Bowl of Heaven

by Gregory Benford

Other authorsLarry Niven

Hardcover, 2012

Status

Available

Call number

813.54

Publication

Tor Books (2012), Edition: First Edition, Hardcover, 416 pages

Description

A human expedition to another star system is jeopardized by the discovery of an immense bowl-shaped structure in space that leads to hostile alien encounters and profound revelations about humanity's place in the universe.

User reviews

LibraryThing member ChrisRiesbeck

What you need to know. First, this ends in the middle of the story with many major plot threads begun and few resolved. Second, this is exactly what you should expect if you've read Niven's Ringworld series and Benford's Galactic Center series, complete with huge manufactured interstellar artifact,

characters constantly saying how bogglingly huge this artifact is, aliens who may have a biological differences but sound just like humans, and a plot that is as much tour as story. It seems like a book Benford and Niven could have done in their sleep, so I'm surprised it took two years for the sequel to arrive.

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LibraryThing member TempleCat

I liked Bowl of Heaven, by Gregory Benford and Larry Niven. I grew up on Asimov and Clarke, Kornbluth and Simak and Pohl, and Bowl of Heaven is very much like the stories those guys wrote - take a big idea and let a group of scrappy humans figure out how to build it or figure out what it does and

how it works, and in the process use explanations of current science and extrapolations of it to provide a grounding in reality. Of course, there must be aliens who want to dissuade the humans from these endeavors and maybe have them for lunch or keep them as slaves. The pace is not rapid, shoot from the hip melodrama; it's a thoughtful, trial and error driven exploration of the Big Idea and its effects on both aliens and humanity. Aliens change the pace, making the humans drop everything and run or fight, but that is used to maintain the conflict of the story, to build tension and suspense, and to demonstrate the character of the personalities involved.

Arthur C. Clarke, Charles Sheffield, Robert Heinlein, Kim Stanley Robinson and probably at least a half dozen others have discussed the ins and outs of a space elevator, rising from earth to geostationary low-earth orbit as a way to more economically move a payload out of earth's gravity well. This isn't just a big idea, it's a huge endeavor, but still, it's small potatoes compared to Benford and Niven's bowl of heaven. That is a craft that is powered by a full-size sun with a manufactured bowl the size of our inner solar system wrapping around it. Various kinds of aliens live in the bowl. And it just so happens that a human starship, on its centuries-long voyage to another planet, passes by the alien craft and the crew decides that they need to stop and resupply.

Of course, the aliens are going to try to dissuade our intrepid travelers. Some of the landing party are captured and the rest escape, running for their lives within the confines of the bowl. This all is the setup for the story. The setting is an unimaginably huge artifact; the problems to be solved are to determine what the aliens are after and what the purpose of the artifact is, how it works and who built it and runs it, all the while trying to stay alive in multiple alien environments while being chased by some of those pesky critters (who resemble huge ostriches.) Other aliens provide further danger and, in some cases, aide.

Because some of the landing party are captured, we get to see different facets of the antagonists' character. Their actions and dialogue tell us about their biological drives and we see how those affect their dealings within their society; we see what kind of power and political structures they have developed and the affiliations and quarrels they experience. Significantly, we learn that they are personally driven by their status; they have a strong class hierarchy (pecking order) and the highest class has arranged life in the bowl over the course of millennia to allow the individuals at the top to maintain their position and perquisites. This desire to maintain the status quo and the pride of place that the highest caste enjoys explains the architecture of the bowl, the structure of the society, and may turn out to be the weakest link in their system.

To the humans, the gigantic structure is an enigma and, of course, they know nothing about the aliens. They will only be able to survive if they learn enough about the aliens and their society and the structure on which they are trapped and are able to leverage that knowledge. By comparing and contrasting their perceptions of the bowl and its denizens with their knowledge of science (physics, astronomy, biology, meteorology, ecology) on earth, the humans gradually piece together several hypotheses.

