Titan [Paperback]

_Titan_ by Ben Bova is the sequel to his earlier novel _Saturn_, part of his Grand Tour series of novels set in the solar system of the late 21st century. It picks up about a year or so after the events of _Saturn_ and it would be helpful if not essential for a reader to have read the earlier novel first.

Much like with _Saturn_, much time is spent on the politics, intrigue, and personal lives of people on the station _Goddard_ though unlike with the novel _Saturn_ the intrigue this time is more closely tied in with the science of the mission. Some might be frustrated by the book's concentration on story elements not directly related to science but they do tie in well with the science and the pace of the book is very brisk.

Essentially, there are four main story elements though other characters do have arcs of their own. Malcolm Eberly, the power-hungry, suave, and manipulative chief administrator, is trying to sow up the next election and is working hard to buy off or counter any potential rivals. Holly Lane, the station's chief of human resources (in addition to contending with romantic issues and a visit by her sister from the colony of Selene, Pancho Lane) is trying to come to grip with issues of the station's future - specifically, whether or not people on the station can start having children. Dr. Edouoard Urbain is obsessed with trying to get his malfunctioning robotic rover on the surface of Titan, named _Titan Alpha_, up and running again after some mysterious complete and total break in communications with the probe occurred after it landed. Finally, Nadia Wunderly, the scientist who made the amazing discovery in _Saturn_ of the apparent existence of life in Saturn's rings, is desperate to try to follow up on her experiments and stop proposals to mine the rings for water.

If you liked _Saturn_, you will like _Titan_, as the pace is similar and nearly all of the characters from the first novel return in the second. As I mentioned, the pace is brisk, the book is quite readable, and this time there is a good bit more science in the novel. It wasn't the best of his Grand Tour series however (_Venus_ and _Jupiter_ were I think the best installments). Some of his characters, even by their own admission, were single-mined to the point of being almost one-dimensional characters (chiefly Dr. Urbain and Eberly), I think some of the writer's views on the differences about men and women when it comes to children was a bit antiquated feeling (but then who really knows what people will think on such matters a hundred years from now), and Holly Lane's slang ("I click," "'Kay," "prob'ly," "nossir", etc) while not constant, was frequent enough to be irritating, particularly since some of the contractions didn't make much sense to me and none of the other characters spoke like that (well, sometimes Pancho did). Bova might have been trying for local color with Holly, maybe going for a youthful sounding individual, I don't know, but it really bothered me sometimes. I am trying to remember if she sounded that way in _Saturn_ or not. In the end though a pretty minor complaint, I don't mention it to drive away potential readers of the book, just something I had to get off of my chest.

Overall I did enjoy the book though and it did have an interesting twist at the end.

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

Overall, I found the story itself rather boring and unintersting. 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 proposterous (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.