3/5 stars
Titan by John Varley
Despite only giving it 3 stars this is really a very goodstory; well paced, interesting idea(s), sympathetic main characters and nicely finished off. What let it down for me was poor research, some incorrect (or at least very poorly expressed) science and, most tellingly for me, it is heavily hung-over with the free lovin’ attitudes of the sixties and seventies:
There were three men aboard Ringmaster, and Cirocco had made love to them all. So had Gaby Plauget.It was impossible to keep secrets when seven people lived in such a confinedspace. She knew for a fact, for instance, that what the Polo sisters did behind the closed doors of their adjoining rooms was still illegal in Alabama.
He suggests all male crews had been tried and shown to notwork (even at the time of writing submariners could have told him he was wrong) and the only workable way of crewing a spaceship had been found to be mixed crews combined with free love. I know this attitude is of its time, but quite frankly even during the sixties and seventies it was pretty obvious to me (and I was a hippy back then) that all this free loving just ended in tears ninety-nine percent of the time. There is much more throughout the book coloured by similar dated attitudes and they made me wince every time I came across them. There are also many instances of what, to me at least, was very clumsy writing, particularly when it comes to describing Gaea. Not an easy task but it surely could have been done better than he achieved.
All of which is a shame as the story and its telling are both excellent. After a slightly slow start the pace never lets up in what is not a short book. The idea of Gaea is intriguing, believable, and well explored. The characters are well portrayed if a little inconsistent at times (but then that could be explained away by the things that have happened tothem).
All in all a good book. I just wish it had been written a decade or two later, after the author had had a chance to shake off those dated attitudes.
Titan by John Varley
Despite only giving it 3 stars this is really a very goodstory; well paced, interesting idea(s), sympathetic main characters and nicely finished off. What let it down for me was poor research, some incorrect (or at least very poorly expressed) science and, most tellingly for me, it is heavily hung-over with the free lovin’ attitudes of the sixties and seventies:
There were three men aboard Ringmaster, and Cirocco had made love to them all. So had Gaby Plauget.It was impossible to keep secrets when seven people lived in such a confinedspace. She knew for a fact, for instance, that what the Polo sisters did behind the closed doors of their adjoining rooms was still illegal in Alabama.
He suggests all male crews had been tried and shown to notwork (even at the time of writing submariners could have told him he was wrong) and the only workable way of crewing a spaceship had been found to be mixed crews combined with free love. I know this attitude is of its time, but quite frankly even during the sixties and seventies it was pretty obvious to me (and I was a hippy back then) that all this free loving just ended in tears ninety-nine percent of the time. There is much more throughout the book coloured by similar dated attitudes and they made me wince every time I came across them. There are also many instances of what, to me at least, was very clumsy writing, particularly when it comes to describing Gaea. Not an easy task but it surely could have been done better than he achieved.
All of which is a shame as the story and its telling are both excellent. After a slightly slow start the pace never lets up in what is not a short book. The idea of Gaea is intriguing, believable, and well explored. The characters are well portrayed if a little inconsistent at times (but then that could be explained away by the things that have happened tothem).
All in all a good book. I just wish it had been written a decade or two later, after the author had had a chance to shake off those dated attitudes.
