Heart of the Comet (A Bantam Spectra Book)

I enjoyed this book immensely! The perfect balance of exploring scientific concepts and telling a riveting story. Like "Earth" (novel by David Brin), some of the scientific ideas are a little farfetched, but not just silly. They are well thought out, and explained in relatively simple terms. There are explorations of biology (the interplay of hostile and symbiotic microscopic life forms - germs), astrophysics (using sublimation to steer a comet), and even the psycology (small groups of people under stress - a la "Lord of the Flies"). I think this is why it took two authors to write this book... there are just too many interesting concepts going on for just one person to have thouroughly researched. Oh, and did I mention that it has lots of action and a great story. Not nearly as dry as you might guess from the title - quite a treat.

Separate these two guys are awesome and if you haven't tried anything by them yet (Benford's Timescape and Galactic Center series and Brin's Uplift series) you owe it to yourself to give them a decent shot if this book at all interested you. Their styles mix quite well, Benford is normally the more straightforward of the two and I think it's his influence that keeps the novel from getting as selfconsciously complicated as the Uplift books tended to get (hey, I love 'em too, but don't tell me that all of them at some point had you scratching your head and going "What's going on?"). Still, it's far too long and by the end the twists aren't as shocking as they were in the beginning, you sort of keep plugging along because you want to see what's going to happen. But that's the minor bad points, there's plenty of good points. For one, the scenario is awesome, Halley's comet is coming back into the solar system and a team of colonists are on there attempting to live there. And of course everything goes splendidly and people live in perfect harmony because everyone got it right the first time before they sent these folks out. Ha, ha, that's funny, right. Not only is there conflict between the genetically tweaked "Percells" and the nonmodified "Orthos" Earth itself is in turmoil and the wacky planet's decisions often directly affect the poor cometfolk. If that's not bad enough, Halley's inhabited and the colonists have to figure out how to live with a bunch of aliens that see them as midnight snacks. Plus there's romance! And riots! And philosophy! And science! And . . . you get the idea. This book has something for everyone and that might be its biggest fault and why it's so danged long, it's not sure whether it wants to be the hard science Alien, or the hard science Tower of Glass or the hard science {insert famed novel/movie here} the book gets a tad schizo after a while, they go right through one genre cliche and tear it to pieces before just moving right onto the next one. Entertaining? Heck, yeah. But tiring after a while? Oh yeah. On the plus side the characters are well drawn if a bit flat and singleminded at times, everyone has their own little personal obsessions but then you'd probably have to be a bit obsessed in the first place to want to go riding a comet for eighty years. A good example of the "thinking man's SF" and a great alternative to the derivative stuff that often clutters the marketplace. I don't think I'd want to see a sequel to this book (the ending wraps things up nicely) but I wouldn't mind seeing these two pros work together again.

I couldn't put the book down. It was a surreal, awe-inspiring adventure. The imagery was such that I could visulaize it in my mind as I was reading. I felt like I was there. A wonderful masterpiece of science fiction that doesn't degrade itself by including sex, slave girls, etc. that a lot of other 3rd rate science trash puts out. This is a classic forever!!!

Finally!! The blurbs on the book cover do it justice. What a woderful book written by two science fiction masters. I had put ofrf reading this book and had it for several years. I picked it up after a friend recommended it and WOW!. It is truly a world building story and the characters are lovingly portrayed and the plot moves along quickly. This is one "hard" science fiction book that does not get bogged down in science facts and details. Just enough to keep you interested. I can;t say enough good things about this book. Too bad these two authors didn;t collaborate on another project.

I like this book so much that I've run a 5-player RPG based on this book's scenario very successfully, for 25 weeks (one 6 hr session every week.) If you're interested in this adaptation, I'm happy to share. Great book!