2010-02-20
By Lynne M. Manero (limerick, pa United States)
My husband really enjoyed reading this biography. He could hardly put the book down. Well written and very interesting!
2010-04-18
By Brian Hawkinson (San Jose, CA)
Having been nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula was enough to get me to read this sci fi. On a whole you can expect the quality of the books that were nominated and/or won either prestigious award to be better than average. Varley's Titan certainly fits the bill, but what I have also come to expect as that many of the earlier nominees and winners can have a very dated feel to them, and Titan also fits that bill.
I had trouble getting in to this one because of how dated it felt, in both the writing and the type of sci fi genre of the time. Often slow and never with any sort of action of some sort to inject life in the beginning stages of the book, Titan followed the well worn genre path of discovering an alien world and then exploring it, oftentimes on accident. This had a very similar feel to Rendezvous with Rama, a Hugo and Nebula winner, where both were exploring and unimaginably large world with its own ecosystems and weather patterns. Both had the dated feel to them that detracted from the storytelling and ultimately made me, in today's age, not care to read it.
I pushed on, though, and ultimately found that it began to turn around and become enjoyable. This didn't really happen until the Titanides and the Angels fought, the first plot sequence of any kind to make me sit up and take notice. From there, ultimately, the real tale of the book shines through as we see the epic struggle that Cirocco and Gaby go through, both physically and mentally. They struggle to the top of the world to speak to Gaea and get answers, ultimately coming in to another ecosystem where the Angels lived. This section was altogether fascinating and intriguing and fully set up the rest of the trilogy and , more specifically, lead in to the next in the series, Wizard.
I could not possibly give it more than three stars just because of how uninteresting the bulk of the story was, but I couldn't give it any lower than a three star either because of the fascinating ending and lead in to the rest of the trilogy. I can't say that I look forward to reading Wizard, but I certainly won't hesitate if the chance arises despite the beginning and middle of Titan. A tentative recommend.
3 stars.
2009-10-16
By Daniel Rosenberg (Highland Park, IL United States)
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. As some other reviewers have written, it's the closest any of us will ever get to being on Titan. The science seems accurate to me as a layman with a healthy interest in space, and the descriptions of space flight are very well done. The characters aren't the most fascinating I've ever read about, but the two main ones do grow on you, and by the end, you feel some warmth for them. The parts of the book that were least enjoyable were the parts that took place on earth, but I rushed through those and was rewarded by the descriptions of the mission and Titan.
2010-07-14
By Y. O. Alleyne (Brooklyn, NY)
It seems that the trend in Hollywood is along as you have special effects, an actual story is not necessary. Doing a remake is not bad if you can still retain the elements that made the original good. In this remake, the movie lacked a consistent story, the acting was not good, and the Kraken looked like the Godzilla 2000's cousin. Say what you want about the original, but for its time, it was a damn good movie; good effects, excellent story, and brilliant acting (Laurence Olivier and Maggie Smith were divine). Hopefully they will follow one thing from the original and not make a sequel. Please DO NOT release the Kraken again!
2009-03-20
By Paul Weiss (Dundas, Ontario Canada)
In Earth's past, Australia was effectively a prison colony, a place for transportation of convicted felons to get them out of sight and out of mind, a place where misfits, recluses and hard-nosed independents could live or die on the strength of their own efforts, a place to which people with intractable problems could run away and start over. In Earth's future, Ben Bova has imagined a distant space habitat orbiting above the surface of Saturn's icy moon, Titan, which has much the same demographic - a ragtag motley crew of misfits and dissidents, sick and tired of a ham-fisted dictatorial theocratic government on earth, willing to pull up stakes and courageously start over in a bleak environment where the future is a blank slate waiting to be written.
Long-time fans of Bova's "Grand Tour of the Universe" series may remember the weakness in "Mercury", a rock-em, sock-em screenplay that was little more than a soap opera force fit into the environment of Mercury that gave scant attention to the science part of science fiction. "Titan" is the polar opposite, thankfully returning the theme of a tour of the solar system to center stage.
The complex, almost insurmountable engineering difficulties of managing a space-faring habitat such as the Goddard - shielding, food, insulation, waste and communication - are all examined in detail. The extreme hazards of navigation through Saturn's rings and landing on the surface of Titan are described with breathtaking foresight. Both the hardware and the software involved in a robotic surface rover, the Titan Alpha, are described with painstaking attention to the minutiae of problems that such a vehicle would be likely to encounter in its scientific explorations and data gathering mission.
