bar too high, but still. Highly disappointing.
I spent the first 70 pages or so irritated with the book. The next 200 or so sorta into it, waiting for a twist that never came in the final 40. It was both trying too hard to be unique while ending up being very samey and similar to a lot of the stuff I've read before.
I was really excited for this, so part of the problem may have been that I set a bar too high, but still. Highly disappointing.
February 1, 2016
Cataloguing everything wrong with this book would take an age. Suffice to say poor writing combined with poor plotting leaves me frustrated with another Bear novel that had enough interesting ideas to give it a fairly generous two stars. As with previous books I've read by him, I find that the material would probably have suited another writer much better. In this case, Alastair Reynolds, who would have delighted in the Gothic horror elements and in fact wrote a vastly superior novella, Slow Bullets, that somewhat overlaps in territory.
September 4, 2010
I was a fan of Bear’s SF for years through Darwin’s Children. After that book, his more recent works were near-future thrillers that seemed targeted more to the mainstream market and did not live up to the quality of his earlier work. In Hull Zero Three Bear returns to more traditional SF but, alas, does not return to his previous stellar level of writing.
The narrator of Hull Zero Three awakens naked and freezing with very fragmented memories. He knows he is on a “Ship” but little more. He apparently is on a Ship of humans on a long voyage to settle a new world, but neither he nor the reader knows where the other passengers are or why he was awakened. A strange young girl rescues him from likely death, and they begin fleeing through a labyrinth of passages in an apparently hostile environment, with hatches that open and close, strange creatures that try to kill them, and no apparent destination in mind except “forward”. The narrator has a seemingly interminable series of narrow escapes, which Bear describes in excruciating detail. I can take only so many pages of curving passages, glimmering lights, and how the ship is spinning. Presumably the dramatic tension is supposed to be growing, but I just wanted him to get on with it.
Ultimately there is a ho-hum resolution of most of the mysteries in the book, one with a bit too much of a mystical element for my personal taste. Sometimes a tedious novel redeems itself with a rousing denouement; sometimes a lackluster ending is tolerable because getting there was so interesting or the characters were engaging. Unfortunately, neither is the case in Hull Zero Three.
The narrator of Hull Zero Three awakens naked and freezing with very fragmented memories. He knows he is on a “Ship” but little more. He apparently is on a Ship of humans on a long voyage to settle a new world, but neither he nor the reader knows where the other passengers are or why he was awakened. A strange young girl rescues him from likely death, and they begin fleeing through a labyrinth of passages in an apparently hostile environment, with hatches that open and close, strange creatures that try to kill them, and no apparent destination in mind except “forward”. The narrator has a seemingly interminable series of narrow escapes, which Bear describes in excruciating detail. I can take only so many pages of curving passages, glimmering lights, and how the ship is spinning. Presumably the dramatic tension is supposed to be growing, but I just wanted him to get on with it.
Ultimately there is a ho-hum resolution of most of the mysteries in the book, one with a bit too much of a mystical element for my personal taste. Sometimes a tedious novel redeems itself with a rousing denouement; sometimes a lackluster ending is tolerable because getting there was so interesting or the characters were engaging. Unfortunately, neither is the case in Hull Zero Three.
February 10, 2012
It's a story as old as science fiction itself. Guy wakes up on a spaceship, has no freaking clue where he is or what he's supposed to do, aaaaand run with it. As a veritable elder statesman of the hard sci-fi genre, Greg Bear both embraces and subverts this cliched idea in the utterly brilliant Hull Zero Three.
I won't pull any punches - HZT is a ~300 page novel, and for about the first 200-225 pages there's going to be a lot of "buh"s and "what the hell?"s. The book's protagonist, the functionally named Teacher, wakes up in a statis pod not just without his real name and memories but the very words needed to describe the bizarre world in which he awakens. Between the phantasmagoric descriptions of the creatures and killers that populate the ship and the detail Bear goes through in describing the weird tri-hulled concept of his colony ship (he is all about internally consistent physics), there's a lot of confusion. And terror.
But eventually the pieces start to fit - some slide gently into place, some clunking into place with audible 'thunk's in my brain. Hull Zero Three might feel like a woefully shoestring, incomplete story at first, but the ending's revelations bring the whole story of Ship and Teacher to light in a very satisfying fashion. I was not expecting a hard sci-fi novel with such a boilerplate concept to be a dark tale of memory, consciousness and the ethics of colonization - topics which are rarely touched on by most science fiction authors. It's a very fun ride and surprisingly deep. Highly recommended.
