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Greg Bear

Hull Zero Three Kindle Edition

by Greg Bear (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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Trapped on a mysterious spaceship, the only way to escape is to survive. A thrilling novel from the Hugo and Nebula award-winning Greg Bear.

A starship hurtles through the emptiness of space. Its destination - unknown. Its purpose? A mystery. Its history? Lost.

Now, one man wakes up. Ripped from a dream of a new home, a new planet and the woman he was meant to love in his arms, he finds himself wet, naked, and freezing to death. The dark halls are full of monsters but trusting other survivors he meets might be the greater danger.

All he has are questions: Who is he? Where are they going? What happened to the dream of a new life? What happened to the woman he loved? What happened to Hull 03?

All will be answered, if he can survive. Uncover the mystery. Fix the ship. Find a way home.

HULL ZERO THREE is an edge of your seat thrill-ride through the darkest reaches of space, from one of the genre's biggest names. Perfect for fans of Arthur C. Clarke's RAMA or the film EVENT HORIZON.

Print length

310 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Gollancz
Publication date

March 17, 2011
File size

850 KB
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Greg Bear is the author of more than thirty books of science fiction and fantasy, including Forerunner: Cryptum, Mariposa, Darwin's Radio, Eon, and Quantico. He is married to Astrid Anderson Bear and is the father of Erik and Alexandra. His works have been published internationally in over twenty languages. Bear has been called the "Best working writer of hard science fiction" by the Ultimate Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. --This text refers to the paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Multiple Hugo and Nebula winner Bear (City at the End of Time) sets this difficult but rewarding short novel on an interstellar colony ship gone astray. Teacher was supposed to be awakened just before landfall. What he finds when he gains some semblance of consciousness, however, is a dangerous and chaotic environment, with monsters roaming the ship's corridors and no one in charge. As he and a small band of equally ignorant crew members attempt to reach the gigantic ship's control center, they travel through a series of labyrinthine spaces, uncovering a variety of clues to the disaster that has destroyed large parts of the starship and damaged the controlling AIs. Not for those who prefer their space opera simpleminded, this beautifully written tale where nothing is as it seems will please readers with a well-developed sense of wonder. (Dec.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Review

'Hull Zero Three is a lean, mean, supercharged sense-of-wonder engine.' -- Alastair Reynolds 'Hull Zero Three is a grand adventure of scientific discovery ... by turns chilling and touching, it poses challenging questions about what it means to be human.' -- Charlie Stross 'Greg Bear's voice is a resonant, clear chord of quality binding some of the best SF of the 20th Century to the short list of science-savvy, sophisticated, top-notch speculative fiction of the 21st. More than a grace note, Hull Zero Three is a compelling allegro in the growing symphony of Greg Bear's finest work.' -- Dan Simmons 'Not for those who prefer their space opera simple-minded, this beautifully written tale where nothing is as it seems will please readers with a well-developed sense of wonder.' PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY 'I loved Hull Zero Three ... this book reminds me of why I fell in love with science fiction in the first place. Searing questions of humanity, a good old fashioned riddle of a plot, and excellent conceptualization make Hull Zero Three more than worth the effort.' THE BOOK SMUGGLERS --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Review

'Hull Zero Three is a lean, mean, supercharged sense-of-wonder engine.' -- Alastair Reynolds 'Hull Zero Three is a grand adventure of scientific discovery ... by turns chilling and touching, it poses challenging questions about what it means to be human.' -- Charlie Stross 'Greg Bear's voice is a resonant, clear chord of quality binding some of the best SF of the 20th Century to the short list of science-savvy, sophisticated, top-notch speculative fiction of the 21st. More than a grace note, Hull Zero Three is a compelling allegro in the growing symphony of Greg Bear's finest work.' -- Dan Simmons 'Not for those who prefer their space opera simple-minded, this beautifully written tale where nothing is as it seems will please readers with a well-developed sense of wonder.' PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY 'I loved Hull Zero Three ... this book reminds me of why I fell in love with science fiction in the first place. Searing questions of humanity, a good old fashioned riddle of a plot, and excellent conceptualization make Hull Zero Three more than worth the effort.' THE BOOK SMUGGLERS --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Booklist

