Marrow - Hardcover

Reed, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312868014 ISBN 13: 9780312868017

Publisher: Tor Books, 2000

Synopsis

Countless years after the near-immortal crew of The Ship has forgotten its mission, they disocver the planet Marrow at the center of The Ship and send a team to investigate, wondering if their discovery will spell doom or bring forth answers.

About this title

About the Author

ROBERT REED is the author of the New York Times notable book BEYOND THE VEIL OF STARS and more than a half-dozen other SF novels. The first Grand Prize Winner of the Writers of the Future contest, he's written a number of stories that have been finalists for Hugo and Nebula Awards. He lives in Omaha, Nebraska.

Reviews

A ship the size of a large planet drifts through space far into the future, setting the stage for Reed's sweeping allegory dramatizing such cosmological questions as the origins of the universe and the relative nature of size and time. Humans are practically immortal with the improvements of bioceramics and repairing genes, allowing Reed (Beyond the Veil of Stars), a multiple Hugo nominee, to track the lives of the Great Ship's crew members and passengers through millennia. The Master Captain has directed every aspect of the ship via her implanted nexuses ever since human explorers first boarded the seemingly empty, ancient vessel, finding the enormous, lifeless ship equipped with adjustable environments that would allow them to create oceans and cities. The human colonists turn the ship into a luxury passenger cruiser carrying 100 billion members of various alien species. The Master and her captains administer the journey according to plans made eons into the past, handily neutralizing any threats or disruptions until the Master mysteriously sends over 200 of her brightest captains, including her ambitious first-chair, Miocene, and the talented alien greeter Washen, on an exploratory mission to what was thought to be the ship's solid iron core. Disaster befalls their mission, unleashing a 5,000-year course of events that will build a new civilization and eventually threaten the existence of the entire ship. The ship itself narrates italicized introductions to each of the book's five parts with thorny, theatrical language, echoing the ship's obtuse, unwieldy presence. Clumsy dialogue and melodramatic scenes render the human dramas far less consequential than the monumental construct in which they play. However, Reed's ambitious, detailed premise and thoughtful manipulations of space and time make for an enjoyable reflection on the size and shape of the universe relative to its human inhabitants. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Reed has previously written stories (included in The Dragons of Springplace, 1999) about a galaxy-cruising, supercolossal spaceship: this is the novel. Of unknown origin, the ship is nearly as ancient as the universe itself; when it wandered near the Milky Way, various human factions fought to take possession. The dominant group evolved into the ship's Captains and crew-able to regenerate themselves from a few scraps of brain tissue, they're all but immortal-who then took aboard human and alien passengers on millennia-long cruises through the galaxy. Now, the Master Captain orders her senior captains to assemble in secret for a confidential mission: to explore the astounding planet, Marrow, discovered to be at the heart of the ship itself. Mars-sized, composed almost entirely of molten iron, barely habitable, Marrow is protected by energy fields that unexpectedly destroy the explorers' equipment and means of egress. No rescue attempt materializes. But, thanks to Marrow's weird cycle of development, in five thousand years the castaways will have an opportunity to escape. Meanwhile, they'll be forced to reinvent civilization, science and technology, and endure rebellious children and their stories about the ship's Builders and their mortal enemies, the Bleak. Only then can they begin to unravel why they weren't rescued, and discover the truth about the ship and its Builders.The plot may not entirely hang together, but this is a wonderful adventure, with idea piled upon splendid idea in a continually fascinating narrative. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

At the center of the vast Ship lies a planet known as Marrow, a surprise to its discoverersDinhabitants of the Ship for as long as they can remember. An attempt to unlock the secrets of the Ship's origins by exploring Marrow leads to unexpected complications and the near-destruction of the investigators. Reed (Beyond the Veil of Stars) expands his fertile imagination to create a cast of human and alien characters as well as a vividly depicted universe enclosed within a space-going vessel. Fans of science-based sf as well as sf adventure should enjoy this adaptation of an earlier novella. For most collections.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Billions of years ago, for reasons unknown, the immense Ship began a journey across the universe. Eventually controlled by humans bioengineered to be nearly immortal and run by the master captain and her underlings, the Ship now circumnavigates the Milky Way. One day a planet surrounded by an energy barrier, and which is named Marrow, is discovered at the Ship's center. Miocene, the ship's first submaster, leads a team of the best and brightest captains on a dangerous mission to the planet's surface, in hopes that the investigation will shed light on the Ship's origins and its builders' identity. A sudden storm in the energy barrier traps the team on the planet, and the captains are forced to rebuild their civilization from scratch while attempting to reach the Ship once again. Reed leads the reader skillfully through his intriguing tale by maintaining curiosity about what the true nature of the Ship's origins might be. Sadly, the ending doesn't sate that curiosity. It does, however, open the door for a sequel. Bryan Baldus
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Tor Books
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312868014
• ISBN 13: 9780312868017
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 351