The pacing is critical for enjoyment of the book. The give and take between the intellectual conflicts involved in dealing with the terrain and the structure and the urgent physical conflicts in dealing with the alien antagonists sets the entire pace and tone of the story. To the reader who likes to settle in and enjoy the gradual piecing together of solutions to the enigma, this book will be a pleasure; for the reader who desires constant action and quick resolutions, who favors the parts of the story that feature the dangers and escape of the humans from the aliens, while there is plenty of that, this book may still seem a mite tedious. I am very definitely in the former group, enjoying the puzzle and the "hard science" style, seasoned with enough action to keep the story moving and maintain suspense.

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LibraryThing member fpagan

Novel about space-faring humans encountering a solar-system-sized alien habitat/starship. Benford and Niven are names that would attract any appreciator of hard SF. Here they deliver the goods well enough, and promise a sequel.

LibraryThing member Tumler100

Bowl of Heaven
A novel by: Gregory Benford & Larry Niven
Published by: TOR (2012-10)
ISBN: 978-0-07653-2841-0

A work riding the wake of "Ringworld".
I'm a long time fan of Ringworld and the aliens of Larry Niven's "Known Space". Many authors have made great stories set in his universe. "The Fleet of

Worlds" with Edward M. Lerner surpassed it. And I hoped the Bowl would be as fascinating.
Ringworld where a grand dream of engeniering on a spectacular size and much more.
In "Bowl of Heaven" Gregory Benford borrow Larry Niven and the consept of a humongous ship encirceling and controlling a sun. "Ringworld" had charming aliens and where rich in details and new concepts.
BoH are filled with SF clichés and bland characthers. They are plain, with no dept, and gets mixed up.
This is the first part of a story. It does'nt end in a clifhanger, but tapers off with a resolve to keep on going.

I do not wait with trepidation for the second leg of this journey but may finish it if time and the authors allow.

1 ½ out of 5 stars * * ***** ½

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LibraryThing member rondoctor

30 pages into this book and I almost gave up on it ... slow, incomprehensible ... but kept going. Benford and Niven are good scifi authors so I kept going as a matter of faith. By around 60 pages in, the writing improved and the plotline began to make sense. From there on the story became engaging.

Interesting premise develops slowly but kept me reading. Now I'll try the sequel, Shipstar.

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LibraryThing member capewood

I rarely read reviews of a book before I read the book. Maybe I wouldn't have picked this up if I had. I only read a few of the reviews before writing this so hopefully I won't be too repetitious. If you pick this up because you're a big Larry Niven fan (and who isn't/) you're going to be

disappointed.

Cliff and Beth are among a group of people sent out from Earth to colonize a relatively nearby star where an earth-like plant has been detected. Most of the ship's complement is put into deep sleep for the journey. Cliff is awoken by the duty crew some 80 years into the journey because their ship is approaching some strange object in space. It's a giant bowl rotating around a star. On the inside of the bowl is an enormous living space. Hey, It's Ringworld turned into a bowl!

I started having problems with the book early on. I had a hard time grasping what this bowl/star looked like from the description. It took pages for me to even figure out from which direction they were approaching it. Then the time/distance to earth was very confusing. They left Earth apparently 80 years ago. The various characters keep remembering stuff from Earth that happened centuries ago. I'm too lazy to look it up but I'm pretty sure that relativistic effects become important at the 0.95 light speed they were traveling at, but this is never mentioned. Every time one of the characters remembered something from Earth, that subjectively only happened to them months ago, they would stop and thing, oh gosh, that was centuries ago. Every time.

The ship's crew decide to go into orbit around the star for plausible reasons but the maneuvering required was completely baffling to me. They figure out that there is some sort of mostly transparent covering keeping the atmosphere in the bowl. They decide to go down to the surface and enter through an opening they found in the cover. But instead the fly right into a structure that extends through the surface of the covering. Much confusion ensues.

The party gets split up once on the surface. One group, led by Cliff manages to escape the resident aliens (who apparently look like Big Bird from Sesame Street) while the other, led by Beth gets captured. Beth and crew eventually escape, but they have no idea where Cliff and company are. The same time/distance problems that open the book occur again. It was impossible to figure out how long they were on the surface or how far apart the two parties were.