Never one to play it safe in his consistently inventive fiction, Bear takes the reader for a harrowing ride on a labyrinthine starship in his latest hard-SF-oriented novel. Bear’s protagonist is an amnesiac starship crew member just released from a deep hibernation state called Dreamtime. Naked, disoriented, and forced by extreme temperature and gravity fluctuations to find safety somewhere among a confusing network of passageways, the man eventually receives help from an odd assortment of fellow Dreamtime refugees. Taking stock of their surroundings, while avoiding onboard killing machines, the gang quickly realizes the starship has given them each a unique role to play, including discovering collectively why the ship has been seriously damaged and cast aside from its mission to seek out habitable worlds. Bear’s pithy, occasionally cryptic writing style perfectly captures the chaotic experiences and unsettling revelations the team endures, while putting an intriguing spin on the timeworn SF theme of interstellar planet hunting. One of Bear’s most thought-provoking and well-crafted novels to date. --Carl Hays --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B004P8ITDS
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Gollancz (March 17, 2011)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 17, 2011
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 850 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 310 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0316072818
Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #1,133,964 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #3,482 in Hard Science Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #5,873 in Hard Science Fiction (Books)
- #8,927 in First Contact Science Fiction eBooks

Customer Reviews:
362 ratings

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Greg Bear

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Greg Bear is the author of more than thirty books, spanning thrillers, science fiction, and fantasy, including Blood Music, Eon, The Forge of God, Darwin's Radio, City at the End of Time, and Hull Zero Three. His books have won numerous international prizes, have been translated into more than twenty-two languages, and have sold millions of copies worldwide. Over the last twenty-eight years, he has also served as a consultant for NASA, the U.S. Army, the State Department, the International Food Protection Association, and Homeland Security on matters ranging from privatizing space to food safety, the frontiers of microbiology and genetics, and biological security.

Customer reviews

5 star		39%
4 star		32%
3 star		15%
2 star		9%
1 star		5%

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Silver Bullet Jason

Surprising and unique

Reviewed in the United States on May 28, 2019

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This was a different sort of Greg Bear book. Often what he presents are large stories, presented from an exterior viewpoint and without background mysteries. This book is all interior monologues and mystery.

The story starts slowly, with a cryptic mystery and many, many aspects of the story that are unknown. Who is the man who woke up? Where is he? Why is gravity not working? What are these creatures which seem to be attacking him? Gradually Bear adds answers until the final couple of chapters which finally put everything in a new light.

I enjoyed the mystery, which had me frantically flipping pages waiting for the truth to be revealed to me. The book is crisply written and a lot of fun. But if you're the kind of reader who wants everything specifically spelled out for you as you start a book, you might find this frustrating.

4 people found this helpful

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krishnananda

Greg Bear at his most intense

Reviewed in the United States on July 27, 2020

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If "Blood Music" was Bear's end-of-the-universe masterpiece, "Hull Zero Three" is the deep-space-colonization-disaster be-all-end-all. Bear can rightfully drop the mic with this one -- from the first page you are right next to the bewildered protagonist, known only as Teacher. He has no clue, you have no clue. Bear ramps up the bewildering action while dropping hints jut often enough to keep the pressure on the reader to figure out what's going on. This is one of the very few Sci Fi books I intend to re-read to try to figure out how he pulled it off.

One person found this helpful

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xi'an

more threes than zeros

Reviewed in the United States on January 1, 2015

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I very rarely read science-fiction of this kind and I frankly cannot remember why I bought this book by Greg Bear… Maybe the cryptic title? Hull Zero Three sounds intriguing enough.. In any case, I found the book a quite interesting read. Of course, most space operas are centred on a spaceship, so this is not a major surprise, but the ambiguity of the nature of the ship is quite appealing (to the reader). The plot itself is somehow secondary as what really matters is to discover where the reality lies. The book is thus much more psychological than action-oriented. Closer to Phillip K. Dick’s Ubik than to Arthur C. Clarke’s Rama…

At a primary level, the narrator starts from scratch, having to learn everything about Ship trough experience, with induced memories from an Earth left centuries ago. This is not the most successful part of the story as this nth replica of a unique ancestor is endowed with a complete memory and some of the earlier pages are not self-coherent for this reason. However, the griping pace of the gradual uncovering of the problem with Ship, then with Mother, more than makes up for the above. There are enough turns and surprises along most of the book to keep the reader hooked and the final twist about Destination Guidance was surprising enough to justify all the circumlocutions and the frustrating doubts of the narrator. (As a non-native reader, I also found the never-ending technical description a wee too much for my taste, as I was not so interested in the inner details of the Ship. But the overall style is quite tolerable, with gems like “the constant sound of the hull being sandblasted by the ghosts of unborn worlds” and “a lot of us have died—sometimes hundreds of times“…)

