Customer Reviews

Hull Zero Three

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(27)
3 star:		(19)
2 star:		(17)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

I was predisposed to liking this novel. I am a fan of the sci-fi tropes of the "big dumb object exploration" (see: "Rama" series) as well as the who multi-century interstellar exploration idea (too many to mention). "Hull Zero Three" is a combination of these themes, and starts out very fast, with a man awakened from a dreaming bliss and rudely injected into a freezing, semi-derelict giant starship, beset by confusion and danger at every turn, and basically trying to survive first, and figure out what is going on and what he is doing later.

The overall theme of "Hull Zero Three" may remind readers last year's (very underrated) film "Pandorum," but Bear, to his credit, writes with a bit more complexity and depth then what you might find in a movie. The themes of "Hull Zero Three" include some meditation on what it means to be human - genetically and morally, and whether we can overcome our genetic 'programming', as well as what humanity as a species may or may not be willing to do in order to survive.

Bear doesn't skimp on pure action, and while he avoids the standard "infodump" we do learn enough of the design and function of the inconceivably vast starship to really engage the reader's sense of wonder and awe. The book was not perfect - there were some scenes towards the middle where it dragged a bit, and the end seemed a bit too rushed and confusing. However, these are minor flaws. Overall, "Hull Zero Three" is one of 2010's better sci-fi offerings and showcases an author that is still near the top of his game.

I really wanted to like this book. After all, the basic plot (character awakes in strange circumstances on a vast starship, and must undertake a long journey with many challenges in order to discover why) is a classic. I doubt that I'm the only reader of space fiction who has dreamed about such a quest, and even thought about writing it.... But I digress. Just because a story is based on a timeless theme doesn't mean it's no good, does it?

So the narrative arc is familiar, the characters equally so, the vaguely horrific quest works well, and the overall resolution is nicely judged. So why Do I give this book only three stars? Other reviewers have already identified the book's fatal weakness: the descriptions. Descriptions of characters and of monsters, both human and monstrous. Descriptions of the ship: its processes, systems, structures, spaces and spatial elements. Descriptions of the forces that act upon the characters, including sounds, accelerations, temperatures... The author insists on painting a detailed picture of every move, every event, every spin-up and chill-down, and then finds himself running out of adjectives. The result is often repetitive, and unfortunately flat.

As I said, I've read many science fiction stories in which the writers strove to describe huge alien forms and to hint at experiences beyond human ken. And generally they succeeded. I have a feeling that what's happening here is that the author has watched too many science fiction moves. When computer graphics can casually fill the screen with aliens, or a starship the size of a small planet, or an attack by thousands of robots, two things can happen to a writer. First, s/he may believe that anything less will not satisfy the reader, and s/he will strive to compete with the visual medium. Second, s/he may hope that the book can become the basis for a successful movie, and drifts into writing not a novel but a screenplay with detailed instructions to the special effects team.

How close does Greg Bear come to these tendencies - the Scylla and Charybdis of CGI envy? A bit too close for comfort, I'm afraid.

Hull Zero Three is an uneven, uneasy marriage of the "amnesiac protagonist" plot (made popular mostly in mystery and suspense fiction, such as "The Bourne Identity") and the "explore the big dumb object" plot (made popular in science fiction, such as "Rendezvous with Rama," "Event Horizon," etc.). Unfortunately, the combination of these plots makes for a muddled read, since a character who doesn't know who or where he is wanders through something he can't adequately describe (because he's also forgotten a lot of words, so he really wouldn't be able to adequately describe his surroundings if he woke up somewhere really mundane) being threatened (or not...he's not really sure) by things he doesn't know the names of and again can't adequately describe.

It is pretty obvious from the outset that the character is on a generation ship and that things have gone HORRIBLY WRONG (as things always seem to do on generation ships...it's a wonder anyone builds them, really...don't those people read science fiction?). So the suspense really all revolves around what has gone wrong and will the characters be able to set it right. It's too bad that Bear chose such an annoying way to tell this story, because I thought the situation (when it is finally revealed very late in the novel) was actually pretty interesting and if he'd made the story about THAT instead of about an amnesiac character slowly making this discovery, it would have been a much better novel.

"Hull Zero Three" takes place aboard an interstellar colony ship, traveling for hundreds of years at 20% of lightspeed. It is not, strictly speaking, a generation ship, since it is designed to have only a few crew during flight. The actual colonists will not be revived until arrival.

Something goes wrong during flight. The main character is one of the colonists who finds himself awake too soon, with the ship failing around him. The majority of the book is one of "man versus the environment," where the environment is the damaged and malfunctioning ship. The main character's memory is damaged, so central to this struggle is his attempt to understand the ship. And this is where it all falls apart.

The problem is that the unnamed Ship makes no sense at all. It might as well be designed by aliens. Insane aliens. At root, "Hull Zero Three" is a horror story, and the Ship is the haunted house, with features that exist just to scare and confuse the main character. The author has made precious little effort to make concessions to what would actually be useful and functional for a colony ship, or how it would really be laid out if the designers were trying to make it useful and convenient for its eventual crew. Imagine if the designers of the "hammer room" from Galaxy Quest built an entire ship that way.

It doesn't help that the dialog is often elliptical, disjointed and deliberately difficult to understand, and that the story is told in an annoying stream-of-consciousness manner. At one point a character says "You are prayed into existence." I kid you not, that's the kind of mushy-headed dialog that's common in this book. The resolution of the book is frankly semi-mystical.

