Saturn by Ben Bova

For a good many years, when I was in my teens, twenties and thirties, Ben Bova was at the forefront of the science fiction field, publishing many great novels which I eagerly read and collected. A couple of years ago, after a long hiatus, I began to read some of his recent books which I had missed, and enjoyed a couple of the earlier ones, but at some point Bova, quite frankly, just started "mailing it in". His books are no longer very creative, his plotting and characterization are weak and filled with the latest memes and clichés, and Saturn was only able to hold my interest for about fifty pages before I gave up.


Another giant in the field is simply publishing on his laurels.

Venus by Ben Bova

Venus is another stop on Bova's Grand Tour. Alex Humphries, the son of a wealthy and powerful man, Martin Humphries, was lost on an expedition to Venus a few years prior to the start of the story, while trying to obtain, for the Greens, evidence that Earth's global warming is similar to the planetary greenhouse effect that has always enveloped the Planet of Love. When Humphries offers ten billion dollars to the first person who returns his son's remains, his other son, Van, who has been a sickly drone most of his life, decides to outfit his own expedition to compete for the prize, which will make him independent at last from his domineering and cruel father.

His only competition will be the expedition mounted by Lars Fuchs, an asteroid miner whose business was ruined and whose wife was stolen by the elder Humphries twenty years ago. Fuchs' ship is named Lucifer, and he spends much of his time in the story quoting Satan's lines from Milton. But there's more to Fuchs than his public persona would suggest, and he actually is one of the more interesting characters in the story by the end.

The best part of this book, however, is all of the fun details that Bova includes about the environment which he believes exists on Venus' surface, and in its cloud layers, and his suppositions about what sort of life might survive in such a vicious place. It ain't Carson of Venus, folks, or even Between Planets; it's nearly literally Hell, which suits the captain of Lucifer just fine, and our "hero" Van not as much.

Jupiter by Ben Bova

 I put some of the earlier books in the Grand Tour series on hold at the library, and the first to come in was Jupiter. I'm not quite sure how Bova fits in the Earth he describes as overrun by vast flooding caused by global warming in New Earth with the vision of an Earth run by the New Morality he envisions here. It seems a coalition of fundamentalists from all religions has banded together in the common cause of enforcing moral behavior and decency upon the entire world, and these fanatics are now in charge of government at all levels. Their antipathy to science is extreme, and their fears that scientists might discover something that disproves creationism or the puts into doubt the existence of God seems to drive all of the conflict in this novel.

The whiny little "hero" of this story is Grant Archer, a grad student in astronomy who is required to serve his four years of Public Service on a space station orbiting Jupiter, while his wife serves hers on Earth. He is recruited by the New Morality to spy on the scientists already on the station, who are suspected of the sin of finding intelligent life on another planet. Bova regales us with a vast data dump of interesting information about Jupiter and its environs, which I assume is mostly factual, though he certainly departs from terra cognita and takes us on a journey of the imagination as we explore deeper than any probes sent to date. You know (if you've read much SF at all in your life) how this has to go, don't you? Archer goes over to the "dark side", joins the expedition, finds the aliens, and broadcasts the truth far and wide so that it cannot be suppressed.

Hmm, is this how Bova creates the downfall of the New Morality and the rise of the government seen in later books? The truth will set you free?

I know that a good science fiction story often requires the willing suspension of disbelief, and yet I have a few quibbles with some of the themes in this story. Bova is cheating a bit with a cardboard cutout "anti-science" villainous entity here (he does the same with an evil corporate CEO in Venus, which I just started reading).

First, I cannot imagine a situation so dire that all of the fundamentalists of the world's religions would ever agree to cooperate for much longer than it took to stab one another in the back. Their fundamental beliefs, though it might not appear so to unbelievers, are not compatible. Not gonna happen. Ever.

Second, Bova seems to think that ALL, shall we say "religionists" are against science, and probably responsible for all of the funding cuts that our country's space program has taken recently (though he does mention in Venus that all NASA funds must be spent on studying climate change, not planetary exploration). Obviously Mr. Bova hangs around (or most likely doesn't) with a whole different group of Jesus Freaks from the ones I hang around with. It would be the exciting topic of many a Sunday afternoon coffee shop discussion if intelligent life was discovered on Jupiter. Do you know how many closet Trekkies go to my church?

New Earth by Ben Bova

 Here's another author whose works I've been reading for many years whom I've never reviewed on this blog. This particular novel is set in a series called The Grand Tour, which so far contains Mercury, Mars Life, and Jupiter: A Novel. I suppose I'm going to have to go out and hunt the others down and kill...er read...them. I have a ton of old Ben Bova books in the library, maybe it's time to add some Nook versions of his newer novels.

The future has arrived, and the results of global warming are in...much of the world is flooded by the melting of the glaciers and polar ice caps, destruction and refugees are the order of the day. Around the time that the first effects were being felt, a manned expedition (crew of 12) was sent to Sirius C, where an Earth-like planet was discovered. The expedition was supposed to be followed by a series of backup missions at short intervals, to augment the crew and explore the new world. However, the crisis on Earth and political considerations have kept new missions from being mounted, and 86 years have passed. The starship is about to land on New Earth.

The leader of the expedition is Jordan Kell, a former diplomat who has, like most of the others on board, been chosen not only because of his qualifications, but because no one on Earth will miss him; his only brother, Brandon, is also on board as a planetary biologist and his wife died of a bio-engineered plague on his last assignment in Kashmir. The nano-virus that caused her death remains within Kell, too, dormant in his guts, but fortunately for Earth, far enough away now that if it revives, it will not hurt anyone but his companions.

When the expedition begins to explore the planet, they're in for a series of surprises, as it turns out to be inhabited by an "alien" race who turn out to be identical in terms of DNA to the human race, and they have been waiting for Earth humans to contact them for a specific purpose - which our intrepid explorers must determine to be either benign or insidious.

The story of how they work their way through the layers of mystery surrounding New Earth is fairly entertaining, and a quick read in the old Bova style. Some of the grumbling and political maneuvers in the novel may reflect Bova's attitude about the current administration's curtailing our outer space exploration and mothballing the shuttle fleet - if I recall correctly, he used to work in aerospace. Whether you think the Earth will die by fire or by flood, you'll hopefully not be distracted by global warming alarmism here, as it serves mostly as a plot device to give the politicians an excuse to defund space missions. Perhaps some of the other Grand Tour books get into it more deeply. I'll keep you posted.