3 people found this helpful

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themarsman

Seeking Guidance

Reviewed in the United States on February 24, 2014

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A man is awoken by a young girl. "Don't just lie there -- get up." The girl's voice implores...begs..."Hurry! The air's going to freeze!" And so begins the tale of Teacher. But who is he supposed to teach? And what information is he supposed to pass on? Teacher soon discovers he is on Ship and that Ship appears to be falling apart, barely functional enough to maintain life-support in many places. But that does not appear to stop either Ship or something on Ship from trying to kill Teacher and others that he meets along the way. Can Teacher and his companions solve the mystery of what happened to Ship and stop it or something aboard it from killing him and his friends? Or will Teacher's journey be fatal to not only himself and his friends, but to Ship's mission as well?

Hull Zero Three is told from a starkly first person point-of-view. Everything that Teacher sees and experiences, the reader does as well. Everything that is beyond Teacher's purview is, also, beyond the reader's. This method for telling Teacher's story works...mostly. It allows the reader to come as near to entering the character's head as possible. The storytelling device, however, does not allow for the reader to really get invested in any character beyond Teacher. Teacher is well-fleshed...his companions rarely adopt this quality.

Despite some flaws, Hull Zero Three does proud generation ship themed scifi, as it is reminiscent -- at least in form, if not flesh -- books like Frank M. Robinson's The Dark Beyond the Stars and Kevin O'Donnell's Mayflies. For those that enjoy this vein of science fiction, Hull Zero Three is recommended and worth reading.

5 people found this helpful

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Roald Olos

A truly powerful story, with much wonder

Reviewed in the United States on April 20, 2013

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I believe this is a much stronger book than many writing here have understood or credited.

In fact it remains in memory for more than a year, and the reference which most often comes to mind is Kafka -- yet with much more charitably accurate human insight, and with much more beauty.

Many seem to want to be told what's happened before, or is going to happen after. But the person you are traveling with can't know these things, and that is the basis of his problem as you accompany him, which is filled with moments of danger that will make you fully awake, along with a very natural sense of its frustration.

Teacher learns, and becomes more and more aware, then insightful, thus saving his life, and gaining the truth of the mystery.

Hiding in plain sight, but only once you arrive to seeing it, is a very full and fresh view of the extent of human power -- and of its ethical dimensions.

As we arrive closer to this truth, more and more amazing beauty shines out of the writing and the story; in visual imagination, in character of those traveling together, in acts of openhearted courage, and in unexpected reward for accomplishment and bravery.

A beautiful book, then, with such rewards; delivered so in the respect fully shown to each reader.

11 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

M. Duncan

Flawed but readable science fiction yarn

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 17, 2021

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At first, as the protagonist narrator of Hull Zero Three wakes from a deep sleep to find himself on a strange ship, surrounded by creatures trying to kill him, it seems that this will be an action adventure sci fi novel. But as things progress, he shows too little agency to be a hero, and is just pulled along on the tide of events without being able to do very much at all. So the book becomes a science fiction story more in the mould of Rendevous With Rama, Arthur C Clarke's classic exploration of an alien vessel, where the interest lies in the revelation of alien environments and the suspense is in guessing the purpose behind them, creating a sense of wonder and discovery. There is just one problem with this approach, which is that Greg Bear's writing lacks the lucid poetry that characterises Clarke's best work, like Rama and 2010. Descriptions of physical spaces here are clunky and often confusing, so that much of the story one is reading about people flying around a vague environment, towards something more vague, for an undefined purpose. Because the narrator doesn't know very much, and gradually picks up information on the way, we as readers know as little as he does, which is often frustrating: if we knew what the goals or the stakes were, we would find things more exciting. The end of the book picks up a little, as mysteries are resolved and scenes clarified, but it is a little too late. Still, not a bad read, and some of that sense of wonder is glimpsed, albeit all too briefly.

Greycynic

A voyage of discovery in to what it is to be human

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 18, 2012

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What I like about this book is that Greg Bear involves the reader in the narrative by putting you there with the main character. The challenge is to distinguish between what is important and what is not. If you enjoy books that make you work and that you do not second guess then this book is for you. If you are looking for a simple story to ride along with then you still could enjoy the action sequences but you might want to borrow a copy rather than buy it.

'Hull Zero Three' is Greg Bear's masterful working of one of the big questions of science fiction. What happens when new technology quite literally overtakes old technology? Old hat - yes but Greg Bear has some interesting twists.

