This book carries on where Saturn ends. The 11 mile long by 4 mile wide space habitat Goddard has reached Saturn and is in orbit around it’s moon Titan.Science, politics, technology and human foibles all get put in a bender, shaken; not stirred, and what comes out is highly entertaining.The main story revolves around Titan Alpha which is a semi autonomous rover type vehicle sent to the surface of Titan to explore the surface. The problem is once it lands it decides that collecting data about Titan is good but sending it back to the Scientists on Goddard is not.The leader of the Scientists Dr Eduoard Urbain is stunned and embarrassed by this problem and harasses his staff to find a solution. In the mean time Titan Alpha decides on it’s own to do a “walkabout” on the surface and see what other data can be collected.This is all happening at Christmas time and Pancho Lane a retired CEO has come to the Goddard habitat not only to see the launch of Titan Alpha but also to visit her sister Susan, who has changed her name to Holly after being thawed from Cryogenic sleep she was put in when she was diagnosed with a terminal disease.Malcolm Eberly is the Chief Administrator of Goddard , a position he got by defeating Dr Urbain in an election held on Goddard. Malcolm is a politician at the highest level whose main concern is maintaining power and making sure people know how powerfull he is. In particular Dr Urbain.There is money to made by mining the rings around Saturn that are made up of ice. However one scientist on board Goddard, Nadia Wunderley, believes the rings have life in them . She tries to get a stuntman on board to repeat his joutrney through the rings to get a sample however he has retired and so it ends up being Pancho Lane who volunteers to go through the rings and collect a sample.Is their life in the rings ? How does ZPG (Zero Population Growth) enter into the election for Chief Administrator of Goddard ? What is Titan Alpha actually doing on the surface of Titan ? Who is really going to go through the rings and collect samples ? Who wins the Chief Administration election ?You’ll have to read the book to get the answers to these questions. You will enjoy every minute of finding out.
Titan is another excellent science fiction novel in Ben Bova’s Grand Tour series. Goddard, a permanent space habitat containing 10,000 people from Earth, is in orbit around Saturn in the years 2095-2096. The unethical Chief Administrator of Goddard is planning to extract the water from the rings of Saturn to sell it to other earth space colonies, which would make the population of the habitat very wealthy. However, the scientists in the habitat are concerned that the mining operations will harm the living organisms that may live in the rings. In addition, a robotic science probe/lab on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, has gone rogue and severed communication with the scientists in the habitat. There is also a political struggle within the habitat to replace the Chief Administrator and end the Zero Population Growth policy to make it possible for women to have children. I found this to be a very engaging novel that meets all the expectations of a definitive work of science fiction. The science is totally plausible, there is plenty of it, and it is presented within a very interesting and entertaining storyline. However, the reader does not need extensive scientific knowledge to enjoy the book. In addition, Bova provides and very interesting group of many appealing and some unsavory characters who support, love, argue, clash, conspire, and/or are deceptive with each other while attempting to enhance their own lives while influencing the sociopolitical environment of the habitat. Bova also provides compelling, life-or-death, outer-space action in the rings of Saturn and on the surface of Titan that certainly made this reader anxious. Of course, Titan is also very well written by one of the great science fiction writers of our time. It was first published in 2006 and it won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel of the year in 2007. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes science fiction or anyone who wants to sample some.
What do You think about Titan (2007)?
A novel with very serious flaws. I couldn't finish, stopping about 3/4 of the way. [[[Spoilers ahead.]]]The biggest flaw I found, a critical one at that, was in the alliance between Wunderly and Holly. The alliance was based on opposing Eberly in his bid for re-election. His big issue was making more money by mining the rings for water. Holly's big issue was the repeal of a Zero Population Growth (ZPG) policy. Wunderly's issue was that she didn't want the rings mined because there might be life
—Norbert
I know this author has a “Grand Tour” of the solar system series. I have put off reading any of these for no reason other than some of Bova’s other books have been inconsistent in the quality of writing. I finally snatched ‘Titan’ cheap and thought I’d give it a go. Overall, I found the story itself rather boring and uninteresting. The underlying politics and personal interactions that should drive the story are woefully unimpressive. Bova displays a very simplistic and naive approach that results in characters adopting almost comical imitations of what an outsider would expect to happen. Oubain's psychotic and neurotic reactions to his "beast's" behavior was laughable. The fact that none of the so-called scientists on Goddard was able to figure out what happened is not realistic. The administrative politics was on the level of high school antics. Finally, the whole notion that an academic body on Earth would "ban" mining the rings of Saturn for water is not only preposterous (who would actually listen to them), but flies in the face of logic. Let's see, Earth's oceans have life, maybe humans should stay out of and off of them as well. All in all a quite disappointing read. It's also sad when you've covered 2/3 of a book and little has happened.
—Patrick Gibson
Titan is a nice addition to Ben Bova's Grand Tour of the Solar System series. It stands well on its own and its plot grows out of what came before it. Bova's prose is good but not great and his plot and characters are a bit flat. But as near-future sci-fi it is compelling, barely 90 years into the future. Our own solar system is envisioned as a very rich and fertile place and the science isn't too far our of reach making it beleivable and compelling. Also making it even more belivable and compelling is the social and historical setting that could be growing out of our own present; ultra-powerful multinational corporations versus globally organized religious fundamentalists versus reactionary scientists. Unfortunately it takes reading more than one of his books from the grand tour to really grasp the socio-political dynamic. It is all pretty good fun.
—Brian Carless