I won't pull any punches - HZT is a ~300 page novel, and for about the first 200-225 pages there's going to be a lot of "buh"s and "what the hell?"s. The book's protagonist, the functionally named Teacher, wakes up in a statis pod not just without his real name and memories but the very words needed to describe the bizarre world in which he awakens. Between the phantasmagoric descriptions of the creatures and killers that populate the ship and the detail Bear goes through in describing the weird tri-hulled concept of his colony ship (he is all about internally consistent physics), there's a lot of confusion. And terror.
But eventually the pieces start to fit - some slide gently into place, some clunking into place with audible 'thunk's in my brain. Hull Zero Three might feel like a woefully shoestring, incomplete story at first, but the ending's revelations bring the whole story of Ship and Teacher to light in a very satisfying fashion. I was not expecting a hard sci-fi novel with such a boilerplate concept to be a dark tale of memory, consciousness and the ethics of colonization - topics which are rarely touched on by most science fiction authors. It's a very fun ride and surprisingly deep. Highly recommended.
August 21, 2011
This was a really, really good book.
Hull Zero Three concerns the adventures of an amnesiac Teacher who comes out of hyper-sleep on a generation ship in which things have gone Badly Wrong. You get quite a few stories for your money here, part thought-experiment on the nature (both ethical and physical) of a generation ship voyaging to a new system, part existentialist monster-horror and part story about what defines us as humans.
It's Hard Sci-fi and completely merits the capital H, but the way the story is told means that the author is able to avoid the narrative getting bogged down by page after page of expository description. That's not to say the pacing was perfect: The first twenty percent of the book is a real struggle both in terms of how attached we feel to our protagonist and the amount of time and space devoted to what stuff looks like.
Unfortunately the whole book is layered like an onion so any in-depth discussion will ruin it for prospective readers. Suffice it to say it's hovering on the very cusp of being a five star book, and that it is absolutely recommended speculative fiction. I will have to start plundering Greg Bear's Klados.
Hull Zero Three concerns the adventures of an amnesiac Teacher who comes out of hyper-sleep on a generation ship in which things have gone Badly Wrong. You get quite a few stories for your money here, part thought-experiment on the nature (both ethical and physical) of a generation ship voyaging to a new system, part existentialist monster-horror and part story about what defines us as humans.
It's Hard Sci-fi and completely merits the capital H, but the way the story is told means that the author is able to avoid the narrative getting bogged down by page after page of expository description. That's not to say the pacing was perfect: The first twenty percent of the book is a real struggle both in terms of how attached we feel to our protagonist and the amount of time and space devoted to what stuff looks like.
Unfortunately the whole book is layered like an onion so any in-depth discussion will ruin it for prospective readers. Suffice it to say it's hovering on the very cusp of being a five star book, and that it is absolutely recommended speculative fiction. I will have to start plundering Greg Bear's Klados.
March 24, 2011
This month I am recommending Greg Bear's new book. No, not the Halo book, although I hear it's pretty good, too. I am talking about HULL ZERO THREE, which I keep referring to as Greg's take on ALIEN. Greg is a hard science fiction writer, but when he gets hold of a good story, look out. This is one. A page turner once you get into it and begin to see the story taking shape, it follows the efforts of a newly awakened space traveler in a giant space ship as he realizes that his awakening has not gone according to plan and there are things hunting him throughout the ship. As usual with Greg, his exploration of ideas about space travel and procreation after light years of deep space sleep to new worlds are fascinating and cause for some serious thinking. I like this book a lot and do recommend it.
March 13, 2011
I've been a big Greg Bear fan ever since reading "The Forge of God" many, many years ago. For whatever reason, and there wasn't one, I stopped reading Bear after reading three books in "The Way" series. "Legacy" was the last Bear book I read; that's how long it's been since I've read anything by him.
Fast forward to "Hull Zero Three", the Bear book I chose at random when I realized that he had written quite a few books since I stopped reading anything by him. "The Way of All Ghosts" would have been the logical choice for me - "Eon" and "Eternity" are still two of my favorite sci-fi books - but I skipped all the way to his most recent book. The blurbs and descriptions for "Hull Zero Three" looked both interesting and strange, so I went with it.
And after reading it, I'm really at a loss to describe what I read. This isn't saying that "Hull Zero Three" was good or bad, it was both. Good as a very distant future sci-fi story full of Bear's grand ideas; bad as a single book of a mere 320 pages. There were so many pieces of Hull Zero Three that could have been expanded or even, in several cases, spun off as separate books that I was left wondering how the story could be wrapped up in any meaningful sort of way. Apparently Bear was wondering the same thing, based on the abrupt ending.
