Uranus

by Ben Bova

Overview

Ben Bova, author of Earth, continues his exploration of the future of a human-settled Solar System with the science fiction action adventure Uranus, the first of his Outer Planets trilogy.

On a privately financed orbital habitat above the planet Uranus, political idealism conflicts with pragmatic, and illegal, methods of financing. Add a scientist who has funding to launch a probe deep into Uranus‘s ocean depths to search for signs of life, and you have a three-way struggle for control.

Humans can’t live on the gas giants, making instead a life in orbit. Kyle Umber, a religious idealist, has built Haven, a sanctuary above the distant planet Uranus. He invites ”the tired, the sick, the poor“ of Earth to his orbital retreat where men and women can find spiritual peace and refuge from the world.


The billionaire who financed Haven, however, has his own designs: beyond the reach of the laws of the inner planets Haven could become the center for an interplanetary web of narcotics, prostitution, even hunting human prey.



Meanwhile a scientist has gotten funding from the Inner Planets to drop remote probes into the “oceans” of Uranus, in search of life. He brings money and prestige, but he also brings journalists and government oversight to Haven. And they can’t have that.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250296542
Publisher:	Tor Publishing Group
Publication date:	07/21/2020
Series:	Outer Planets Trilogy , #1
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	675,699
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Ben Bova (1932-2020) was the author of more than a hundred works of science fact and fiction, including Able One, Transhuman, Orion, the Star Quest Trilogy, and the Grand Tour novels, including Titan, winner of John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel of the year. His many honors include the Isaac Asimov Memorial Award in 1996, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation in 2005, and the Robert A. Heinlein Award “for his outstanding body of work in the field of literature” in 2008.

Dr. Bova was President Emeritus of the National Space Society and a past president of Science Fiction Writers of America, and a former editor of Analog and former fiction editor of Omni. As an editor, he won science fiction’s Hugo Award six times. His writings predicted the Space Race of the 1960s, virtual reality, human cloning, the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars), electronic book publishing, and much more.

In addition to his literary achievements, Bova worked for Project Vanguard, America’s first artificial satellite program, and for Avco Everett Research Laboratory, the company that created the heat shields for Apollo 11, helping the NASA astronauts land on the moon. He also taught science fiction at Harvard University and at New York City’s Hayden Planetarium and worked with such filmmakers as George Lucas and Gene Roddenberry.

Editorial Reviews

03/16/2020

Bova continues his ambitious project of exploring a near-future human-colonized solar system (which began with 1992’s Mars) with this all-too-conventional space adventure, the first of the Outer Planets trilogy. Raven Marchesi flees a life of prostitution in Naples, Italy, for Haven, an artificial habitat circling Uranus, where idealistic Reverend Kyle Umber has set up a nondenominational refuge for Earth’s “poor, disenfranchised, forgotten” with the backing of sinister financier Evan Waxman. Raven soon becomes involved with both Waxman, who’s running a secret drug trade, and astronomer Tómas Gomez, who’s come to Haven to investigate secrets lurking under Uranus’s ocean. Not much science animates this stale story, which is more concerned with Waxman’s drug deals, romantic encounters, and corruption, and the hints of alien forces bent on destroying humanity amount to too little too late. The characters’ relationships and biases are grounded in contemporary attitudes, making it clear that shockingly little social change has occurred in Bova’s vision of the future. Readers will be disappointed by this rote, unimaginative work of hard science fiction. (May)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Ben Bova

“Bova proves himself equal to the task of showing how adversity can temper character in unforeseen ways.” —The New York Times

“[Bova’s] excellence at combining hard science with believable characters and an attention-grabbing plot makes him one of the genre’s most accessible and entertaining storytellers.” —Library Journal

From the Publisher

2020-03-02
For nearly 30 years, Bova has been exploring the solar system in his Grand Tour novels; this entry is the first of an Outer Planets trilogy.

Through the series, certain themes tend to recur—there are alien life-forms, environmentalists battling wealthy industrialists, scientists clashing with religious fundamentalists—but not here. Of conditions on Earth we learn only that there's still much poverty and hardship and, jarringly, no shortage of well-funded scientists eager to jaunt off to remote planets. An idealist, the Rev. Kyle Umber has commissioned a huge habitat orbiting Uranus to accommodate disadvantaged folk from Earth. He offers education, employment, and, optionally, religion. One such refugee, the beautiful prostitute Raven Marchesi, seizes the opportunity and soon finds herself working for astronomer Tómas Gomez, who wants to know why Uranus' hidden ocean is lifeless. But Raven is determined to snuggle up to the habitat's moneybags sponsor, Evan Waxman. Big mistake: Waxman's idealism is just a cover for narcotics manufacture and distribution. Unfortunately, it doesn't feel like we're a very long way from Earth or that there's a large and extremely peculiar planet nearby—the habitat could be parked anywhere. In plotting and development, the book is just as formulaic as it sounds. Take a well-meaning but deluded religious leader, a former sex worker, an obsessive scientist, and a criminal lurking behind a mask of riches. Stir. Decant. Decorate with froth about ancient aliens. Work it through to an unsurprising conclusion.

Bland.

Kirkus Reviews