The Ganymede Club [Hardcover]

Charles Sheffield (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1995

The author of Cold As Ice delivers a tale about the survivors of a war that kills half the human race, makes half of Earth uninhabitable, and leads to strange discoveries.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Sheffield returns to the future of Cold as Ice, here using the aftermath of the solar system-wide Great War of 2067 as backdrop for a science-fiction mystery. Lola Belman is a haldane: she uses a mixture of computer technology and drugs to treat clients' psychological problems. She lives on, or rather in, the Jovian moon Ganymede with her precocious teenage brother, Spook, who is just beginning to make a name for himself on the cyberspace Puzzle Network. Spook soon meets another teenage Master of the Net (seen in Cold as Ice): Megachirops, or Bat, a fat, poorly socialized but brilliant hacker. The mystery at first concerns Lola's client Bryce Sonnenberg, who has memories of places he has never been and whose account of himself and his family differs markedly from what Lola finds in the census records. But more is involved, and soon not only Bryce but also Lola, Spook and Bat are in danger. The characters, generally interesting and likable, credibly use their various skills to save themselves and unravel level after level of secrets. Sheffield provides a rich and satisfying history, including time lines of human colonization of the solar system and the subsequent disputes leading up to the Great War, and his world-building always works with the plot, never overpowering it.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

As the human race struggles to recover from the Great War, a secret society based on Ganymede enacts its mysterious agenda of selective murder and galactic intrigue. Set in the same far future as Cold as Ice (Tor Bks., 1992), Sheffield's latest novel depicts a civilization cut off from its cultural underpinnings. Strong characters and solid scientific theory reinforce the staying power of this fast-paced sf thriller. Recommended for most sf collections.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books (November 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312856628
• ISBN-13: 978-0312856625
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,616,547 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Same Universe as Cold As Ice, Different Feel, September 22, 2003

By 

Randy Stafford (St. Paul, MN USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Ganymede Club (Paperback)

It's five years after the Great War that killed nine billion people in the Solar System, but violence hasn't ceased. It's just returned to the traditional forms of individual murder for profit and paranoia.

The targets in question are haldane Lola Belman, a therapist trained in the aracana of the mathematical underpinnings of the brain, psychotropic drugs, and medicine, and her patient who seems to be suffering a severe bout of false memories.

Unlike its prequel _Cold As Ice_, there are not a lot of neat scientific concepts here. The plot is not driven by scientific exploration and corporate and political intrigue but mostly by the suspense of the characters trying to figure out things the reader knows already, specifically who's trying to kill them and why. And those characters are generally a more interesting lot than those in the earlier novel. The only overlap in the cast is with the best character: the Bat, an obese and extremely private genius who delights in solving all sorts of puzzles from scheduling conflicts in the spaceship transportation network to murder. Here we see him twenty years earlier in his career.

Essentially, if you like a good, suspenseful science fiction tale with a bit of hard science, this novel is for you. Sheffield has created, in these books, a universe of adventure, discovery, and intrigue about 90 years in the future. Each stands alone, and the books can be read in any order.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, hard sci-fi!, March 13, 2002

By 

Emil L. Posey (Huntsville, AL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Ganymede Club (Hardcover)

This is one of the better science fiction books I've read in a long time. It weaves alien symbiosis, Solar System-wide war, personality transference, and psychiatric sleuthing into a great whodunit. It's marred only by the unreasonable choice of setting it in the period A.D. 2040 to 2070. It took me half of the novel to put that in the back of my mind. A.D. 2340 would have been more appropriate. Other than that, it was an outstanding read. I don't think they come any better than Sheffield.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good sf/mystery by a hard sf author., August 27, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: The Ganymede Club (Hardcover)

The "Ganymede Club" is a sf mystery set in the same universe as "Cold as Ice". However that novel was unremarkable, "Club" is much better. It ports the best aspects of that universe and its most endearing character (Bat). The novel is not original enought to be great. The plot is the tried and true: "Psychiatrist learns of plot while treating patient, and now must die." And there is the surly, omnipotent Hacker--Bat to provide all the answers and save the day. Sheffield is from the "hard" school of sf, so "Club" is not space opera. He's also not a gritty writer--man has not fallen to far in his fiction. Hence "Club" comes across as a slightly risque Nancy Drew (since the main character is a woman)in Jovian orbit. However, it is entertaining despite its predictability.