If you're a Bear fan, I recommend "Hull Zero Three" because it's quite a bit different than his previous work. For anyone else, sci-fi readers included, it may be a bit of a disappointment.
Fast forward to "Hull Zero Three", the Bear book I chose at random when I realized that he had written quite a few books since I stopped reading anything by him. "The Way of All Ghosts" would have been the logical choice for me - "Eon" and "Eternity" are still two of my favorite sci-fi books - but I skipped all the way to his most recent book. The blurbs and descriptions for "Hull Zero Three" looked both interesting and strange, so I went with it.
And after reading it, I'm really at a loss to describe what I read. This isn't saying that "Hull Zero Three" was good or bad, it was both. Good as a very distant future sci-fi story full of Bear's grand ideas; bad as a single book of a mere 320 pages. There were so many pieces of Hull Zero Three that could have been expanded or even, in several cases, spun off as separate books that I was left wondering how the story could be wrapped up in any meaningful sort of way. Apparently Bear was wondering the same thing, based on the abrupt ending.
If you're a Bear fan, I recommend "Hull Zero Three" because it's quite a bit different than his previous work. For anyone else, sci-fi readers included, it may be a bit of a disappointment.
December 6, 2010
Probably closer to 3.5 stars for me. This is not a hard Scifi novel, nor is it similar to past Greg Bear novels. It is however, an enjoyable, short, fast paced, science fiction mystery / survival thriller. Yes, it does have a lot of similarities to the movie Pandorum. Yes, it would make a great Saturday night "B" movie on the SyFy channel. And, yes, it is nothing really new or fresh in the genre. Even with all these similarities, it still has Greg Bear's flare and writing talent to keep you reading. Bear is outstanding at putting his character's thoughts into written form. He deftly is able to suck us in to his world's and into his nightmares. Bear's prose elevates this somewhat ordinary science fiction story to a higher level. There are some other redeeming factors to the story too. The protagonist Teacher, is fighting to stay alive, to discover his past, and to unlock the truth, while at the same time, he is trying to figure out why he/they are in their predicament. This novel is quite short, and the ending is not a knockout, but overall worthy of a read if you are a Bear fan or a fan of science fiction.
October 17, 2013
It took me a while to get round to finishing Hull Zero Three, but it's not a difficult book at all. It's easy to read, despite the ethical questions it brings up; it's not hard SF, really, it's low on technical details.
Mostly Greg Bear gives you a sort of survival-horror world, which you come to realise is a version of the generation-ship idea, and then poses a problem unique to this particular ship that they have to work through. Because the main character has a sort of amnesia, all of this is revealed slowly -- which is a pretty clever way to do it, because obviously the reader is in the same position as the narrator.
Ultimately, Hull Zero Three didn't really get its claws into me -- there wasn't enough to make it stand out. But it is a fun read, and an interesting one.
Mostly Greg Bear gives you a sort of survival-horror world, which you come to realise is a version of the generation-ship idea, and then poses a problem unique to this particular ship that they have to work through. Because the main character has a sort of amnesia, all of this is revealed slowly -- which is a pretty clever way to do it, because obviously the reader is in the same position as the narrator.
Ultimately, Hull Zero Three didn't really get its claws into me -- there wasn't enough to make it stand out. But it is a fun read, and an interesting one.
November 10, 2025
I wish Greg Bear could get someone to write his amaizng stories. His ideas are so grand, but damn his writing keeps me underwhelmed no matter how exciting the scene is. It felt like three different books on different topics by differnt people, none of them particularly cohesive or well put together. The bits that weren't confusing were boring. Spoilers ahead: And the ending was just a hand wavey and explaining away the entire plot that came before it. This book could have been an article in Popular Mechanics and it would have been better for it.
This will probably be the last time i try a Greg Bear.
This will probably be the last time i try a Greg Bear.
