Saturn (The Grand Tour)

Rating:
Summary: A gift for pain
Review: This book was so bad it was painful. One almost pitied the characters for the lack of of vision of their creator and the lack of life with which they were imbued.

Rating:
Summary: a great stretch for Ben Bova
Review: To many people this book is a major failure. To say that the science takes a back seat is a valid argument. Bova literally throws in some science, but basically the planet Saturn is ignored throughout most of the book. Bova even ignores all of Saturns moons except for Titan. That is a letdown to long time readers of Bova's works including myself. His science is one of his great strengths (check out the book Jupiter)
Instead, the book Saturn is really an examination of how any democracy can turn into a dictatorship right under peoples noses. Professor Wilmot really is the focal point that drives this story forward. Unlike his previous books, there are no heros or villians. This is not a western. Instead we see society at it's ugliest and it is both engrossing and frightening to witness. The religious vs. secular tensions that are pointed out in this book are a direct parallel to what the US is experiencing right now. Consider this: Malcolm Eberly, the power crazed manipulator along with the vicious Morgenthau and Vyborg represent the double standards and moral superiority that allows them to do anything and everything they want knowing that God is behind them. It is a reminder that power in anyones hands , even those who pray, can be destructive. Killing, torture, lying, deceit are all morally OK, but somehow the science of nanotechnology is the devil's work according to Morgenthau. That argument of course is over simplified and it would have been better for balance to include more complexity in that situation but that is not Bova's strength.
This book in many ways is Bova venting off some steam and it sometimes comes through. Sometimes Bova preaches a bit through his characters and the complexity of the situation gets oversimplified. Part of that is Bova's main weakness which is creating complex characters. It's not an easy thing to do. Issac Asimov only began doing it really well toward the end of his life (Check out the later Foundation prequels as compared to the early Foundation series itself)
My biggest disapointment is Bova inserting some action/mystery sequences that just don't work. It's a distraction. This is an essay of society and it is one everyone should read but take it for what it is, and it will be something that leaves you thinking and hopefully wondering a bit more about the future (or lack of) of the United States democracy.


Rating:
Summary: Good novel, though politics rather than Saturn is the star
Review: _Saturn_ is one of the latest in Ben Bova's "Grand Tour" series, an excellent series of novels set in the future in our solar system. Interstellar travel does not exist yet but the solar system is being explored and is on the verge of colonization. Previous works in this series have explored Mars, Jupiter, Venus, the asteroids, and the Moon. The subject of this novel, as one might imagine from the title, is Saturn.

Or I should say one might think that it was Saturn. Though most of the other works in the series spent a great deal of time on the titular place of that particular book, we don't actually get to Saturn until around the last quarter of the book or so. Though Saturn - or I should say its rings - does get pretty good treatment towards the end (where there is a real surprise within the ring system), the book does not really embrace the planet the same way _Jupiter_ dealt with Jupiter or _Venus_ really immersed the reader in that particular planet. Saturn's moon Titan is discussed fairly often in the book but the action never moves at all to that fascinating satellite.

Instead, the focus of _Saturn_ is the space habitat _Goddard_, a massive tubular construction that was designed to provide a home for 10,000 people for 5 years in orbit around Saturn (taking around 2 years to arrive). Inside _Goddard_ are villages, streams, forests, fields, and farms, all built along the inside of the rotating space habitat. Essentially except for the endcaps the entire interior surface of the cylindrical space station is covered in buildings and vegetation, designed to provide an Earth-like home to its inhabitants as well as food, oxygen, and all the other necessities. Of the ten thousand people a significant portion are scientists and technicians though there are also farmers, administrative personnel, factory workers, security guards, medical personnel, and food service workers.

More to the point the focus of _Saturn_ are the people and politics of the space habitat. The majority of the ten thousand on the habitat are people who for one reason or another are unhappy with the religious and generally authoritarian regimes on Earth, either seeking to flee it or having been asked to leave by their government (in a matter not unlike the Pilgrims leaving England in the 17th century perhaps, or maybe the convicts sent to Australia). Earth, at least in Europe, North America, and the Middle East, is ruled by religious fundamentalist regimes, having come to power after the chaos and environmental disruptions caused by global warming.

Though the religious governments - notably the Holy Disciples in Europe - want these intellectual malcontents out of their hair, they don't want them to have a "godless" government on the habitat either. One of the main characters of the novel is Malcolm Eberly, someone the Disciples recruit from a prison in Vienna. An adept schemer and manipulator, they instruct him to gain control of the government of _Goddard_ as it reaches Saturn and steer is population towards a politically correct path. Once on the habitat though Eberly seeks power himself, not through rough coercion but through adept politics, subterfuge, and manipulations of individuals and of the people of _Goddard_ as a whole.

Much of the book focuses on Eberly's struggle for power and those who aid or oppose him. One such persion is Ruth Morgenthau, a Holy Disciples spy sent to control and "guide" Eberly in his political machinations and when he eventually gains control of the habitat. Colonel Kanaga, a Rwandan security officer, along with the treacherous, power hungry Dr. Sammi Vyborg in the Communications Department form a coterie with Morgenthau and Eberly in their attempts to control the habitat, an effort that eventually devolves into murder. James Wilmot is the official head of the habitat, ostensibly opposed to them, an anthropologist by trade who has a somewhat odd, detached view of politics and society on _Goddard_, viewing the entire operation as a grand experiment, the reasons for this being revealed at the end. A more active opponent is the station's chief scientist, Dr. Urbain, an arrogant though honest and politically naïve man opposed to Eberly.

The protagonists of the book - though I would like to add it wasn't always clear whether or not Eberly was a good guy or a bad guy, particularly at the end - include Holly Lane, a "reborn" person (someone who endured cryogenic sleep after dying from a deadly illness, being reawakened in the future once a cure existed but like all cryogenic patients having no memory at all, having to relearn even to walk and speak) who is on the habitat to get a new life for herself, away from her sister on the lunar city-state of Selene. My favorite character was the womanizing stuntman Manuel Gaeta, journeying to Saturn on _Goddard_ to film his descent to the surface of Titan, hoping to be the first man to ever do so (an effort bitterly opposed by the habitat's scientists, chiefly Dr. Urbain). Gaeta is also being employed by Holly's sister to watch over her, fearful over her future on _Goddard_. Another protagonist is Dr. Kris Cardenas, the solar system's brilliant expert on nanotechnology, a technology greatly feared and banned on Earth, who joins the expedition en route.

Having said that the book does not focus much on Saturn per se I still enjoyed. I liked several of the characters and found them fairly engaging. I was riveted by the power struggles on the habitat - though fair disclosure, I read the book while traveling in a car for ten hours this past weekend - and was quite interested to see how it turned out. With the few surprises thrown in at the end I enjoyed _Saturn_. Not the best of his "Grand Tour" series, I still liked it. If you have read others in this series I think you will enjoy it too.