Reading
I started reading this on February 21, 2006, and finished it on
February 25, 2006.
Specs
Bova, Ben, Saturn, written
2003, published by Tom Doherty Associates, Tor Press, New York. This
is from the Central Resource Library.
Overview
(Time: appears placed in the late 21st century.)
This is a story about an experiment. That is, the "New
Morality," based in New Jersey, has
decided on an experiment where they will collect a group of 10,000
people, put them in an enclosed environment, and see what they do.
Particularly, what sort of government they set up. Dr. Wilmot is the
scientist in charge, and the 10,000 do not know they are part of an
experiment.
Although the New Morality set up the experiment, which is a
Sociological experiment, about a third of
the staff is from the "The International Consortium of University."
This group is in charge of the technical aspects of the trip to
Saturn, but they don't know about the experiment either.
Unknown to the New Morality and the ICU another group also put
people onto the environment, "The Holy Disciples."
This group is a group of fundamentalist who are
afraid the people on the Habitat will be beyond their control
(like the government in The Gustave Station).
Actually, I think the New Morality is another Fundamentalist group,
but obviously less restrictive.
The Holy Disciples put people into the
habitat with their cronies, with orders to take over at all costs.
Malcolm Eberly. is the designated leader, and is the head of
"Personnel." Therefore, he has some control over who gets to go,
and what job they get, although Dr. Wilmot has final say. Also, Mr.
Kananga is the chief of security. He was a police officer that was
kicked off the force for attempted genocide. He is big and mean. A
Ms. Morgenthau is also in the group. She is probably gay, and makes
herself fat and ugly to keep the men away.
The fourth group is smaller and
more personal. A woman, Susan Lane (who changed her name to Holly,
so she is know as Holly for most of the story), decides to go with.
She is someone who died and was brought back to life, but lost her
memory as a result, so she is really an older woman who acts like a
teenager. Her sister is Pancho Lane, a famous Astronaut, who does
not go with. Her sister doesn't want her to go, but she can't stop
her, so she hires people to go with to keep an eye on her. Of
course, they have other jobs, and Holly doesn't know they were hired.
They are Manny Gaeta, a stunt person. That is, he makes his
living by doing stunts and getting paid for it. He wants to be the
first person to go to the surface of Titan, so he will go out with
the colony, and will return immediately on a "torch ship" (a
fast, but expensive, ship). Also, Dr. Cardenas, who won a Nobel
prize for nanotechnology. She doesn't join the expedition until they
reach Jupiter (where more hydrogen is picked up for the fusion
engine). And, finally, Mr. Tavalera, who did not plan to go and was
not hired, was picked up in an accident near Jupiter.
Throughout the novel, Dr. Wilmot is watching what is going on with
interest, since this is his area of research, but he never
intervenes. He learns of Eberly's plans, but he
allows them to proceed, even when he, personally, is compromised.
To be honest, the book was very slow at the beginning. They are
just waiting to get to Saturn.
Eberly decided to start his takeover early. He
starts a contest to name everything in the habitat, the villages, the
factories, etc. Holly, who is very much infatuated with Eberly, is
his assistant. Once they're on their way, Eberly decides to spend
full time planning and implementing his intrigues, but he names
Morgenthau as his acting
replacement. Holly is disappointed, but Eberly keeps her in
line by telling her that Morgenthau
is only a figurehead, and she will hold the real authority. Holly is
in charge of the naming project.
One downside is that obviously Ben Bova
doesn't know anything about other election schemes than first past
the post, with all its problems. He does illustrate the problems
however.
Eberly gets permission from Dr. Wilmot
to write the Constitution. It is a very liberal constitution, with a
clause stating that the leader can take suspend human rights in an
emergency. The plan, of course, is that once the Constitution is in
force, and Eberly set up as the leader, there will always be a state
of emergency, so the guys back on Earth will get their absolute
control.
Mr. Vyborg is the third in command in
the Communication Division. There is an old man, Diego Romero, who
is a figurehead in charge, and a Mr. Berkowitz does the work. But
Vyborg is the person the conspiracy says should be in charge, so he
tries to get Eberly to remove the people above him. When Eberly
doesn't do it as fast as he likes, he kills Romero. Holly, who had
become friends with Romero, finds the body. She suspects something
because she knows Romero, and the official version, that is was an
accident is not true. She finds some proof in that there is evidence
of Romero's struggling to save himself. She eventually reveals this
to Eberly, who then orders her killed. Eberly leads her to Kananga,
but she beats him up. She might look small and weak, but obviously
she must know martial arts. Then she hides out in the tunnels under
the surface, which she knows like the back of her hands. She hides
out for two weeks, in fact, with the entire security force looking
for her.
Eventually Eberly is elected, the
Constitution is accepted, and Holly is caught. Holly again escapes,
but is re-caught. Kananga arranges for a show trial, after which she
is to be killed by being put in the airlock without a suit.
At the same time, Gaeta is going to go
through the rings of Saturn in his big stunt suit. He set out to do
this, (he is almost killed, despite the fact that his very large
suit is designed to handle meteor strikes, and radiation from space.
Just as Kananga is preparing to push Holly out the door (after a
really terrible beating), Gaeta comes in from his trek through the
rings. The airlock is locked, but Gaeta has to get in through the
emergency cycling. Gaeta comes out decked out in his big space suit,
tired and sore, but he sees what's going on. The security forces
fire lasers at him, but the lasers are nothing compared to what the
suit is built to take. (Keep in mind, he was hired to protect
Holly.) There were three guards, he hits one, which either kills
him, or knocks him out (Gaeta doesn't care). Then he grabs Kananga
by the throat, and takes him out the airlock, cycling it, end of
Kananga.
The other conspirators are there
as well, including Eberly, to witness the show trial. So, the entire
group is brought before Dr. Wilmot. All the facts are now known.
Kananga killed Romero, Gaeta killed Kananga to save Holly. Wilmot
sends Morgenthau and Vyborg into exile back
to Earth. The implication is that the people that sent them
will kill them because of their ultimate failure.
This is a story about the raise of Hitler before the Second World
War. Eberly is the standing for Hitler. He continues to pit one
group against another even as he tells people they need unity. As
Dr. Wilmot says in the end, that type of government is by its nature
unstable. In Eberly's case, it lasted about five hours, when the
fact that everyone had something on everyone else brought the system
down. That was in the report to his superiors.
There is also a lot of talk about nanomachines, which are outlawed
on Earth due to the Fundamentalist governments. He talks about
nanomachines that can tear thing apart on the atomic level. This is
not possible, as there is a lower limit to the size of nanomachines,
especially nanomachines that use some computers.
Also, a technical point, Ben Bova talks about computers as if they
are souped up versions of the current
computers. That is, they are turned on by audio commands, but are
still separate units, each person has their own computer. There are
hand held computers, which display on a wall, or due to holograms. I
really suspect that in the future computers will be more like the one
in The Gustave Station, where
individual computers are less important than the networked backbone.
Therefore, in that story the "computer" becomes a character, but
the character includes all computers on the station.
The name of the habitat is the Goddard
habitat, presumably after Robert Goddard. It is 2 Kilometers in
radius, and 20 kilometers long. He says that is rotates in 45
seconds to get 1 gravity, but actually is should be 90 seconds.
Theme
At it heart this is a book about the establishment of a repressive
government, and ultimately how unstable that is. (The government
only lasts 5 hours before it breaks up due to internal strife.)
During the first half of the book I could not help but see parallels
to Hitler and his rise to power. I suspect that was deliberate.
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