January 15, 2012
The most interesting thing about this book was the way the author put the reader 100% into the shoes of the main character. This might not sound unusual, but in fact it was a difficult task because the main character is “born” right at the beginning of the novel as a full-sized adult humanoid with little to no memory—not even the memory of language itself. He is disgorged from some kind of growth crèche (think “The Matrix”) into a chaotic, freezing cold and dangerous environment where lots of weird monsters are for some reason trying to kill him. The descriptions are often quite inventive as the newly minted being attempts to understand the various strange environments and situations he finds himself in WITHOUT REFERRING TO ANY PREVIOUS KNOWLEDGE OR EVEN WORDS. Think about this. He has never seen, for example, a flower, so he cannot say “Gee, that mechanism over there is opening like a flower.” He has never seen a spaceship so he cannot describe the room he has just entered as “like the bridge on a star destroyer.” You get the picture. Imagine writing an entire book without being able to use a simile or a metaphor because the point-of-view character has nothing with which to compare anything.
This has been attempted before by other authors. One particularly successful attempt that I recall is Octavia Butler’s “The Fledgling.” Like Bear’s protagonist, the main character in “The Fledgling” awakens in the beginning of the book with no idea who or what she is. The reader sees a nearly incomprehensible situation unfold through the character’s newborn eyes. The key word here is “nearly.” Because “The Fledgling” is set on Earth, in a geography that is not entirely unknown to the reader, the reader can actually begin to make sense of the situation even if the character cannot. In addition, Butler wisely restricts this portion of the book to the first chapter or two, realizing that it is an interesting device but if overused could grow tiresome. Which brings me to the problems with “Hull Zero Three.”
With no idea of who or where he is, Bear’s protagonist stumbles from one horrible episode to another and has no idea what the frell is going on. The situation in which the character finds himself is so complex, the environment so completely alien, even an avid scifi reader like myself could not figure out what was happening most of the time, and long descriptions of things fail to make clear what the protagonist is seeing before him. Even the character is frustrated :“I hate this hallucinogenic guesswork. The mind shouldn’t be a game. Knowledge is who we are—memory and knowledge should be organized and easily available.” A drawing halfway through the book is obviously meant to shed some light on the spatial layout of the place, but it only confused me more.
The language/simile/metaphor problem is dispensed with about 1/3 of the way through the book as the protagonist acquires vocabulary and memories. For example, upon introducing a particularly strange new character into the story, whose “glistening muscles rearrange on the screw-shaped bones” –huh?--I could almost feel Bear throwing up his hands, for the next phrase is “looking more and more like a four-legged tank—or something called an armadillo. An armadillo with the head of an awful, lizardlike wolf. Three animals I’ve never seen.” But of course the reader has. If the author hadn’t thrown out these occasional bones, I’m not sure I could have understood the book at all.
This has been attempted before by other authors. One particularly successful attempt that I recall is Octavia Butler’s “The Fledgling.” Like Bear’s protagonist, the main character in “The Fledgling” awakens in the beginning of the book with no idea who or what she is. The reader sees a nearly incomprehensible situation unfold through the character’s newborn eyes. The key word here is “nearly.” Because “The Fledgling” is set on Earth, in a geography that is not entirely unknown to the reader, the reader can actually begin to make sense of the situation even if the character cannot. In addition, Butler wisely restricts this portion of the book to the first chapter or two, realizing that it is an interesting device but if overused could grow tiresome. Which brings me to the problems with “Hull Zero Three.”
With no idea of who or where he is, Bear’s protagonist stumbles from one horrible episode to another and has no idea what the frell is going on. The situation in which the character finds himself is so complex, the environment so completely alien, even an avid scifi reader like myself could not figure out what was happening most of the time, and long descriptions of things fail to make clear what the protagonist is seeing before him. Even the character is frustrated :“I hate this hallucinogenic guesswork. The mind shouldn’t be a game. Knowledge is who we are—memory and knowledge should be organized and easily available.” A drawing halfway through the book is obviously meant to shed some light on the spatial layout of the place, but it only confused me more.
The language/simile/metaphor problem is dispensed with about 1/3 of the way through the book as the protagonist acquires vocabulary and memories. For example, upon introducing a particularly strange new character into the story, whose “glistening muscles rearrange on the screw-shaped bones” –huh?--I could almost feel Bear throwing up his hands, for the next phrase is “looking more and more like a four-legged tank—or something called an armadillo. An armadillo with the head of an awful, lizardlike wolf. Three animals I’ve never seen.” But of course the reader has. If the author hadn’t thrown out these occasional bones, I’m not sure I could have understood the book at all.
January 7, 2014
A novel that keeps you guessing, a narrator whose scattered memories bear little relation to his present situation, a space-ship that might be symbol or reality, and a wealth of characters who aren’t quite human but might not be anything else; it would be hard to imagine a more unsettling start or setting for a novel. But Greg Bear’s Hull Zero Three keeps readers glued to the page, providing just enough consistency and detail to promise a genuine resolution.
