Customer Reviews

THE WEB BETWEEN THE WORLDS.

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to notice that burning vast quantities of combustible fuel to move an object from here out into orbit, let alone out into the solar system, is phenomenally expensive and dangerous. Science Fiction authors have, for decades, tried to come up with all manner of workarounds, from gravitation drives to Star Trek style transporters.

One proposal that, until the late seventies, didn't attract a lot of attention was the idea of a cable stretching from the Earth into space, held in place by some form of geosynchronous structure. It's probably the least sexy technology available, nothing more than a really, really, strong, long, cable with objects climbing up and down it using whatever means fit the designer's imagination.

Two science fiction authors, Arthur C. Clarke and Charles Sheffield, decided to raise the idea of such a cable at roughly the same time (Clarke's book, The Fountains of Paradise, was published two weeks before Sheffield's), and at once the obvious simplicity and advantages of the idea captured the public imagination. Well, sort of, currently there is no known material strong enough to withstand the tension a useful cable would carry, but we're probably not far off.

This book is a treat. As well as the story itself, mostly a thriller centered around an engineer (who builds the cable, 'natch), a billionaire solar system miner, and a dubious amoral biologist, the book comes with a contribution from Arthur C Clarke on the history of the how the idea was brought to press, and a long appendix detailing the physics involved in building a "beanstalk" (Sheffield's name for the thing.) It was this part I personally found most interesting - it covered how such a thing would be built, other designs centered around the same principle, advantages the cable would have such as the ability to slingshot ships from the end, using the Earth's own rotation to move objects to anywhere in the solar system.

The novel itself is a multi-layered story which is centered so much around a sub-plot that the beanstalk itself is almost an afterthought. In a pinch, Merlin, the main character, investigates the death of his parents and why they were murdered, after the new project he's hired to lead unexpectedly brings him into contact with people who were involved or knew the reasons. The Science in the Fiction includes the beanstalk (obviously), genetic engineering, the mining of asteroids and other trips around the solar system. About my only grouse is that the characters are a little wooden and come across in that kind of pseudo-machismo usually associated with salesman culture and office politics, something that ought not to have irritated me to the extent that it did.

A wonderful book though, proposing a wonderful idea that, if ever implemented, will probably mean more for mankind's eventual exploration of space than the moon landings themselves.

First of all - don't mistake this book with "Between the strokes of night" which deals with life-prolongation by altering the body's metabolic speed and time sense. Now, the reason everybody are so dissapointed, I believe, is that the book lacks Sheffield's usual giant scope, and therefore highly advenced thechnolegy, with the setting in the far future. (allthough thet description is'nt compatiblle with the wonderfull "Proteus" series). But the plot did waver a bit. the climax was not all that. I do think though that all the charecters were excellent, and developed through the book. Not a bad story, it's only the higher expectations of the readers from sheffield.

Some good info on building a space elevator complete with mad industrialist with more money than god. There are misc other subplots though which were completely unecessary and uninteresting. Worth reading at a used price but not full retail.

Combining a pedestrian plot with an endless stream of science, Sheffield leaves lots of open room for character development but obviously prefers to keep it simple... and by `simple' I mean throwing in phrases like Maclaurin and Jacobi ellipsoids, heuristic elements to optimized algorithms, nonlinear elasticity and thermal diffusion. If you have any inkling to what Sheffield is talking about, perhaps you might enjoy the instruction manual more than me but it read just like that as there was little emotion, personal development or greater `greatness.'

Beginning with the unbelievable contraption of the Spider ( which is made to expel 200km of silicon cable two meters wide in one day), some of the future science borders on ridiculous for the 2070. There's also a genetically modified Mole which consumes and mines coal, which is then further modified to work in vacuum and mine other materials. With personal earth-to-orbit craft a commercial norm and the transfer of asteroids from outer-Mars orbit a lucrative business, Sheffield's vision of the future is very optimistic but also very tedious to read.

It's all fine and dandy to base a novel around the construction of a space elevator, or a Beanstalk as it's called in the book, but the plot keeps returning to the conversation between the engineer Merlin (misspelled Merlyn on the rear cover!) and this financer Regulo about the nitty-gritty specifics about the Beanstalk. The novel is merely a steady unfolding of the schematics for the elevator between the two characters, perhaps a fantasy which Sheffield felt he just had to put forth in a novel.

Even with all the geeky science and unfathomable scenes of what all the contraptions must look like, there is a good amount of awe involved. The what-if factor for the space elevator was the biggest draw to the novel, in my opinion. It held my wonder and awe for a good amount of the length, but was getting annoyingly distracted by frivolous attempts by Sheffield to add sympathy and evil. It all fell very flat, very quickly. The evil was superficial and the sympathy was an exaggerated effort. It MIGHT have been a better novel is WAS just an instruction manual for the space elevator.

Regardless, I look forward to picking up another Sheffield novel to see if he has any other big ideas so fully worked out as in The Web.

This book tackles the engineering and manufactoring effort required to build a space elevator. Nice intro by Arthur C. Clarke saying that his idea was not plagarized. The story also delves into bioengineering and some of the possibilities thereof. Including some severe issues about the moralities of bioengineering.

"mybluemake" says in his review that "Charles Sheffield is (or was) actually pulitzer prize winning author James Kirkwood." I don't think that that's true. Sheffield did use "James Kirkwood" as a pen-name a few times, but there's another author of that name who did win a Pulitzer for "A Chorus Line" and died in 1989. Sheffield died in 2002.

As for the book itself, GREAT. However, it was wrong about how the Space Elevator will be built. It'll be a thin ribbon a meter wide and the thickness of saran wrap, not a cylinder the size of a Sequoia. Not a big deal, as far as the story goes.

merlin is an engineer of the future- he builds in space. the book is about the expense and limits of transporting goods and persons between earth's surface and space, and merlin's collaboration with a space ore miner to build a ' skyhook' or 'beanstalk'- a transport tower anchored on the earth's surface and extending into orbit- that would allow constant, cheap, easy travel into space. a neat story by itself, but i think made a lot more interesting by the fact that almost simultaneously, arthur c clarke published a book about an engineer building a 'skyhook' ....- apparently neither knowing about the others' publication until after the fact. the juxtaposition makes an interesting comparison of the idea.

As always, Sheffield's mix of juvenile and adult characters
charms. Although not as polished as some of his later
work, this tale of extended lifetime through drastically
slowed metabolism is an absorbing read, characteristic
as always by careful attention to physics, and a real
appreciation of the scope of endeavour available to
humans.

Although not as polished, this tale of extended lifetimes
via drastically slowed metabolism is an entertaining
reda.

i think 'a reviewer' of feb 20, '97 must be thinking of a different book!!