Book Review: Orbitsville

Continuing through my survey of 1970s era Science Fiction, I've just finished Bob Shaw's 1975 novel Orbitsville, which I found to be both intriguing and a little alarming (but in a really good way).

The novel focus on ship captain Vance Garamond, who while waiting to meet the CEO of the most powerful company on Earth makes a rather (sorry for the mild forty-year-old spoiler of the events of the first chapter) terrible mistake and through a moment of negligence allows the CEOs only child to die in an accident.

Obviously the next segment of the book follows his rapid escape from Earth and his attempt to hide from the most powerful person in the world, which leads to Orbitsville itself, a massive Dyson sphere (wherein a hospitable atmosphere and environment exist across the inside of a globe) but the sphere itself is so massive it is almost beyond comprehension.

For classic SF readers, the book is clearly going to draw comparisons with Larry Niven's Ringworld (1970), but although there are a number of similarities between the two - world exploration, action and adventure, Orbitsville plays down the aliens aspect and focuses much more on the alien nature of the world itself.  

The book was a quick read, quite fascinating, and ended with a turn of events I was definitely not expecting.  Well worth a read.

Genre Character of the Week:Colonel Mack Tavernor

Over the last few days I’ve been reading the 1969 novel The Palace of Eternity by Bob Shaw, a science fiction novel taking place on the planet Mnemosyne (an artist’s colony) and taking place during a war with a strange alien race called the Syccans. Our main character (and our genre character of the week) is Colonel Mack Tavernor.

Tavernor is introduced to the reader as a repair man living in a colony of artists, musicians, and poets. He is 49 years old, and keeps many of the planets indigenous creatures in his home as pets. Throughout the novel we learn of his childhood (he was a lone survivor of a planet-wide Syccan attack at age eight) and his military career, as well as the events leading to his current situation.

The novel has a lot of obvious parallels with later SF books, namely Ender’s Game, and Falling Free (from my point of view), and Tavernor is definitely one of my personal favourite kind of genre characters; the working-Joe just trying to mind his own business and live a quiet life who gets swept up in something huge.

I don’t want to go into too many spoilers of the novel, but trust me, Mack’s journey is a pretty major one, and it had me intrigued, excited and honestly shocked at various points throughout. Although the book may require you to make a trip to your local used-book store, it is definitely worth the trip.