The story has a computer-game feeling, with dark corridors, surprise scares waiting around corners, and sudden telling details that tie it all together. But everything is so beautifully and convincingly described, it makes a thoroughly enjoyable read. Cleverly three-dimensional and absorbingly real, it offers much more than any game, keeping the reader guessing, wondering, choosing and deciding as the tale progresses. Te freezing cold of space will have you shivering in your armchair, and the shape and design of the giant spaceship almost paints itself on the movie screen of the mind.
A well-hidden mystery blends science and human error into a shape resembling myth as the tale comes together, making this a fascinating, fast-flowing novel exploring space and human nature and more. Highly recommended for fans of science fiction, and ponderers of the fate of humankind.
Disclosure: One of my sons gave me this for Christmas
The story has a computer-game feeling, with dark corridors, surprise scares waiting around corners, and sudden telling details that tie it all together. But everything is so beautifully and convincingly described, it makes a thoroughly enjoyable read. Cleverly three-dimensional and absorbingly real, it offers much more than any game, keeping the reader guessing, wondering, choosing and deciding as the tale progresses. Te freezing cold of space will have you shivering in your armchair, and the shape and design of the giant spaceship almost paints itself on the movie screen of the mind.
A well-hidden mystery blends science and human error into a shape resembling myth as the tale comes together, making this a fascinating, fast-flowing novel exploring space and human nature and more. Highly recommended for fans of science fiction, and ponderers of the fate of humankind.
Disclosure: One of my sons gave me this for Christmas
June 6, 2013
Greg Bear throws you into the thick of the action in this wonderful and quirky hard sci-fi novel. My attention and imagination was hard at work right from the start of this free-standing novel about a man that wakes up without memory.
Regaining consciousness in a chaotic hallway, our protagonist notices a little girl calling him 'Teacher;' something that continues to puzzle him throughout his journey across the massive generation ship that sets the stage.
In a frantic pursuit of memories, knowledge, and survival the little girl leads 'Teacher' from hull to hull. As their struggle intensifies, they come to realize that they have been roused too soon and that Destination Guidance, whatever that is, has not performed its ultimate mission.
Hull Zero Three has all the right ingredients for an amazing novel and Greg Bear executes wonderfully by never giving the reader time to think about events as they occur. Bear has cleaned up his prose remarkably which leaves the novel blissfully void of his otherwise long rants and descriptions.
In short, a wonderful read. Greg Bear delivers a fast-paced novel that leaves your imagination reeling in anticipation of what comes next.
Regaining consciousness in a chaotic hallway, our protagonist notices a little girl calling him 'Teacher;' something that continues to puzzle him throughout his journey across the massive generation ship that sets the stage.
In a frantic pursuit of memories, knowledge, and survival the little girl leads 'Teacher' from hull to hull. As their struggle intensifies, they come to realize that they have been roused too soon and that Destination Guidance, whatever that is, has not performed its ultimate mission.
Hull Zero Three has all the right ingredients for an amazing novel and Greg Bear executes wonderfully by never giving the reader time to think about events as they occur. Bear has cleaned up his prose remarkably which leaves the novel blissfully void of his otherwise long rants and descriptions.
In short, a wonderful read. Greg Bear delivers a fast-paced novel that leaves your imagination reeling in anticipation of what comes next.
March 14, 2012
When this book first came out I looked at it and passed.
I have now read it after buying it at a reduced rate and my first instincts were right. Not really one of Bears stronger books.
It was not as enjoyable to read as many of his other books I have read. It’s a story that starts out with a fully grown man popping out of a birthing chamber with very little of his memory in place. He the meets varied people/creatures that help him reach Hull Zero Three.
He finds he is on a heavily damaged triple hull space ship that has sustained significant damage and the ship is now systematically killing everything aboard.
He runs into other inhabitants that are trying to stay alive and tags along with them.
The main problem I had with the book was that there was not a good link for me to the character , so that I didn’t really care whether they made it or not. Also the story was scattered and confusing at times
I have now read it after buying it at a reduced rate and my first instincts were right. Not really one of Bears stronger books.
It was not as enjoyable to read as many of his other books I have read. It’s a story that starts out with a fully grown man popping out of a birthing chamber with very little of his memory in place. He the meets varied people/creatures that help him reach Hull Zero Three.
He finds he is on a heavily damaged triple hull space ship that has sustained significant damage and the ship is now systematically killing everything aboard.
