Colony [Paperback]

Ben Bova (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 31, 1989

In the Future, Everything is Different.
But Nothing Has Changed.

"The Earth has been poisoned by pollution, choked by overpopulation, and ravaged by the mindless greed of power-hungry corporations. A fragile peace is threatened by landless revolutionaries and global anarchy seems imminent.

Yet a single ray of hope remains. . ."

Island One is a celestial utopia, and David Adams is its most perfect creation - a man with a brain as advanced as any computer and a body free of human frailties. But David is a prisoner -- a captive of the colony that created him -- destined to spend the days of his life in an island-sized cylinder that circles a doomed and desperate home planet. Thousands of miles below him, a world trembles; its people cringe in terror and despair in anticipation of an impending apocalypse. And as Earth's boundaries, fate has cast one extraordinary human in the role of savior. For David Adams has a plan -- one that will ultimately ensure the salvation of his species . . . or its annihilation.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Born in Philadelphia, Ben Bova worked as a newspaper reporter, a technical editor for Project Vanguard (the first American satellite program), and a science writer and marketing manager for Avco Everett Research Laboratory, before being appointed editor of Analog, one of the leading science fiction magazines, in 1971. After leaving Analog in 1978, he continued his editorial work in science fiction, serving as fiction editor of Omni for several years and editing a number of anthologies and lines of books, including the "Ben Bova Presents" series for Tor. He has won science fiction's Hugo Award for Best Editor six times.

A published SF author from the late 1950s onward, Bova is one of the field's leading writers of "hard SF," science fiction based on plausible science and engineering. Among his dozens of novels are Millennium, The Kinsman Saga, Colony, Orion, Peacekeepers, Privateers, and the Voyagers series. Much of his recent work, including Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, The Precipice, and The Rock Rats, falls into the continuity he calls "The Grand Tour," a large-scale saga of the near-future exploration and development of our solar system.

A President Emeritus of the National Space Society and a past president of Science-fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, in 2001 Dr. Bova was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He lives in Naples, Florida, with his wife, the well-known literary agent Barbara Bova.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 470 pages
• Publisher: Mandarin (December 31, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0749303190
• ISBN-13: 978-0749303198
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Better than I expected, April 5, 2004

By 

John Howard "jrh1972" (Jacksonville, Florida) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Colony (Mass Market Paperback)

I was desparate for something to read, and this was the best looking thing that I could find lying around at the time, so I really didn't expect much. However, this book pleasantly surprised me, it was very well written with a lot of interesting characters and events.

I was surprised about a hundred pages into the book when I read something that didn't fit very well historically, to find out that this book is actually about twenty-five years old. I should have realized it sooner because the dates in the story are very close to the present, but I just didn't notice that until I checked the copyright date. Despite the abundance of picture phones, I thought the author did a really good job of writing a future world that doesn't seem to far fetched even after all this time. I was somewhat disappointed in the ending, not that it was bad, but just a little abrupt and anticlimactic. There was also a plot point that I thought was silly and unnecessary, it took one of the best parts of the book, a part that really made you see the protaganist's growth and just made it look like a really poor job of parenting by his gaurdian.

I wasn't expecting much from this book when I picked it up, but I will be looking to read more of Bova in the future.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars loved it, December 24, 2004

By 

ribcage (Lantana, Florida United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Colony (Mass Market Paperback)

I loved this book. The characters and story are great, but what really made me like this book is the incredible background and locales Ben Bova creates. The intricacies of world government and corporate power are ultimately the main focus of this book. He unfolds things with good timing. The locales we see are awesome. A huge paradise inside a cylinder in outer space to a decrepit New York run by gangs and avoided by the military, dangerous streets of the middle east, a South American jungle. It was a fun journey, and I'm glad I decided to pick this book up.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting story..., April 11, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Colony (Mass Market Paperback)

The story is a little out of date now (it was originally written in 1978), but it is still good.

The beginning of the book is a little slow. Probably the first 100 pages or so. Bova takes quite a bit of time introducing the characters and the environment. But, once through that, it move along.

It not an exciting book, rather an interesting book.

The main character, David, is very interesting. His life and how he perceives his future and destiny.

Worth reading.