Teaser

In the search for alien life, eyes turn to Jupiter. Could this world’s oceans hide an alien intelligence? And what would such a discovery mean for the strictly doctrinal New Morality . . ?

Review

It’s always nice to return to the books of Ben Bova. There’s something incredibly comforting about the reading the adventures of scientists going out into the solar system and doing science. It’s like Star Trek on a smaller scale, and it is wonderful. Yes, it’s hard to find his books in the UK, and I’m unlikely to be returning to the US any time soon, but my limited access to Bova’s work just makes it all the more special. As any Trek fan will tell you, this sort of story can grow formulaic and stale given time, so this rationing of Grand Tour novels is likely working in their favour.

I want to take a moment here to address the question of genre. I call the Grand Tour novels Hard SF. I’m probably not alone in this. These are books driven by science, and are predominantly about scientists. Bova delights in explaining the physics and mechanics behind every discovery. However, as some have pointed out (including in the comments of this very blog) he also includes things that are scientifically false. An interstellar death wave. Alien ruins on Mars. In this novel, Jupiter is home to more than one form of alien life. Can a book truly be Hard SF when it contains these scientific inaccuracies?

I would argue it can. Let us set aside for a moment the fact that science can quickly be rendered outdated, and focus on the period in which a book is written. To my mind, Bova is not ignoring scientific fact in order to tell his story. What he is doing, is taking a fictional idea (life on Jupiter, for example) and applying scientific rigour to it. Rather than looking at an inhospitable planet and saying ‘there could be no life here,’ Bova works in reverse, ‘If there is life here, how could it exist?’ This is a much more interesting question, and certainly one that leads to more entertaining stories. And if your book is based on an exploration of solid scientific questioning, then I will happily label it as Hard SF, no matter what other people might say.

The plot of the book, as is so often the case with Bova, is elegant in its simplicity. A team of scientists explore Jupiter in search of intelligent life, and much of the book focuses on the discoveries they make along the way. In addition to the planetary exploration, there is also experimentation with uplifted animals, and all the internal squabbling and factionalism you could hope for in a book. The driving conflict, however, is between the scientists, and the New Morality.

When I first encountered the New Morality in Bova’s work, I was unimpressed. In the middle of all his optimism, suddenly there was a global fundamentalist religious movement that was taking over politics, education, and society as a whole. It felt out of place. Worse than that, it felt unrealistic. However, when I look at the news today, a movement such as the New Morality seems more plausible than ever, and it puts a chill in my bones. Yes, it does sometimes feel as though Bova has a personal axe to grind with organised religion, but he’s not entirely wrong to portray the religious takeover of society as a worrying thing. If something like the New Morality did exist, it could be every bit as inadvertently destructive as Bova depicts.

That being said, I think Bova strikes a nice balance. He doesn’t portray religion itself as cartoonishly evil. Men of faith are good men, and even the New Morality, for all its failings, embarks on projects that will enrich humanity. Bova’s message, if there is one, is that it is the excesses that are wrong. The need to control. The refusal to learn from other, even alien, points of view. Humanity will never agree on one way to explore the universe, but if we keep our minds and hearts open, we can learn to explore it together.

Jupiter isn’t my favourite Bova book, but it is one where a lot of elements crystallise. If you want to understand the Grand Tour, then this is one story you can’t afford to miss.

Book Stats

• Part of the Grand Tour Universe
• Published in 2000 by Tor
• 378 Pages