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Orbitsville (Gollancz SF collector's edition)
 
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Orbitsville (Gollancz SF collector's edition) (Paperback)

by Bob Shaw (Author)
4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 187 pages
  • Publisher: Gollancz; New edition edition (18 May 2000)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0575070986
  • ISBN-13: 978-0575070981
  • Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 13.6 x 1.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 786,397 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review

In 1960, scientist Freeman Dyson suggested that advanced alien civilizations would rebuild their solar systems into "Dyson spheres" enclosing the sun and harnessing all its output. SF writers developed the idea: Larry Niven's Ringworld (1970) features a cut-down version while Bob Shaw's Orbitsville (1975) broods on the unimaginable vastness of the entire sphere whose inner surface has five billiontimes Earth's land area.

Shaw kick-starts his story with panicky intensity as starship commander Garamond, knowing he'll be blamed for the accidental death of his powerful(and unpleasant) employer Elizabeth Lindstrom's young son, goes on the run. He hijacks his own ship and heads for unexplored galactic regions... to discover this gigantic construction. There's a striking scene as he penetrates the single entrance's forcefield:

And there--on the edge of a circular lake of stars, suited and armoured to withstand the lethal vacuum of interplanetary space-Garamond had his first look at the green and infinite meadows of Orbitsville.

Before long the vengeful Lindstrom catches up, and a spectacularly pyrotechnic escape leaves Garamond's spaceship wrecked 15 million kilometres away from the human beachhead on Orbitsville. That's a tiny fraction of the 300 million kilometre diameter: the sphere's hugeness is emphasised as our hero's team doggedly builds a fleet of planes to be flown in shifts back to base, a journey that'll take three full years. A final nerve-tingling clash gives way to revelations--jolting but in retrospect inevitable--of Orbitsville's hidden purpose. One of the best novels by this popular British author. --David Langford



Product Description

When the young son of Elizabeth Lindstrom, the autocratic president of Starflight, falls to his death, Vance Garamond, a flickerwing commander, is the obvious target for Elizabeth's grief and anger. Which, since Elizabeth is not a forgiving employer, leaves Garamond little choice but to flee. And fleeing Elizabeth's wrath means leaving the Solar System far behind, for ever, and hiding somewhere in deep space. Pursued remorselessly by Earth's space fleet, the somewhere that Garamond finds is an unimaginably vast, alien-built, spherical structure which could just change the destiny of the human race...
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Customer Reviews

4 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.8 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Why Hasn't This Been Filmed?, 12 Sep 2000
By A Customer
You may well ask the same after reading this. I've not previously read any of Shaw's work, so this excellent novel, written in 1975, came as a surprise. Space exploration saga, fugitive epic, revenge thriller - the author manages to compress into 186 pages enough plot ideas to keep other writers going over at least three separate books. This novel hits the ground running and doesn't let up. Looming unimaginably vast over all these happenings is the titular creation - a concept previously used by Larry Niven but not on such an enormous scale.. Solid characterisations, and considerations given to the science behind the fiction elevate this book above mere space adventure. Victor Gollancz (or rather Orion Books) have reissued this in their yellow- jacketed SF Collectors series. Good thing too - although surely this is one book that is owed a gorgeous cover illustration?
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Classic Shaw, 6 Sep 2004
By Rod Williams "hairybloke@aol.com" (London) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   
This review is from: Orbitsville (Paperback)
In the first of a rare trilogy from Shaw he examines the theory of the Dyson sphere, a theoretical construction which is, as might be imagined, a sphere, but one which whose diameter is the same size as the orbit of the Earth. It is believed that such a sphere would be able to contain a star such as our own, and given sufficient orbital rotation, would provide a habitable area on the inner surface equal to several hundred million Earths.
Vance Garamond is a Starflight Captain reporting directly to Elizabeth Lindstrom, President of a starfaring society in which only one other habitable planet, Terranova, has been discovered. Earth is overcrowded and Lindstrom, a psychotic and psychopathic dictator, is parcelling up the new planet and selling strips of it off to the highest bidder.
While awaiting his audience with the President before a routine assignment Vance is asked to entertain her nine-year old son. Distracted by his thoughts, Vance does not see that the boy has climbed up into the arms of a statue and before he can react the boy falls and cracks his head on the pedestal, killing himself instantly.
Realising that his life is now forfeit when the borderline-insane Elizabeth discovers her son's death, Garamond collects his wife and young son and smuggles them aboard his spacecraft. Along with his crew they head out for the stars, knowing that their chances of finding a new habitable world and so being able to escape the President's wrath is minimal.
Garamond has one hope in that he has what amounts to a treasure map; ancient research consisting of a chronological series of alien stellar maps in which a star apparently disappears.
Setting off for this point in space, Garamond discovers that the sun has been encased in a sphere of indestructible material, with an entrance at the equator. Inside, the inner surface has been terraformed and its surface area so large that it would provide the same space as several million Earths.
Radio and radar do not work within the sphere, and it is suggested that its creators meant it as a honeytrap for intelligent life, as the alien races which are discovered living within the sphere have reverted to an idyllic pastoral existence.
It's a gloriously retro novel for its time. Elizabeth's Presidential position has regal overtones quite apart from the symbolic relevance of her name. Other critics have seen the influence of Van Vogt here, and certainly the tone and the scope is redolent of novels such as 'Empire of The Atom' or 'Mission to the Stars' although the characterisation exceeds anything Van Vogt produced in either work.
It is also maybe a response to the 'Big Dumb Object' trend which arguably began with Niven's 'Ringworld' and was followed most famously by Clarke's 'Rendezvous with Rama'. Certainly, it would appear that Shaw's novel was the first major use of a Dyson sphere, the concept of which was later used by other authors such as Stephen Baxter in 'The Time Ships' and on TV in 'Star Trek - The Next Generation'.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinary., 7 Dec 2001
By Squerrimole (Addlestone, Surrey UK) - See all my reviews
This novel is beautiful, awesome and chilling all at once. It takes Mankind out of his narrow-minded provincial backwater. It shows him the Extraordinary and then turns him into something Other. When you take Shaw's profound imagination and nail it to a cast of carefully drawn characters and a thrilling plot, you are picked up and hurled bodily right into the centre of things. You will come away humbled, even turned into something Other. Read Orbitsville, and feel insignificant.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Small novel, big ideas
The Orbitsville of the title is a Dyson Sphere: a world that encloses a star thus providing billions of times the Earth's acreage for colonisation. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Blackhorse47

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