15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Scientist and Believer, August 14, 2006
Jupiter (2001) is the second SF novel in the Planet Novel series, following Venus. In this volume, Grant Archer graduated with a degree in Astrophysics and expected to spend his two years of Public Service at Farside Observatory studying black holes. His wife would be serving with the Peacekeepers on Earth, but he should be able to spend his furloughs with her. Then the New Morality changed his Public Service tour to four years on Thomas Gold station orbiting around the planet Jupiter.
Grant appeals his assignment through New Morality channels to regional director Ellis Beech. There Grant is told that something unusual is occurring at the station and that he is to report any such suspicious actions to Beech. Grant is a Believer, but he doesn't fancy himself as a spy. However, he realizes that Beech could easily assign him to some obnoxious manual labor job and starts agreeing with the director's complaints.
After more than a year in transit, the rundown freighter Oral Roberts finally docks at Gold station. In the boarding tunnel, Grant notices an asymmetrical feature on one side of the torus that he doesn't recognize from his study of the station diagrams. Then he is met by Egon Farland, given a brief tour, and shown to his compartment.
As soon as he can, Grant tries to discover the purpose of the strange arrangement, but the computer gives him a message stating that the subject is not for public dissemination. After he tries several other ways of tracking down the object through the computer, Grant is summoned to the station director's office and told that he has no business trying to access such information. Zhang Wo declares that he has made a bad start on the station and directs him to report to the security office.
Lane O'hara, the current security director, is a beautiful woman who renders him speechless in admiration. In her initial conversation with Grant, Lane is vibrant and convivial, but soon displays a stern demeanor as she conveys the official briefing. After completing the formalities, she sends him to the personnel director, who turns out to be Farland. When Grant displays his puzzlement, Egon informs him that each of the scientific staff temporarily fills the administrative roles in the Jupiter system, thus allowing more scooters -- i.e., scientists -- on the staff and reducing the number of beancounters.
Almost all the scooters in the system are studying the various moons. However, both Lane and Egon are assigned to the Jupiter study group. Grant soon meets others is this study group: Zeb Muzorawa, Irene Pascal, Frankovich, Ignacio Quintero, Patti Buono, Kayla Ukara, and Christel Krebs. He also learns that five members of this group will be going below the clouds of Jupiter in the ship that he had first seen from the boarding tube. Little does he know that he will be one of them.
Director Wo is devoted to finding out whether the lifeforms spotted in the first dive of the saucer-shaped ship are intelligent. He has imposed strict security because the danger from Zealots in the New Morality and other like groups. Such Zealots take "Man was made in God's image" as their manifesto and they would assassinate anyone who tries to prove otherwise.
This novel continues the struggle between the fundamentalists in political power and the scientists who search for new lifeforms in the universe. Unfortunately for the fundamentalists, the scientists keep finding new indications of life within the solar system. Since these Believers depend upon the products of science and technology, how can they prevent the scientists and technologists from following their own agenda?
Logically speaking, fundamentalism is based on the most primitive of worldviews and belongs in a primitive society. Global warming killed off much of the world population and fundamentalism was acceptable to the survivors. However, population controls are not acceptable to most primitive societies and only caused resentment among the descendants of these survivors.
With a growing population, survival itself has once again become dependent upon technology. Now the fundamentalists are caught between the rock of their own beliefs and the hard place of group and individual survival. Compromise becomes a necessity, yet the Zealots are not compromisers.
Recommended for Bova fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of planetary exploration and moral dilemmas.
-Arthur W. Jordin
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Science fiction in the classic style, August 16, 2002
Although he has been around for a while and I have read a lot of science fiction, this is only the second Ben Bova novel I have read, the first being one of his stories for teenagers. What I found with Jupiter is that Bova is a decent author, well-deserving of his longetivity in the genre.
Bova's late 21st Century Earth is an unpleasant place dominated by the New Morality, a futuristic spin-off of the Moral Majority. Protagonist Grant Archer is a religious man who is used as a pawn of the New Morality in its efforts to spy on the Jovian explorers. Archer is sent to a space station above Jupiter and quickly learns there are mysterious goings-on, and as the story develops, he gets more and more involved with these happenings himself, until finally he must go on a high-risk exploration of the big planet itself.
I say that this novel is in the classic style of science fiction because it is reminiscent of such sci-fi giants as Asimov and Clarke. Science and scientific exploration are the most important things, and plot and character are next on the list. Nonetheless, although his characters are not all that well developed, they are not one-dimensional. Archer, in particular, is a conflicted individual, torn between the New Morality who he often agrees with and offers his only chance to go home to his wife and his own feelings that the Jovian explorers are doing a necessary thing.
I recommend this book for fans of hard science fiction, in particular, fans of classic hard science fiction. This book fits well into this genre and will not disappoint those readers.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Readable but not very imaginative., June 11, 2003
Ben Bova has been around a long time, has written a lot of novels, and when he writes a novel it is bound to be a decent read. That is what this book is: a decent read for those of us who enjoy "hard" science fiction.
Candidly, this book is not in the same league as Bova's "Mars" or even "Moonrise" or "Moonwar." Although the story takes place almost entirely aboard a space station orbiting Jupiter, one would never know it. They might as well have been at an Antarctic research station--few of the special issues that surely would exist in such an envirnonment ever come out. The book takes a crack at being imaginative by featuring some odd aliens: a genetically modified (more intelligent) gorilla, and whale-like intelligent Jovians. It doesn't work. The ape reminded me of my three year old son except with gorilla strength, and the Jovians act just like human beings. Not at all compelling, convincing, or interesting. Well, that's my opinion, anyway.
Nor did I find the politics of the novel to be particularly interesting. In effect, the novel is set in a world where a caricature of the present American so-called "religious right" is in full control in both the future USA and other countries. Just as you'd expect, these folks (the "New Morality") are narrow-minded characters who you would not want to have a beer with. They are against science and progress because, well, they are narrow-minded characters. OK, so we know that Bova doesn't like the "religious right." We find that out in the first ten or so pages, which essentially constitute a recital as to how awful the "New Morality" is. The "New Morality" then basically drops out of the novel into the distant background, basically as a bunch of puritans who don't want the folks on the space station to explore Jupiter and find out that it contains life and maybe intelligent Jovians. They don't want people to know that there are intelligent aliens because, well, the New Morality is comprised of narrow minded characters. Ho hum.
Basically, like all of Bova's books that I have ever read (most of them) Bova paints a depressing view of the future--one in which individual liberty is very limited, and anything resembling a Jeffersonian view of freedom is a thing of the past. In virtually all of Bova's books he postulates a future in which the authorities can pretty do whatever they like to whomever they like, and generally this is pretty ugly. That is certainly the case in this book--you'll find this recurrent theme throughout. Just like in Bova's "Mars" "Moonrise" "Moonwar" and I imagine the others.
Bova's prose is good. As usual, his character development is serviceable, but none of the characters are compelling, and all are quite forgettable. Nevertheless, this is a readable book; good for an afternoon at the beach or whatnot.
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