He runs into other inhabitants that are trying to stay alive and tags along with them.
The main problem I had with the book was that there was not a good link for me to the character , so that I didn’t really care whether they made it or not. Also the story was scattered and confusing at times
March 25, 2015
Alright. Wish I had got it on my Nook, and not a proper book. Updated 3/25:
I just saw that a friend was reading this, I felt bad. But I thought maybe she will like it. Maybe it will be more for her. Sadly, I was wrong. It's a stinker.
I just saw that a friend was reading this, I felt bad. But I thought maybe she will like it. Maybe it will be more for her. Sadly, I was wrong. It's a stinker.
October 4, 2011
It's a common enough SF trope to have its own three-letter acronym: BDO, the Big Dumb Object that human beings are forced, through threat, circumstance or mere monkey curiosity, to explore, often dying in the process. The canonical example would probably be Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama. And Greg Bear himself has played with the concept before, at greater length, in his 1985 novel Eon. Often, of course, it's a different kind of BDO—the Big Dangerous Object, 'cause it's a lot more interesting if the exploring party gets killed off one by one by things in the dark they don't understand. Again, a venerable idea; Algis Budrys' Rogue Moon is one intriguing and enduring take.
Greg Bear's Hull Zero Three falls more into the latter camp—the Object in which its narrator awakens is both Big and Dangerous, but not really all that Dumb. It's immediately obvious both to the reader and the character that he's in a big, slow starship, en route to an unknown destination. What's less obvious is... everything else.
This is one of those books where the protagonist wakes up confused, and gets more so for quite some time. Answers are slow in coming, while dangers are quick. This can be frustrating for the reader... at least to begin with, there doesn't seem to be much reason for a starship to be quite this inimical to its passengers. I certainly found it frustrating, though some faith in Bear and an interest in What Happens Next kept me reading through to the point where the situation began getting clearer.
And it does get clearer, never fear. The patient reader is rewarded with answers to the puzzles set up in the first half of the novel. It might be too much effort for too little payoff, but I kinda liked it.
Greg Bear's Hull Zero Three falls more into the latter camp—the Object in which its narrator awakens is both Big and Dangerous, but not really all that Dumb. It's immediately obvious both to the reader and the character that he's in a big, slow starship, en route to an unknown destination. What's less obvious is... everything else.
This is one of those books where the protagonist wakes up confused, and gets more so for quite some time. Answers are slow in coming, while dangers are quick. This can be frustrating for the reader... at least to begin with, there doesn't seem to be much reason for a starship to be quite this inimical to its passengers. I certainly found it frustrating, though some faith in Bear and an interest in What Happens Next kept me reading through to the point where the situation began getting clearer.
And it does get clearer, never fear. The patient reader is rewarded with answers to the puzzles set up in the first half of the novel. It might be too much effort for too little payoff, but I kinda liked it.
February 23, 2011
Hull Zero three was another book that recently subverted my expectations. The description I read of this title suggested to me a dark survival horror-style novel of a man being woken on board a generation ship to find the halls full of monsters and broken-down machinary and himself hunted.
Whilst that is not an entirely inaccurate description of the setup for the novel, I was somewhat disappointed to find this atmosphere somewhat lacking; in fact, that is one of my key complaints about this novel in general. I picked it up looking forward to the atmosphere of the setting only to find it minimised by the writing style and not delivering to my expectations. This is because I misinterpreted what this story actually was.
One it began to strike home I found myself drawn deep into a mind-bending story of Carrollian absurdity and creepiness, a drop at terminal velocity through a rabbit-hole full of surprises as the characters try desperately to understand why the ship is so damaged, why genetically-engineered monsters lurk in the hallways and, most importantly of all, who, or what, exactly are they themselves?
This is a classic science fiction novel of Ideas, and in that vein it most certainly does not disappoint, keeping you guessing as to the true villain (if there can be said to really be one) and tugging at your sympathies constantly until the very end.
There was perhaps one subplot (the silvery) that I think the story could have been stronger without, particularly the slight suggestion of deus ex machina provided right at the end, but on the whole it should be quite satisfying to anyone with a love of twisted philosophical plots.
Whilst that is not an entirely inaccurate description of the setup for the novel, I was somewhat disappointed to find this atmosphere somewhat lacking; in fact, that is one of my key complaints about this novel in general. I picked it up looking forward to the atmosphere of the setting only to find it minimised by the writing style and not delivering to my expectations. This is because I misinterpreted what this story actually was.
