Titan

Rating:
Summary: A even better Rendezvous with Rama
Review: If you liked Rendezvous with Rama, you'll love Titan. A interesting world, interesting characters and amazing ending.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best and most imaginative books I've ever read!!
Review: John Varley at his best - and that's really saying something. Simply astounding plot and characters!!

Rating:
Summary: once you start you cant stop reading titan
Review: marvelous story plot, mr. varley please dont stop. we need more adventure and more titan stories. I give titan six stars

Rating:
Summary: Eh...
Review: My original review wasn't posted, so here we go again:

This is NOT science fiction, it's adult fantasy. Don't expect a hard sci-fi plot, you won't get it. Varley has a great imagination, as evidenced in his other books (Millennium, The Ophiuchi Hotline), but what he chooses to do with the characters in this book is not very creative. Also, his writing here takes a very adolescent approach towards sex, of which this book has an overabundance. I'm no prude - when sex serves to further the plot or define a character, I'm all for it, but here, it's clearly included only to get the reader's attention, nothing more. The back cover of the edition I read (now at the used bookstore) says that Varley's Gaea trilogy rivals Frank Herbert's Dune series... don't make me laugh.

Rating:
Summary: Too much sex
Review: Sex is an overriding theme in this book, largely overshadowing all other aspects. By the time I decided to stop reading, I had read about incestuous sex, homosexual sex, adulterous sex, rape, and abortion. The author could not even introduce aliens without giving more detail about their sexual organs (all three of them) than any other characteristic of their body. The non-sexual content of the book was interesting, but there wasn't enough to carry me through the rest.

Rating:
Summary: Warning: This may get you addicted to Varley.
Review: Smart, detailed and very, VERY realistic. Truly a pioneering work of hard science fiction. You won't believe this book is 20 years old!

Rating:
Summary: A classic of 1970's-vintage space opera
Review: The age of books like Titan is long since gone. The fact that Titan is still in print is telling -- it is among the best this era had to offer.

An enormous investment of imagination and analysis went into creating Gaea, the giant living space-habitat where the story takes place. Many novels of this day were full of strange alien landscapes and creatures that come off as hollow flights of fancy arranged by authorial fiat. Here though, they fit together in symbiosis. Even the parts of the world that seem "not quite right" on the first read through make perfect sense at the end after finding out more about the world's history. In fact, this is a good analogy for the plot of the book as a whole: a series of apparently random adventures with little obvious connection that finally makes perfect sense at the end when you learn what's really been going on.

Titan is also a reasonably good psychological novel. The opening events leave all the human characters mentally "damaged" in various ways, and Varley does a very believable, mature job of developing the plot as each character overcomes or sinks deeper into his or her respective psychosis.

What prevents Titan from being much better than it is is that Varley does not apply this same maturity to his handling of the various sexual issues he tries to address. In his treatment of free love, homosexuality, rape, abortion, and the like, his characters don't act like the liberated personalities he intends them to be, but simply as people who are as dogmatized in one direction as the American society of thirty years ago was dogmatized in the other. As a result, what Varley intended as thought provoking, having in time lost all shock value, comes off somewhere between childish and puerile. Especially in their almost fetishistic attention to alien pudenda, these passages are no longer good for much more than the titillation of 14-year old boys.

In short, Titan is among the best of the "adventure while exploring alien landscape" space operas of yesteryear. It surpasses most of that genre in terms of both coherency and imagination, and only falls down where it tried to run a path many books like it would not even try to tiptoe.

Rating:
Summary: The Best Science-Fiction I ever read
Review: The first time I read John Varley (and perhaps the first time I read Science Fiction) it was when I bought Demon, the last episode of the Gea trilogy by mistake. Imagine me with 15 ears old trying to read something so strange as Demon, which I think is the strongest episode of the Gaea trilogy. In the beginning I was almost giving up to read the book but I must confess that when I finished it I read it more 2 times, I bought Titan and Wizard and read all the trilogy more 3 or 4 times.

Its amazing how John Varley is able to construct a so strange universe and keep it consistent, every time that I make another read I find something new, a detail that I didn't notice.

Now I'm 26 years old and I'm aungry to read more of Varley, I'm just waiting for Portuguese editions of the other books.

I hope that some day somebody try to make a movie of the trilogy.

Rating:
Summary: The start of one of an all-time great science fantasy series
Review: The Gaea Trilogy traces the arc of a hero's ascent, fall from grace and redemption. So if you like "Titan," the ride just gets better from here.

Having said that, why should you pick up "Titan?" Isn't this the same book as "Rendezvous with Rama?" Well, yes and no. The book is about astronauts exploring the environment inside an alien space station. But from there, the core concept is all filtered through the mind of John Varley.

Beyond being a straight exploration story, Varley also discusses issue of women in power, homosexuality vs. heterosexuality, altenate breeding relationships for alien species (nothing you can possibly imagine) and some fun with the science of angels. And, of course, it's here that Varley begins his deepest exploration between man and God, although to say more would be to give away too much of the book.

First and foremost, though, "Titan" is an adventure story of the highest caliber, with a heroic lead, weird creatures, alien settings, a warm heart and a very sharp mind. (And it's a mind not nearly as dirty as some of the reviewers are complaining that it is. If you live in America in the 21st century, you'll likely find the book fairly tame sexually.)

Rating:
Summary: fun
Review: the gaia(?) trilogy is fun read. however, I think it may work better as a real satire. or maybe Varley meant it as a satire? it wasn't clear to me.

the books also introduce strong female characters