author : Robert Reed

A gigantic mysterious abandoned spaceship, the size of Jupiter, is discovered entering the galaxy. It soon gets taken over, and turned into a stupendous cruise ship for billions of bored near-immortal life forms. Then 100 millennia into its new voyage around the galaxy, a strange secret is discovered at the centre of the ship.

I found this very hard going, and I kept putting it down to read something else, yet something compelled me to finish it. I came at it expecting another Big Dumb Object tale, but, somewhat to my disappointment (I like BDO tales), it is actually a story of the bizarre long-lived crew and how they react to the discoveries in their ship. Yet, because the action takes place over millennia (and it's very irritating that that much used word is consistently misspelled as 'millenia'), there is very little feeling of urgency, or tension, at least until right near the end. And then the revelations about the nature of the ship are somewhat pulled out of a hat.

I guess my problem is that I am more interested in the ship than its crew, but the story is more about the crew than the ship. Yet the feeling of sheer scale -- the planetary size of the ship, the millennia that elapse between events, the staggering number of beings on board -- is well-drawn, and saves the story, for me at least.

fixup novel

Contents (possible spoilers)

• Sister Alice. 1993

• Brother Perfect. 1995

• Mother Death. 1998

• Baby's Fire. 1999

• Father to the Man. 2000