I had lots of problems with this book but I managed to finish it. About halfway through I started to think that this was going to be the first book of a series. The closer I got to the end the more I was sure of this as the story was moving too slowly to be wrapped up in the pages left. And sure enough, stay tuned for Volume 2. I'm not sure I'm interested enough to read more.

Sure there is interesting stuff here. The concept of this enormous bowl-like structure with immense living space is interesting, but, you know, Ringworld. The place is full of interesting plant and animal life as apparently the Big Birds collect species from whatever planet they pass. The Big Birds are also slavers as any intelligent species they pick up are genetically altered to serve them.

But the characters aren't too interesting. The humans are mostly one-dimensional who seemed to be stunned by what has happened to them. As another reviewer said, all the do is run and eat.

We get to meet one alien, Memor, the Big Bird charged with understanding the captured humans and then charged with killing them after they escape. She's sort of interesting but, really, it's hard to take giant alien birds seriously, no matter how smart they are.
Comment

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LibraryThing member nmele

Initially, I was hesitant to read this one because, as a diagram in the book makes clear, it sure seems like a bigger, newer Ringworld novel; as I read,though, Benford's and Niven's plot in particular recalled a very different series, Harry Harrison's "West of Eden" trilogy. Except, of course, that

it's set on a massive construct cruising through space and the humans are technological and interlopers. I'm waiting for the next volume.

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LibraryThing member JohnFair

Written by Niven and Benford, you are looking at the top tier of hard science fiction authorship here, and the book ticks all the required item; a slow sleeper ship, using a ramscoop and taking a colony out to a star thought to have life bearing planets runs into an unexpected object - not a

traditional Dyson Sphere, nor yet Niven's answer to that, a Ring World, but a bowl cupping a star as both objects make a transit that appears to be heading in the same direction as the Earth shi.

Once in orbit, some members of the crew travel down to the bowl and find themselves involved in a power struggle bewteen the owners of this fantastic object and the species they had adapted to their lifestyle.

There are some good pieces of interesting storytelling about tthe different areas the team members find themselves in and a real sense of the age of the object they find themselves aboard. If this had inteneded to be a single book, there would have been no way that even such talented authors could have done the Bowl justice but there is already a sequel on the way so the authors have the space to look at justifyinbg various aspects of the object.

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LibraryThing member Bruce_McNair

A ramscoop starship has set off from Earth for a star that appears to have a habitable planet. Just a few crew pilot the ship at any time with most of the crew in cold storage. But after a couple of centuries (Earth time), the crew encounter anomalies, both with the ship's drive and a large object

ahead, and so they decide they need to wake up others to help them out. The large object ahead turns out to be a large bowl-shaped object surrounding a small star. After deciding that they will not make their destination, they wake the captain and convince that they need to rendezvous with the bowl and perhaps gather new supplies to help them reach their eventual destination. They send down a scouting party, which becomes divided in two. One half is captured by the giant bird-like aliens that inhabit and command the bowl. The other half struggle to survive in the strange surroundings.

In my opinion, the story is slow in developing. The outward trip is similar to many other deep-sleep interstellar trips. The real excitement happens when they first encounter and rendezvous with the Bowl. But then the story descends into a more monotonous tone, with long descriptions of incarceration, tedious trips across a wilderness that could be literally anywhere, and encounters with alien beings of varying natures. In my opinion, a lot of this could have been cut without losing much from the story. Then from chapter 40 (out of 49), the action develops more strongly, but the book ends prematurely without any resolution, thus obliging the reader to move onto volume 2.

I feel that this is not the best work produced by Larry Niven. Ringworld has a similar setting with more interesting and quirky characters that are unforgettable. And Ringworld has more action too. I only hope that volume 2, Shipstar, provides a more satisfactory ending. I give this book a mark of 3 out of 5.

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LibraryThing member DanTarlin

When they say "hard science fiction", this is what they mean. A future Earth-based crew piles into a ramscoop interstellar ship to head for "Glory", a distant planet that looks like it could support a colony. But the crew must be awakened in mid-flight when they come across an incomprehensibly huge

artifact, a star that is moving toward the same planet, with a constructed "bowl" of habitable "land" supporting an enormous amount of life, with land area that is many times that of any single planet. A landing party goes to explore, and is separated into two parts as it attempts to elude hostile aliens. The aliens' perspective is also laid out by the authors.