One it began to strike home I found myself drawn deep into a mind-bending story of Carrollian absurdity and creepiness, a drop at terminal velocity through a rabbit-hole full of surprises as the characters try desperately to understand why the ship is so damaged, why genetically-engineered monsters lurk in the hallways and, most importantly of all, who, or what, exactly are they themselves?
This is a classic science fiction novel of Ideas, and in that vein it most certainly does not disappoint, keeping you guessing as to the true villain (if there can be said to really be one) and tugging at your sympathies constantly until the very end.
There was perhaps one subplot (the silvery) that I think the story could have been stronger without, particularly the slight suggestion of deus ex machina provided right at the end, but on the whole it should be quite satisfying to anyone with a love of twisted philosophical plots.
July 28, 2023
A decent delve into horror in space, that ultimately falls flat in just about every catagory.
Hull Zero Three was very descriptive without really telling you much. If you like to read manuals on some kind of machine product, a car perhaps, you might get a lot out of this book. There were several moments where I thought the story could have gone down one of two different routes. The left being something interesting and the right, well, not so much. Too many right turns.
I enjoyed the first third of the book the most. Not as informative and exciting as the other two thirds, but more engaging and gripping. I felt the turning-point was the scene in which the characters choose a name for themselves. I lost a connection with the characters when this happened. By the end I felt the not-knowing what's going on, turned out to be a lot better than what Hull Zero Three was actually about. And, the supposed horror aspects of this book were just not there. Shame. I do enjoy Science Fiction Horror.
Ultimately, there are much better similar experiences to be had.
Pandorum for one.
Hull Zero Three was very descriptive without really telling you much. If you like to read manuals on some kind of machine product, a car perhaps, you might get a lot out of this book. There were several moments where I thought the story could have gone down one of two different routes. The left being something interesting and the right, well, not so much. Too many right turns.
I enjoyed the first third of the book the most. Not as informative and exciting as the other two thirds, but more engaging and gripping. I felt the turning-point was the scene in which the characters choose a name for themselves. I lost a connection with the characters when this happened. By the end I felt the not-knowing what's going on, turned out to be a lot better than what Hull Zero Three was actually about. And, the supposed horror aspects of this book were just not there. Shame. I do enjoy Science Fiction Horror.
Ultimately, there are much better similar experiences to be had.
Pandorum for one.
April 16, 2025
i randomly decided to pick up a sci-fi book at my library without looking into it 😃
honestly, it wasn’t too bad.. i didn’t REALLY understand what was going on, but neither did the protagonist, and the vibes of Scary Deep Space were definitely vibing. i really liked parts of it (Tsinoy, all the monsters, the weirdo found family, Kim the Lemon Man) and other parts were just … weird. like the doughnut monkeys at Destination Control. or Mother (who looks just like MC’s i’ve-never-actually-met-her wife). or the fact that MULTIPLE TIMES people dig other people out of slimy embryonic egg sacs and they’re all schloppy and sticky and gross.
the end didn’t make ALLLL that much sense, but it also kinda did. i’m definitely digging the mysterious supernatural force. i don’t know why it took his book.
all that to say. um. yeah, i read this…. maybe proper sci-fi enjoyers will enjoy/understand it more than i did! but it wasn’t all that bad!
honestly, it wasn’t too bad.. i didn’t REALLY understand what was going on, but neither did the protagonist, and the vibes of Scary Deep Space were definitely vibing. i really liked parts of it (Tsinoy, all the monsters, the weirdo found family, Kim the Lemon Man) and other parts were just … weird. like the doughnut monkeys at Destination Control. or Mother (who looks just like MC’s i’ve-never-actually-met-her wife). or the fact that MULTIPLE TIMES people dig other people out of slimy embryonic egg sacs and they’re all schloppy and sticky and gross.
the end didn’t make ALLLL that much sense, but it also kinda did. i’m definitely digging the mysterious supernatural force. i don’t know why it took his book.
all that to say. um. yeah, i read this…. maybe proper sci-fi enjoyers will enjoy/understand it more than i did! but it wasn’t all that bad!
August 20, 2012
Whew. It's been awhile since a book gave me so much eyestrain. I started reading it last night and then midnight came around and I was like "...I SHOULD go to sleep, but... one more chapter!!!"