Eventually, we do find out what's going on, and it's a mixed bag. On the one hand, the bare bones idea of the Ship's nature, and why there's a conflict between Destination Guidance and other parts of the ship is kind of interesting. On the other, how the conflict progressed, the motivations behind awakening the main character, and the way it's resolved are all ridiculous. I felt like I read a little over 300 pages just to get a few ideas that were better explored in another novel, the title of which I can't mention without spoiling the ending of "Hull Zero Three."

At least it was relatively short, as modern SF novels go. Not recommended.

Greg, what happened? After the virtuosic QUEEN OF ANGELS and the wonderful SLANT comes this loser out of left field. It's so bad in almost every category it's hard to know where to begin. There's that goofy title explaining and meaning nothing. And ignore this old horse of a plot that truly has been done before and done much better - Interstellar traveler wakes with amnesia and discovers mysteries, dissension and rebellion and the TRUE purpose of his mission. The first 3/4 of the book reads like an introduction.

I'd say the book would work better as a movie since it is actually a horror tale with continual actions. But a movie would have a difficult time following the dreamlike "plot" the reader is forced to endure. The only thing harder than making sense of the various wonderings around this ship was the descriptions of the ship. Confusion reigns as the reader runs into bulkheads, airlocks, hulls, pipes, halls, chambers, tunnels, goes up, down, left, right, under and over, bouncea off walls or flies through space.

The main character seems only partly formed, an imitation character without interest or reality. He finds the terrible secret and with a ragtag band of friendly creatures (a la Star Wars) he prepares his counter punch. The logic for the characters and events is non-existent. The ending is a hoot - fakey and forced. My grade - D

Hull Zero Three is the kind of book that throws the reader into a spin dryer set on turbo. It has a somewhat random, disjointed style that tends to kick your mind in the gut. This is not a bad thing; It makes for a fast paced read.

That said, this is not fluff. There is a great deal of character development. (easy to do when the main character not only does not know who he is, but has no idea of what he is.) The book contains a bit of moral exploration, however, it is not preachy.

If you are looking for a nice little casual read, drop this book. If you are looking for an experimentally structured book that is not afraid to strike a bit of fear into the reader or get the reader to think, Hull Zero Three is for you.

It appears that Hull Zero Three hasn't been very well received on Amazon and that's pretty sad. I greatly anticipated its release and was mystified by the Vine program's negative feedback. To truly appreciate Hull Zero Three, I think the reader needs to meet two criteria, like myself:
1) The reader needs to understand most of Greg Bear's work, including his 1980s and 1990s grand space spectacles of The Way series and Forge of God series). Also, the reader must be disenfranchised with Bear's work since the millennium (Quantico, Vitals and especially City at the End of Time). This will give you a proper lead-up to what Bear has accomplished and why Hull Zero Three is a return to his grand tradition of space spectacles.

2) The reader must be disappointed in the state of the art of American science fiction. I don't read any of the stuff since the millennium as there's been a preferred chasm of difference with British SF. US SF tends to have very short paragraphs with lots of dialogue and it nearly always reads like a Hollywood scrip for people with short attention spans.

NOW, open up the deliciously ambiguous book entitled Hull Zero Three. Granted, from the onset, the initial "man wakes up on ship with amnesia" isn't exactly unique but banish that from your feeble mind as the subject is at the masterful (er, with the exception of End of Time) hands of Greg Bear. Like the main character, Teacher, we, too are borne unto this novel with little knowledge of what is happening but we grow to understand the environment, the dangers, the expectations and direction: where the Teacher learns so the reader, where the Teacher panics so the reader panics. Identify with this: "I'm just a pair of eyes on the end of a stalk of neck with a brain and some hands and legs attached."

I won't to expose too much detail about the greater scene of the book because it's important that the reader, like to protagonist, learns as he/she goes. So, to just glance over the plot, here it is: Three separate hulls are on a 500-hundred-year journey to inhabit the stars. Something has gone wrong, albeit a malicious deviation of course or a natural phenomenon. People are being awoken, these people are being killed by the Ships machines. On board is the entire Gene Pool of earth and the landing crew will make use of this gene pool to adapt to the environment of the one planet they will fall upon. They have only the one shot to establish their civilization.

I must mention the Gene Pool part of the plot because it's by far the most titillating potential in the entire book. Stop and think about the variation of life on earth and how, in the future, it may be possible to alter man in any way, always abiding by the gene pool, to suit Man for life on other planets. Hull Zero Three visits some minor shifts in the human DNA but always tiptoes around some of the more exotic spectrum of what humans could become. The details revolving around this 500-year trip and the gene pool are hugely enticing and very rewarding.

Like mentioned in criterion #2, Hull Zero Three is unlike anything the US SF has recently produced (this includes Vinge and the peripheral Star Wars, Star Trek and Halo series). No author has gotten it right except for our friends across the pond, many of whom I'm a great fan of: Banks, Hamilton, Reynolds, Stross. Greg Bear writes in a style similar to the British friends, where there is more of a focus on describing environment, emotion, experience and detail with longer paragraphs, more internal monologue and less frivolous chit-chat.

"Exploring," in his purest essence, isn't about banally chatting about what you're seeing... it's about internalizing the experience and relating yourself to your surroundings. Much like Hull Zero Three - you'll explore the Ship (Hulls One AND Three!) through the internalized experience of Teacher. However, you'll also be grappling with the fear of death, dismemberment, starvation and suffocation. Great contrast.

He tries to describe everything in so much detail it boarders on water boarding. The writing is also very choppy, making it seem like a child's writing. I will not be finishing it.

While the idea behind the story is great, just like the main character, I found it a struggle to make it through to the end of the book. It is only in the last few pages of the book that all is revealed.

This book failed to provide me with any reason to care about the fate of the protagonist. I went through 2/3 of the book waiting for SOME reason to care, and finally gave up. Maybe you will fare better!