I guess Benford is a physicist, and it shows. There are no shortcuts, magic technologies that make the plot move along but have no scientific explanation. Rather, much of the dialogue between the humans involves them figuring out the physics and biology of the Bowl. I think this is great from one perspective, but tough for me as a non-scientist to follow. I'd find myself re-reading paragraphs and trying to remember high school physics, then giving up and just moving on. For someone more scientifically educated, I would imagine the book would be more satisfying.

...and how many times can you stress how enormous the Bowl is? That gets kind of tiring. We get it! And it does seem implausible that enough material could be found to build such a thing. For a book that's going for plausible science, that one is tough.

Anyway, the adventure is good. I'm reading this for the second time now, as I just got Book 2 and don't remember the details of this one. The reread is quite good, though- better the second time.

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LibraryThing member jerevo

This book feels like two authors whose best days are long behind them getting together to relive their greatest hits. Think Ringworld meets Great Sky River in a down-at-heel bar, and both get roaring drunk. The setting has little new to offer, the characters are tedious cardboard cut-outs, and

frankly, after this, I'm not sure I can be bothered with any other books either Benford or Niven may write.

One to avoid.

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LibraryThing member ConalO

An interesting premise but not one that delivered on it. I struggled to finish this one as it just did not keep my interest. On the fence on whether to read the follow up to this which is actually the second half of the story...

LibraryThing member nwhyte

It would have been cutting-edge stuff forty years ago, but not now.

LibraryThing member shadrachanki

I really enjoyed this book, but it took me far longer than I expected to read it.

LibraryThing member RalphLagana

I really don't like knocking books, but sometimes it needs to happen. Bowl of Heaven begins well with a group of scientists making an incredibly long journey to a far flung planet. Their journey will have them traveling so far into the solar system, that those they knew will be long gone when they

arrive at their destination. Only this is, they never get there.

The crew is interrupted by the discovery of an incredibly large "bowl" traveling along a route similar to theirs. The object is clearly made by intelligent beings and it is impossibly huge. The only recourse the star travelers have is to investigate it.

Everything up this point of the book worked for me. Even when they first enter the massive habitat, things are interesting. It's when the authors introduced the planet's owners that things begin to spiral into boredom.

The alien race is too much a mix of alien and human. The author do try, admirably, to make the way the alien birds behave and think come off as unique (score one for having one of the bowls leaders change from male to female early on in the story) but too often they'd slip back into human contrivances to help us understand how the aliens thought or felt. Alien should read and feel as alien throughout.

The bowl's aliens are essentially large, intelligent birds who are clearly more advanced than their human intruders in every way. And yet, one group of the human crew escapes from a holding area the aliens have and another group run rampant through the bowl ecology eluding tech and birds alike. This is pure nonsense. The bowl's design implies that those who built it are amazingly advanced and should have no problem with some pesky humans.

IN the end, I couldn't reach the end of this tale. I quite with about 60 pages left. Who knows, maybe a missed one heck of a story finale.

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LibraryThing member speljamr

The book sets the story in a quasi Dyson sphere (only 1/2 of a sphere) with lots of different aliens and eco-systems. The science explored here ranges from realistic interstellar flight to evolution and brain science. While the story has plenty of strange aliens, the use of these aliens in the

story is really a reflection for the study of ourselves and how our brains work. This seems to incorporate much of our recent discoveries in neuroscience and the topic of freewill; science I've also been reading in other recent non-fiction books. This is exactly the type of stuff I love and one of the best reasons to read good science fiction.

This book is not a stand alone story, so if you're thinking about reading it and not continuing on with the other books when they come out, I'd say you should skip this. Otherwise, I think this will turn out to be a nice series from two of sci-fi's greatest authors. I won't give it away, but this first book does end with a bit of a mystery at the end, one I'm sure will take the entire series to play out.

I'm really looking forward to book number two, 'Shipstar'

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LibraryThing member philipcristiano

I had a hard time finishing this. I never seemed to care about the characters but the concept of the book was intriguing. Not sure if I will read the next book in the series at any point.

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