Cradle Of Saturn [Hardcover]

James P. Hogan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1999

For years, engineer Landen Keene has envied the Kronian colony among the moons of Saturn, which embodies the pioneer spirit that Earth has lost. Then a Kronian delegation arrives on Earth with newfound evidence that the planets underwent cataclysmic changes only a few thousand years ago. And a white-hot protoplanet which Jupiter has emitted is found to be on a collision course with Earth. Keene has to choose between escaping on the Kronian ship or making a desperate cross-continent journey to find a woman he didn't even realize he cared about -- if she is still alive....

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

So there's this big hunk of rock hurtling through space, see? And it just might be on a collision course with earth. Now, the authorities are skeptical at first, mind you. But thanks to evidence amassed by plucky scientists, they eventually relent (although too late to do much about it) and recognize the impending disaster for what it is. Rock meets earth. Earth meets rock. Panic and calamity ensue.

Forgive him the by-now terribly hackneyed premise, and you'll actually find that the able James P. Hogan has infused this Armageddon scenario du jour with some novel science. The pluckiest of Hogan's plucky scientists are the Kronians, brainy colonists from Saturn's satellites, who try, along with like-minded earthlings, to persuade others that Athena, a white-hot comet ejected from Saturn's core, threatens to cook the earth on a near-miss. And along the way, we get treated to some neat, eye-opening theories, among them that the earth may have orbited Saturn as recently as the Pliocene--with giant humans rubbing shoulders with titanotheres--and that Venus may have been spit out by Jupiter just a few thousand years ago. The workmanlike action in Cradle of Saturn is typical disaster-flick fare (although with more politicking than car chases), but it's these ideas that make the book worthwhile. That, and the fact that at no point does Bruce Willis attempt to blow Athena up. --Paul Hughes

From Publishers Weekly

The author of Bug Park now offers an action-cum-romance-cum-disaster novel-cum-movie, with no tackiness. Some time in the future, when the world is not overrun with machines but machines keep everything running, science has stagnated at the pinnacle of its power. Landen Keene, of Earth, is a nuclear engineer struggling to push science out of its rut and to radically change the establishment's way of thinking. Some of his closest colleagues are people he has never met. They are Kronians, citizens of habitats orbiting Saturn's moons. The original Kronians left Earth a generation before to create a society where science is free of bureaucracy and where one's worth is based on how hard one works. After an Earth-sized asteroid is ejected from Jupiter, Keene and the Kronians present evidence that Venus, a troublingly youthful planet, is also an offshoot of Jupiter. The Terran establishment closes ranks and protects its stable solar system dogma. But as the asteroid's course shifts and it begins heading directly for Earth, panic settles in and Keene must decide whether to abandon his new love and escape to Saturn. The action throughout is dense, with no sentence wasted. Hogan's clearly explained scientific hypothesis presents intriguing questions, and his characters are real and likable. Though the sparse detailing renders the settings less than vivid, the suspenseful plot will keep readers strapped in for the ride. (June)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Baen (June 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671578138
• ISBN-13: 978-0671578138
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,546,966 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars "Express elevator to hell! Goin' DOWN!", May 11, 2000

By 

Geoffrey Kidd (Berkeley, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cradle of Saturn (Mass Market Paperback)

Okay, the villains make cardboard look thick, the end-of-the-world genre has been "done to death" :), and the Kronan social model is, to be charitable about it, ridiculous. Add to the foregoing the fact that it took me four tries to get past the book's opening, which doesn't (apparently) have *anything* to do with the story, and you'll understand why, despite the fact that I'm a Hogan fan, it took a year for me to get around to this one even after I bought the hardcover.

On the other hand, I finally discovered that this book has two things going for it. First, is Hogan's attitude toward scientific evidence, which shines through many of the scenes. It can be summed up in the phrase "evidence outweighs theory," and Hogan's characters make their case without theatrics. The second thing is the *scale* of the story. It is uncommon for an author to show you in your guts how having six billion voices screaming "INCOMING!" simultaneously feels.

Once this story really got rolling in Part Three, I was hooked. It was like stepping on a skateboard at the top of Mount Everest with no brakes. At midnight, I found myself turning "just one more page" and forcibly reminding myself I had to get up early. I had to know "what comes next, what comes next,...", and I was relating seriously to the hero, who tries desperately to do the right thing even if it means giving up what might be his only shot at survival. That sort of involvement is something only solid writing can create. To be sure, this book has its flaws and it's not Hogan's best work, but it was worth the time and effort I put into it, and I don't recommend starting it if you don't have the time to finish it. Like all the rest of James Hogan's writings, it is good, solid reading. I may not read this one a second time, but I'm glad I read it a first.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Science Fiction is SPECULATIVE Fiction, August 5, 2003

By 

Randall R. Holterman - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cradle Of Saturn (Hardcover)

Remembering that Science Fiction should more properly be called Speculative Fiction (from Larry Niven), this book meets the criteria very well. Hogan puts a readable and interesting tale around the question "What if Velikovsky was right?" If you like stories that explore different ideas that make your mind work somewhat, you should enjoy this one. If you decide that all existing scientific theories are wrong, or right, based on this book, you are being as closed minded as Hogan's "establishment" scientific bad guys. Treat this one as a good read exploring, literally, earthshattering ideas and handle the scientific arguments by looking at source documentation, (some of which Hogan was nice enough to reference in the paperback), not relying on this fiction book, and you'll enjoy "Cradle of Saturn".

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A mind is a terrible thing to waste..., January 22, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Cradle Of Saturn (Hardcover)

James P. Hogan has a mixed record in the world of "hard" science fiction, with some good books and some not so good. His latest novel, "Cradle of Saturn" (COS), goes well beyond the "not so good" into the "terrible". Ideally, good science fiction results from the combination of good fiction plus at least reasonably plausible science. Unfortunately COS fails on both counts. The writing is turgid and uninteresting, and the "science" is pathetically bad.

In recent years Hogan seems to have fixated on the idea that a conspiracy of scientists is attempting to conceal the Truth about a variety of topics, including AIDS, the stratospheric ozone layer, dinosaurs, evolution, and so forth. Most of the reasoning he uses to support these claims is neither original nor credible. As someone who has some familiarity with atmospheric chemistry, I can say with confidence that most of his allegations about stratospheric ozone are worthless.

Yet in COS, Hogan carries his anti-scientific revisionist nonsense far, far beyond most of his earlier writings. The central theme of this book based on the work of Velikovsky, a crackpot whose ideas about the history and dynamics of the solar system were unsupportable when first published in the early 1950s, and have only become more so in the past half century. To justify his use of Velikovskian ideas, Hogan has to bend, break, or ignore most of modern geology and physics.

Some might argue that the science doesn't matter, as long as the literary side of COS is well done. Unfortunately, it's not. Hogan's characters are cardboard cutouts, with no depth or personality. His prose is uninteresting, and the story frequently is pushed aside to make room for thinly-veiled rants relating to Hogan's bizarre anti-scientific obsessions. It IS possible for a persevering reader to make his or her way through to the end of this book, but the question is -- why would one want to? There are far more worthwhile books out there than could possibly be read in anyone's lifetime; plowing your way through "Cradle of Saturn" will only prevent you from reading something else that would probably be infinitely better.

If you really want to read something interesting by Hogan, I'd recommend "Inherit the Stars" and "The Proteus Operation" over "Cradle of Saturn" any day.