Hull Zero Three turned out to be exactly the kind of story I like to read. The book opens with the rather rude awakening of the main character, who was in a sort of stasis pod aboard the ship. He is awakened, and immediately needs to run for his life. That pretty much sums up all you really need to know in order to start reading this book. Presumably due to his abrupt awakening, the character has no concrete memories. He recovers them slowly, so the reader discovers the secrets of the ship alongside him. You get a real feeling for the tenseness of the situation as he encounters corpses, blood smears, furry tentacle beak snapping monsters... what HAPPENED on this ship?
I really enjoy those sorts of survival stories, and this one had some really excellent writing. One of the interesting things about the character is that he can barely remember language, so the writing of the book evolves with him, as his memory and vocabulary return. I really appreciated that, but I can also see how it could be a bit annoying if you only look at it from an entertainment point of view. The whole survival and discover phase drags on for a bit, and a lot of the things he "discovers" are pretty obvious to the reader from the start, so you could be sitting there going "god when will this idiot wake the fuck up." I didn't feel like it was ever overdone, though, and there are plenty of things that are not obvious to the reader.
Of course, I don't think there has ever been a "mysterious environment where every answer only raises more questions" story that didn't end up being disappointing once the questions started getting answered, and Hull Zero Three didn't really break the mold. Once you get past the "simply fleeing and trying to survive" part of the book, things get kind of weird, but it does some unique things that I enjoyed. As someone who loves a good survival tale, the whole first part of the book was a solid 5, maybe even a 6 just for almost keeping me up all night wanting to keep reading. The rest of the book is what pulls it down to a 4, but even then it has a decent enough ending.
Hull Zero Three turned out to be exactly the kind of story I like to read. The book opens with the rather rude awakening of the main character, who was in a sort of stasis pod aboard the ship. He is awakened, and immediately needs to run for his life. That pretty much sums up all you really need to know in order to start reading this book. Presumably due to his abrupt awakening, the character has no concrete memories. He recovers them slowly, so the reader discovers the secrets of the ship alongside him. You get a real feeling for the tenseness of the situation as he encounters corpses, blood smears, furry tentacle beak snapping monsters... what HAPPENED on this ship?
I really enjoy those sorts of survival stories, and this one had some really excellent writing. One of the interesting things about the character is that he can barely remember language, so the writing of the book evolves with him, as his memory and vocabulary return. I really appreciated that, but I can also see how it could be a bit annoying if you only look at it from an entertainment point of view. The whole survival and discover phase drags on for a bit, and a lot of the things he "discovers" are pretty obvious to the reader from the start, so you could be sitting there going "god when will this idiot wake the fuck up." I didn't feel like it was ever overdone, though, and there are plenty of things that are not obvious to the reader.
Of course, I don't think there has ever been a "mysterious environment where every answer only raises more questions" story that didn't end up being disappointing once the questions started getting answered, and Hull Zero Three didn't really break the mold. Once you get past the "simply fleeing and trying to survive" part of the book, things get kind of weird, but it does some unique things that I enjoyed. As someone who loves a good survival tale, the whole first part of the book was a solid 5, maybe even a 6 just for almost keeping me up all night wanting to keep reading. The rest of the book is what pulls it down to a 4, but even then it has a decent enough ending.
October 22, 2014
"You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building."
If you recognize that, you get an idea of the reader's position as this book starts.
Except that in this version, the narrator is in deadly peril from the get-go.
And stays in it for hundreds of pages.
And the whole time he has no idea (nor do we) what's going on.
But gradually we find out, and it's a good story.
There is a LOT of description about where we are now, which is what made me think that at any moment a hollow voice would say "plugh" and our hero would find himself in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
There are a lot of deadly creatures, enough to make Neal Asher smile. But they are interesting, and used well.
Well before the end, we can figure out how it's going to end, but that's not a bad thing. It elevates the book from a POV-action adventure to a story that's about bigger ideas.
Not recommended for people who have been reading Sookie Stackhouse and Star Wars novels. This is serious stuff.
If you recognize that, you get an idea of the reader's position as this book starts.
Except that in this version, the narrator is in deadly peril from the get-go.
And stays in it for hundreds of pages.
And the whole time he has no idea (nor do we) what's going on.
But gradually we find out, and it's a good story.
There is a LOT of description about where we are now, which is what made me think that at any moment a hollow voice would say "plugh" and our hero would find himself in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
There are a lot of deadly creatures, enough to make Neal Asher smile. But they are interesting, and used well.
Well before the end, we can figure out how it's going to end, but that's not a bad thing. It elevates the book from a POV-action adventure to a story that's about bigger ideas.
Not recommended for people who have been reading Sookie Stackhouse and Star Wars novels. This is serious stuff.
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