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Mercury: Amazon.co.uk: Bova, Ben: 9780340823958: Books

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Mercury Paperback – 15 Aug. 2005

by Ben Bova (Author)

4.3 92 ratings

Book 16 of 23: The Grand Tour

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The closest planet to the Sun, Mercury is an airless, heat-scorched world where temperatures rise to four times higher than the boiling point of water.

But this vision of hell is also a planet with unlimited solar power - worth a fortune to the space tycoon Saito Yamagata if he can find a way to harness it. He has hired the enigmatic Dante Alexios to establish a research station on the surface of the planet and find a way to turn that solar energy into portable power satellites.

But Yamagata is secretly also preparing the way to a very different dream: he wants to travel to the stars themselves. And Alexios has his own obsession, a plot to lure an old enemy to this hellhole of a world and take his revenge for one of the worst disasters in human history.

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Book 16 of 23

The Grand Tour
Print length

384 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Hodder Paperbacks
Publication date

15 Aug. 2005
Dimensions

11.1 x 17.6 x 2.4 cm
ISBN-10

034082395X
ISBN-13

978-0340823958
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Product description

Review

'The science fiction author who will have the greatest effect on the world.' Ray Bradbury

'A masterful storyteller.' Vector

'A splendid book.' Arthur C. Clarke

'Fun, thought-provoking, pacy and stylish . . . Gives a good read while turning your eyes to what might be in the not so distant future, just like Clarke and Asimov used to do so well.' SFX on VENUS

'Vivid, poetic and wonder- provoking.' Foundation on JUPITER

Book Description

The latest novel in Ben Bova's acclaimed Grand Tour of the Solar System, the enthralling story of humankind's first steps to explore Earth's closest neighbours in the universe.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Hodder Paperbacks; New edition (15 Aug. 2005)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 384 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 034082395X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0340823958
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 11.1 x 17.6 x 2.4 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 1,682,588 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 23,875 in Science Fiction Adventure (Books)
- 158,962 in Fantasy (Books)

Customer reviews:
4.3 92 ratings

About the author

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Ben Bova

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The author of more than 100 futuristic novels and nonfiction books,

Dr. Ben Bova has been involved in science and high technology since the very beginnings of the space age. President Emeritus of the National Space Society and a past president of Science Fiction Writers of America, Dr. Bova received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation in 2005, “for fueling mankind’s imagination regarding the wonders of outer

space.” His 2006 novel TITAN received the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel of the year. Earlier, he was an award-winning editor of ANALOG and OMNI and an executive in the aerospace industry.

Dr. Bova is a frequent commentator on radio and television and popular lecturer.

His website is: http://www.benbova.com

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5

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Ben Bova does it again

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 December 2012

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As always, Ben Bova combines his Scifi with the intrigues of human relationships. An excellent read. I highly recomment it.

One person found this helpful

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 September 2008

This book is easy to read, its story line is straightforward and once started you will want to finish it. The image of mercury is hot, hot, hot, so no surprises there then, but it's well done. Yes we have seen space elevator's before done by Kim Stanley Robinson and Arthur C. Clarke but I had no problem with that and rather enjoyed the technical realisation of the structure. Overall I enjoyed the book and will continue to pick up more of this author's work.

Badly structured book with faulty physics

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 20 February 2024

I agree with most of the other 2 star reviews regarding the flaws in this book, compared to others in the Grand Tour of the Solar system series. What I particularly disliked was that the second (more than) half of the book was a flashback to cover the collapse of the skytower (often called a space elevator elsewhere). This is not a spoiler because the collapse was well covered in the first part, so there was no surprise or anticipation in reading the second part, only a wait for the inevitable collapse.

But what I have not seen commented elsewhere are the flaws in the fundamental physics regarding the skytower, which I would not have expected from an experienced author like Ben Bova. First, the characters visit a platform on the low Earth orbit station on the tower where the characters find themselves WEIGHTLESS. But that is quite impossible for a sky tower. It inevitably rotates with the Earth itself with a period of 24 hours, so weightlessness will only occur at the geosynchronous station on the elevator, over 22,000 miles above the Earth (where by definition the stable orbit has a 24 hour period). At the low Earth orbit station, only 300 miles high, weightlessness occurs for orbits of about one and a half hours period, not 24 hours, and on the skytower the reduction in weight would be scarcely noticeable!

Secondly, when the tower (which is based in Ecuador) collapses, it is supposed to fall (presumably along the line of the equator) across the Pacific ocean. But the geosynchronous station, where the break occurs, is rotating (like the Earth beneath) West to East at about 6000 mph, compared to the surface rotational velocity of about 1000 mph. So that the huge rotational momentum of the tower would fling the falling tower FORWARDS, across Brazil and the Atlantic ocean!

Small planet, small impact.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 June 2017

Spawned lovers in intergalactic feud, is a potential tabloid headline for Mercury. It's science fiction elements are but a backdrop to the cast of rather unlikeable astronauts. In tone this feels more like a novel from Bova's Asteroid Wars than an entry in the Grand Tour, due to the overstretched plot and overarching coincidences that stitch the story together. Brilliant series however this entry is a little bit below par.