But Bova hasn't neglected to examine the softer philosophical people issues of such an environment either. Just as with any revolutionary group that breaks away from their beginnings, the inhabitants of space habitat Goddard deal with issues of governance, democracy and the creation of a new constitution that is appropriate to their needs and their unique circumstances. Of course, they must perforce continue to deal as best they can with a continuing relationship with their progenitors, the governments that remain behind on the earth and the moon. On a more micro-level, "Titan" deals realistically with the day to day squabbles that would inevitably arise between differing groups in the habitat - men vs women, scientists vs engineers, governments vs citizens, the doers vs the grunts that are along for the ride, and so on.
One of the most interesting soft people issues that Bova injected into the story was the controversy surround a policy of "zero population growth". Clearly, Goddard's ability to handle a population has a distinct maximum determined by limited resources such as space, food, oxygen, waste turnover and so on. The conflict between the necessity for a ZPG policy and the natural drives of humans to procreate makes for some interesting philosophical discussion and debate.
Last but not least, there is that positively brilliant ending (Is it possible to smile and be slack-jawed with amazement at the same time?) Anyone who reads and enjoys both science and science fiction knows that the reality of the universe is far more complex and bizarre than any mere science fiction writer could possibly create. But Bova has done his best to hypothesize a future for mankind beyond imagining when a discovery is made in Saturn's rings that dwarfs the speculations of the best scientists that Goddard has to offer.
Truly, "Titan" is modern science fiction written the way the science fiction should be - hard, soft, exciting, cutting edge and thought provoking. Well done, Ben Bova.
Paul Weiss
2009-08-06
By J. Shurin (London)
Another Avalon Hill weekend-absorbing classic.
Players push tiny stacks of cardboard beasties around a hexagonal board, chasing down one another's 'Titan'.
Cardboard beasties turn into more cardboard beasties by recruiting their kin. Battles are resolved on additional gameboards - one for each type of terrain. (A lot of trees died to make Titan). The rules are deceptively complex - the vast bulk of the box makes it look like a complicated game, but the core mechanics are surprisingly easy (leaving lots of brain-space to fret over strategy).
2009-10-16
By Mongol (Alexandria, VA USA)
This book puts the late 1800s into perspective. It's fascinating to read how businesses develop when little or no rules of engagement are in place. The most ruthless and devoid of emotion wins, which is good if you're part of the winning team. Not so good if you're trying to start a competing business or worked for the defeated party. If read carefully, you can see parallels with many business practices throughout the ages - including the present.
2008-12-09
By doomsdayer520 (Pennsylvania)
Saturn's moon Titan is surely one of the most fascinating bodies in the solar system, with a thick atmosphere, Earth-like topography, and complex chemistry that has inspired speculation about primitive life. Starting in late 2004, Titan received a special visit from the Cassini orbiter, which explored the Saturnian system, and the special detachable Huygens probe that was sent to the moon's surface. That mission and the resulting new discoveries are the focus of this book. But the interested layperson is going to have to wait until the last couple of chapters to really learn about all the wondrous new discoveries that have been found on Titan. Alas, much of the rest of the book is a disappointing example of science writing. When scientists decide to inform the general public of their discoveries, they have to remember that not everyone in the public will be as fascinated as they are by the esoteric details of programming, planning, or data analysis.
Introductions to the Cassini/Huygens mission and its related political and budgetary issues are presented with a very poor sense of narrative flow, and will probably be rewarding for a very limited audience of engineering enthusiasts. The text often devolves into the unnecessarily erudite technical specifications of problems like how fast the probe spun upon entry and how many spare models had to be cleaned with what types of hoses during the construction phase. Much of the text is padded with snippets of the author's professional diary ("Ralph's Log"), which are sometimes illuminating but are usually distracting tangents into not-so-useful personal interests.
Also, the publisher gets the thumbs-down as most of the photographs (notwithstanding a short collection of color plates) are flat black-and-white reproductions in which the reader can barely see the fascinating discoveries mentioned so breathlessly in the text. Granted, so far this is probably the definitive guide to all of the wondrous recent discoveries on Titan. But such a fascinating world deserves a more dramatic and romantic treatment than it receives here. [~doomsdayer520~]
2010-02-25
By dollar bin dan (Berkeley, CA USA)
I will refrain from review the actual movie too much. You can read about that all over this page, this site and many places on the web. I'd like to add that it's very entertaining, original and well animated.
This is a very good DVD production. Great transfer, audio and features. Never had any problems with the disc playing or with the menus functioning so it was manufactured well.
2010-03-05
By Johnathan P. Adkins (norris city ill)
Titan-Synthesis was not the best in the series. But im glad the auther only stuck with one story line at the time.