- Bova, Ben.
Mercury.
New York: Tor, 2005.
ISBN 0-7653-4314-2.
-
I hadn't read anything by
Ben Bova in years—certainly
not since 1990. I always used to think of him as a journeyman
science fiction writer, cranking out enjoyable stories mostly
toward the hard end of the science fiction spectrum, but not
a grand master of the calibre of, say, Heinlein, Clarke, and Niven.
His stint as editor of
Analog
was admirable, proving himself a worthy successor to John W. Campbell, who
developed the authors of the golden age of science
fiction. Bova is also a prolific essayist on science, writing, and
other topics, and his January 1965 Analog article
“It's Done with Mirrors” with William F. Dawson may have
been one of the earliest proposals of a multiply-connected
small universe cosmological model.
I don't read a lot of fiction these days, and tend to lose
track of authors, so when I came across this book in an
airport departure lounge and noticed it was published in
2005, my first reaction was, “Gosh, is he still writing?”
(Bova was born in 1932, and his first novel was published in
1959.) The
U.K. paperback edition was featured
in a “buy one, get one free” bin, so how could I
resist?
I ought to strengthen my resistance. This novel is so execrably bad
that several times in the process of reading it I was tempted to rip
it to bits and burn them to ensure nobody else would have to
suffer the experience. There is nothing whatsoever redeeming
about this book. The plot is a conventional love triangle/revenge
tale. The only thing that makes it science fiction at all is
that it's set in the future and involves bases on Mercury, space
elevators, and asteroid mining, but these are just backdrops for a
story which could take place anywhere. Notwithstanding the
title, which places it within the author's “Grand Tour”
series, only about half of the story takes place on Mercury,
whose particulars play only a small part.
Did I mention the writing? No, I guess I was trying to forget it.
Each character, even throw-away figures who appear only in a
single chapter, is introduced by a little sketch which reads
like something produced by filling out a form. For example,
Jacqueline Wexler was such an administrator. Gracious
and charming in public, accommodating and willing to
compromise at meetings, she nevertheless had the steel-hard
will and sharp intellect to drive the ICU's ramshackle
collection of egos toward goals that she herself selected.
Widely known as ‘Attila the Honey,’ Wexler
was all sweetness and smiles on the outside, and ruthless
determination within.
After spending a third of page 70 on this paragraph, which makes my
teeth ache just to re-read, the formidable Ms. Wexler walks off stage
before the end of p. 71, never to re-appear. But fear not (or
fear), there are many, many more such paragraphs in
subsequent pages.
An Earth-based space elevator, a science fiction staple, is central
to the plot, and here Bova bungles the elementary science of
such a structure in a laugh-out-loud chapter in which the
three principal characters ride the elevator to a platform
located at the low Earth orbit altitude of 500 kilometres.
Upon arrival there, they find themselves weightless,
while in reality the force of gravity would be imperceptibly
less than on the surface of the Earth! Objects in orbit are
weightless because their horizontal velocity cancels Earth's
gravity, but a station at 500 kilometres is travelling only
at the speed of the Earth's rotation, which is less than
1/16 of orbital velocity. The only place on a space elevator
where weightlessness would be experienced is the portion
where orbital velocity equals Earth's rotation rate, and that
is at the anchor point at geosynchronous altitude. This is not
a small detail; it is central to the physics, engineering, and
economics of space elevators, and it figured prominently
in Arthur C. Clarke's 1979 novel
The Fountains of Paradise
which is alluded to here on p. 140.
Nor does Bova restrain himself from what is becoming a
science fiction cliché of the first magnitude:
“nano-magic”. This is my term for using the
“nano” prefix the way bad fantasy authors
use “magic”. For example, Lord Hacksalot
draws his sword and cuts down a mighty oak tree with a
single blow, smashing the wall of the evil prince's castle. The
editor says, “Look, you can't cut down an oak
tree with a single swing of a sword.” Author:
“But it's a magic sword.”
On p. 258 the principal character is traversing a
tether between two parts of a ship in the asteroid
belt which, for some reason, the author believes is
filled with deadly radiation. “With nothing
protecting him except the flimsy…suit, Bracknell felt like
a turkey wrapped in a plastic bag inside a microwave oven.
He knew that high-energy radiation was sleeting down on
him from the pale, distant Sun and still-more-distant stars.
He hoped that suit's radiation protection was as good as
the manufacturer claimed.” Imaginary editor (who
clearly never read this manuscript): “But the only
thing which can shield you from heavy primary cosmic rays
is mass, and lots of it. No ‘flimsy suit’
however it's made, can protect you against iron nuclei incoming
near the speed of light.” Author: “But it's a nano
suit!”
Not only is the science wrong, the fiction is equally lame. Characters
simply don't behave as people do in the real world, nor are events and
their consequences plausible. We are expected to believe that the
causes of and blame for a technological catastrophe which killed millions
would be left to be decided by a criminal trial of a single individual
in Ecuador without any independent investigation. Or that a conspiracy
to cause said disaster involving a Japanese mega-corporation, two
mass religious movements, rogue nanotechnologists, and numerous
others could be organised, executed, and subsequently kept secret
for a decade. The dénouement
hinges on a coincidence so fantastically improbable that the
plausibility of the plot would be improved were the direct intervention
of God Almighty posited instead.
Whatever became of Ben Bova, whose science was scientific and whose
fiction was fun to read? It would be uncharitable to attribute this
waste of ink and paper to age, as many science fictioneers with far
more years on the clock have penned genuine classics. But
look at this! Researching the author's biography, I
discovered that in 1996, at the age of 64, he received a doctorate in
education from
California Coast University,
a “distance learning” institution. Now, remember back
when you were in engineering school struggling with thermogoddamics
and fluid mechanics how you regarded the student body of the Ed
school? Well, I always assumed it was a selection effect—those
who can do, and those who can't…anyway, it never occurred to me that
somewhere in that dark, lowering building they had a nano
brain mushifier which turned the earnest students who wished to
dedicate their careers to educating the next generation into the
cognitively challenged classes they graduated. I used to look forward
to reading anything by Ben Bova; I shall, however, forgo
further works by the present Doctor of Education.
December 2006 