His old technology is not the usual generation ship launched from Earth towards a specific target. This behemoth is an automated ship with three semi-autonomous hulls, linked through Destination Control, and wrapped around the mountain of ice that is its fuel and propellant supply. The plan is that as the ship nears the halfway point of its journey it will give birth to a group of human crew members. They will live in Destination Control and select the ships target system. As the ship approaches its target world it will give birth to other human crew members. The key twist is that these crew members will be genetically adapted to both survive on their new world and to perform specific duties. One such special task is the extermination of any intelligent, native life from their new world.

The story of 'Hull Zero Three' happens long after the time of the selection of the ship's destination. The main character is born believing that the ship has arrived. He expects to be disembarking to teach the new settlers about humanity's ideals and achievements. Instead he is pulled in to a very different ship where the first thing that he has to do is to run for his life. His guide to safety is a girl who knows him better than he knows himself and calls him 'Teacher'.

Superficially 'Hull Zero Three' is an adventure story with a single hero. It is confusing because it is a first person narrative and the narrator is confused. Teacher does not understand what is happening to him. He is having to pull the strands together as he runs. Initially to survive himself and then to ensure the survival of the humans a later version of him will teach sometime in the future. This gives Greg Bear the space that he needs to make this a very different story and one that is well worth the effort of reading.

8 people found this helpful

Patrick Borer

Fascinating

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 21, 2012

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"Hull Zero Three" is a very concentrated and focussed hard SF novel. It impresses with an approach of deliberate reduction - this is no space opera, there are no grandiose views of the future, and what prevails is not a sense of wonder, but of oppression and danger. It's all about a man with little knowledge of his identity and background trying to save himself on a badly damaged and hazardous colonisation spaceship he doesn't understand at all - and maybe to save the ship and its colonists, or what is left of them, too... In telling this story, the author uses very few basic elements which are re-arranged in different ways until the puzzle fits. It's a program of sparseness. We know never more than the protagonist, and what he knows is very little for most of the book. All this is done in a way that makes readers feel the perilous environment of the protagonist almost physically. Not a comfortable read - but a fascinating one.

One person found this helpful

The Hatchet Bunny

A tautly written sci-fi thriller.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 4, 2012

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The Ship is on a one way trip to a new planet, a place to build a new Utopia. Unfortunately something has gone awry, and Teacher awakens from the Dreamtime of hypersleep into a living nightmare.

Teacher is thrust into a hostile environment where death lurks around every corner. His only option is to struggle through the hostile environs of the ship to try to restore order to his waking nightmare... but with no identity, no memories, no allies and no clothes the odds are against him from the start.

Hull Zero Three is the latest novel from Greg Bear, but rather than produce another epic tome he has stripped this story down to the bare minimum to produce something quite extraordinary. Whilst the story has a lot in common with the film Pandorum, it deals with the material in a much more thought-provoking way.

The story starts hard and fast, the fragmented and disjointed opening successfully conveying the mental state of Teacher as he is thrust from the womb-like serenity of the Dreamtime into the harsh and hostile reality of the Ship, hunted by the violent bio-engineered monstrosities designed by the ships gene-pool.

As he slowly comes to understand the nature of the ship, gain some insight into what has gone wrong and discovered the chilling implications of its mission capabilities, Teacher and his companions becomes the focus of power struggle between the divided forces of Ship Control, Destination Guidance and the seemingly benevolent Mother.

Some of the questions raised are extremely thought-provoking. If we did expend huge sums in a massive generation ship, or if that ship was the last ark of the human race and all that stood between us and extinction, how far would we expect to go to ensure its survival? What exactly are we doing out there?

Hull Zero Three (****) is a tautly written thriller pared right back to the bone. It raises questions of identity, ethics and morality that remain long after the story has finished, but the disjointed opener may be off-putting to some.

One person found this helpful

FUNK COLLECTOR2

Surprising Sci-Fi

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 19, 2019

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Not what I thought this book would be! In fact, much deeper, much darker and much better! A great storyline, drawn out and once engaged, hard to put down. In fact, after the first few pages, I was bored, not that interested with no feeling for the characters. However, bit by bit, you start to engage with the main character, feel for him and get immersed in the massive expanse of the spaceship. I’m sure this would make a great film, with the plot twists and slow realisation of what is coming...or not. Enough sci-fi and space science stuff to keep the boffins happy along with a great story!

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