Patchy and disappointing

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 March 2005

Mercury is the latest in Ben Bova's 'Grand Tour of the Solar System' series. Set in the near future it describes a world divided into an authoritarian mix of new religious fundamentalist governments, massive multinationals and heroic scientists and pioneers picking their way through the solar system planet by planet (including the Asteroid belt, setting for the last three books). Mercury is a tale of revenge and Bova is at his best when describing the interplay of human relations and betrayals that forge his characters. Unfortunately the rest of the book is poorly realised and feels unfinished. Admittedly Mercury is perhaps the least interesting of the planets, being a big baked rock, and Bova tries to expand the story with an extended flashback describing the first space elevator and, later, one of the characters' exile to the Asteroid belt. There's nothing here that hasn't been done before and I got the feeling that Bova was retreading old ground, or plagiarising others (I won't spoil the plot but the catastrophe half-way through the book is lifted wholesale from Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series). His peripheral characters are weak. The arrogant Japanese corporate boss has stepped straight from the pages of Michael Crichton's Rising Sun and trots out the old cliched mistakes about Japanese businessmen being closet samurai. Grammatical errors and poor proof-reading ('despondent' repeated twice in the same paragraph) suggests this book was trotted on out autopilot for the sake of completeness. If you're into the series it's worth reading, if not, I'd either turn to the brilliant Moon series, Jupiter or wait and hope Bova gets back on form with the next planet.

8 people found this helpful

A miserable attempt by Ben Bova

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 10 June 2006

Ben Bova has written some excellent books, but sadly this one disappoints. The plot is weak, with characters and ideas from earlier books now over-used. Mercury itself plays a very small part in the story - much of the story is set on Earth - and the "big event" in the book is a poor shadow of a plot line in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series.

Fortunately, Ben is running out of planets.

Top reviews from other countries

lee gainer

Suspensful

Reviewed in the United States on 27 March 2022

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A very exciting read u did not know how it was going to turn out the ending was a shock to me

Minana

Good story line.

Reviewed in the United States on 23 July 2019

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I felt like was a passenger on board. Need to read all this series in order. Good author, will continue to follow.

Steve King

Mercury - A Book That Doesn't Really Involve Mercury

Reviewed in the United States on 19 September 2011

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As a disclaimer for my review, I'll mention that I'm trying to read all of the Grand Tour (19ish) books by Ben Bova in their chronological order - which is not the order they were written in. Mercury is the 16th book in the chronological order.

Mance Bracknell is living the dream. Engaged to his college sweetheart, Lara, and project leader of the first Space Ladder which will allow humanity to deliver payloads into orbit for a fraction of the cost of rocket launches, Mance is living his dream. However, he is betrayed by a friend (Victor Molina) who is also in love with Lara and a priest of the fundamentalist New Morality movement (Elliot Danvers) and the Space Ladder collapses, killing four million people worldwide. Bracknell is exiled from Earth and sent to serve a life sentence of hard labor in the asteroid belt. Discovering that the destruction of the Space Ladder was intentional and carried out by zealots paid by Yamagata Corporation, Bracknell vows revenge on the son of Saito Yamagata (founder of Yamagata Corp.), his former friend Molina, and Elliot Danvers.

Mercury was one of the most disjointed books in the Grand Tour for me. The first 100ish pages of the book take place in the current Grand Tour timeline, then snaps back 10 years to detail the events that led up to the destruction of the Space Ladder, many of which had already been covered earlier in the book, if in less detail. Then, it isn't until the last 30 or so pages of the book that we catch up with the current time again. While flashbacks aren't necessarily a bad thing, in Mercury it felt like watching fourth quarter of a close football game until the 2:00 minute warning, then rewinding it and watching the whole thing from the beginning of the game.

As another reviewer pointed out, Mercury is an after thought in this book. One would expect a book called Mercury to involve the planet at some point but in this case it's only as a physical location that is hot and inhospitable to human life. If you know that Mercury is hot and rocky, then you already know everything about Mercury that will be covered in this book. Mr. Bova could have essentially used any hot, rocky location for the plot elements that are needed, so the use of Mercury felt arbitrary.

The story of love lost, tragedy and the quest for revenge is actually pretty good. I've had negative things to say about Mr. Bova's portrayal of romance in the past and as soon as I realized Mercury involved a love triangle I worried it would be another emotionless, cardboard romance but in this case it was believable, at least in a Shakespearean Tragedy sort of way. In honesty, I could have rated Mercury anywhere between two and four stars, and finally settled on three.

5 people found this helpful

The Pirate

the Pirate.

Reviewed in the United States on 4 May 2019

Verified Purchase

Excellent as always. Big fan of Ben Bova...

Marcia E Linder

I have enjoyed every one of Ben Bova’s books! Excellent author!

Reviewed in the United States on 9 April 2019

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Enjoyed the book very much!

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