Book Review: Titan (by Ben Bova)

Ben Bova

2006

Awards: Campbell

Rating: ★ ★ – – –

Before I begin trashing the plot and characters of Ben Bova’s Titan, let me say first that the parts of this book that were actually directly related to science fiction are fine. Bova does a perfectly reasonable job of describing futuristic capabilities of medical nanotechnology, the components of a space station habitat, and the methane slush and smog on the surface of Titan. Not as great a job as, say, Kim Stanley Robinson, but perfectly good.

                                                                      

Unfortunately, the science fiction parts of this book are largely drowned out by the irritating, unlikeable characters and the tiresome soap opera going on among them. Not to mention the tremendously awkward presentation of gender conflicts.

In Titan, a group of ten thousand people have all flown out together from Earth on the spacecraft Goddard and are now living in it in the orbit of Saturn. Their voyage has been funded by a coalition of universities and is primarily meant for scientific research, but the Goddard also carries Earth exiles, administrators, mechanics, and rich tourists interested in exploring the solar system.

The book has a huge cast of characters, few of whom have identifiably distinct personalities. And they are all introduced rapid-fire in the first part of the book, so there is no real chance to get to know any of them well. This is just one book in Bova’s multi-part “Grand Tour” series of solar system exploration and it’s possible that some of these characters would be more familiar and appealing to me if I had read the earlier installments of that series, but I haven’t, and they aren’t.

If any characters can be said to be particularly central to the plot, I guess it would be protagonist Pancho Lane and antagonist Malcolm Eberly. Lane is the retired former CEO of a giant tech company and an accomplished space pilot. She is on Goddard partly because she’s there visiting her sister Holly, and partly because she’s bored with life back on Earth. Eberly is the nauseatingly selfish and manipulative chief administrator of the Goddard habitat, and he is willing to do anything it takes to enhance his own power.

For most of the book, the main dramatic tension centers around Eberly’s run for reelection. He initially thinks he is a shoe-in, since he promises untold wealth for everyone in the habitat if they allow him to mine water from Saturn’s rings for export to other space outposts. But he doesn’t count on two things:

(1) Pancho Lane teaming up with an admiral, a stuntman, and a plucky group of scientists to try to prove that there are living organisms in the rings of Saturn, which would prevent them from being mined; and

(2) Pancho’s sister Holly Lane, who decides to run against Eberly in the election.

There is also a good amount of time spent on a secondary plotline about an exploratory probe sent to Titan. The probe goes dead as soon as it gets to the moon’s surface, and the leader of the project, Edouard Urbain, drives his staff over the edge of exhaustion trying to reactivate it. This story had far more potential than the election melodrama, but, unfortunately, nothing major plot-wise ever really came from it, so I sort of wondered what the point of it was.

No, unfortunately, far more time is spent not on exploratory moon probes but on internal habitat politics and, in particular, the grossly mishandled topic of zero population growth. The Goddard has limited space, so everyone on it signed an agreement that they wouldn’t have any children on the flight out to Saturn. Now that they have reached Saturn, however, they want to start having babies. Eberly refuses to even talk about it, so Holly runs against him, not because she thinks she has a prayer of winning, but just to force the issue.

The debate quickly divides the habitat cleanly down gender lines. Nearly 100% of all women aboard are apparently universally in favor of and desperately in need of the unfettered production of children, and nearly 100% of the men aboard, are at the very most, neutral on the topic, if not actively against it.

Some women on the ship refuse to have sex with their husbands until they agree to Holly’s platform—and their men, of course, relent. Holly’s rallies are almost 100% women except for a few men who have either been forced to come by their wives or who are there to cover it for the media.

And her speeches are smugly described by her supporters as “women’s issues,” even though population control in this context is hardly only a women’s issue. People are motivated to reproduce—or not—for a host of complex motives. There are plenty of men who want to have children. There are plenty of women who don’t. There are people of both sexes who are unsure. I think Bova thought that he was making a relevant cultural statement with this presentation of the topic. I couldn’t decide whether it was actually offensive, or just plain ridiculous.

Bova handles the writing of competent women, and their relationships with men and between each other, pretty badly in general. At one point, the head of the nanotech lab doesn’t want to re-assert a request for something she needs for her work because she doesn’t want to be thought of as a “nagging little woman.” At another point, two women—the head of the biology department and the leader of the project to find life in the rings of Saturn—can’t find a way to talk to each other professionally at first, but at last bond like giggling schoolgirls over lunch talking about how to get a man to like them.

And in another sparkling incident, one of these same women, the biology department head, tries to convince Urbain to let her work on a different project than his stuck probe. He refuses and she leaves his office crying, where she bumps into the meek, shy head of the computer science department. Her crying suddenly transforms the computer science head into a paragon of assertiveness who marches into Urbain’s office and demands that he treat his employees better. And then the biology department head and the computer science head promptly start dating.

One other thing I can’t help mentioning is that the sisters Holly and Pancho Lane have an incredibly annoying accent. One of them (Holly) is the head of human resources for the habitat and is running for chief administrator, and the other (Pancho) is a former head of a giant tech company and an accomplished space pilot. And yet they have this accent in which they use slang, jargon, and contractions in ways that make them sound like Valley Girls. It’s hard to take someone seriously when their vocabulary is sprinkled with f’real, c’mon, prob’ly, coupla, damfino, dontcha, jeeps, and terrif.

Okay, one more thing. Bova seems to be preoccupied with the chin as an indicator of emotion. I counted six instances where he had someone “dip” his or her “chin” to signify agreement (instead of, I suppose, just nodding). There are also a couple of times where someone scratches their chin to indicate confusion, and a couple times when people tipped their chins in surprise. It is a habit worthy of the lip-biting of Cyteen.