Ritorno a Orbitsville

Orbitsville #2

by Bob Shaw, Gianpaolo Cossato (Translator), Sandro Sandrelli (Transator)

Con Sfera Orbitale (Orbitsville) Bob Shaw aveva introdotto uno dei concetti più interessanti della fantascienza moderna: un mondo artificiale di immensa grandezza, costruito a forma di guscio cavo intorno al suo sole, con una massa equivalente a cinque miliardi di volte quella del nostro pianeta. In quel primo romanzo Shaw trattava principalmente la scoperta di questa meraviglia cosmica: ora, nell’attesissimo seguito, considera invece la conseguenza di questa scoperta sullo sviluppo della razza umana.

Duecento anni sono passati dagli eventi narrati in Sfera Orbitale, e in questo frattempo la maggioranza dei terrestri sono emigrati negli ospitali spazi di questo enorme mondo. L'ansia di esplorare il cosmo si è spenta nell'animo dell'uomo: Orbitsville offre tutto lo spazio che l'umanità potrebbe mai volere, e la Terra sta diventando un immenso museo. Alcuni antichi problemi tuttavia persistono ancora, come Garry Dallen, approdato alla Terra di Orbitsville, ha modo di scoprire a sue spese quando la sua famiglia viene uccisa da un criminale colto dalla disperazione. Ma la voglia di vendetta, che nasce in Dallen dopo questo brutale episodio, lo spingerà al centro di un mistero molto più grande: quello di Orbitsville, e della sua costruzione. Chi ha costruito questo mondo immenso? E per quali scopi?

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Speculative Fiction

177 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Bob Shaw was born in Northern Ireland. After working in structural engineering, industrial public relations, and journalism he became a full time science fiction writer in 1975.

Shaw was noted for his originality and wit. He was two-time recipient (in 1979 and 1980) of the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer. His short story Light of Other Days was a Hugo Award nominee in 1967, as was his novel The Ragged Astronauts in 1987.

Reviews

[Roddy Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘Two hundred years ago mankind found Orbitsville, a vast sphere whose habitable inner surface comprised living space equivalent to five billion Earths. The resulting migration was enthusiastic – and nearly total.

Earth itself is a backwater now, a place with which the people of Orbitsville maintain only marginal contact. But just because it’s backward doesn’t mean it isn’t dangerous...’

Blurb from the Orbit 1991 paperback edition

Shaw wrote mostly stand alone novels, so it’s interesting to see what he does with a trilogy. We return to Shaw’s ‘Orbitsville’ some two hundred years after the vents of the first novel. Society has moved on from the peculiar neo-Elizabethan monarchy of the first novel and Earth is depopulated, having transported most of the human race to the interior of the vast Dyson Sphere that is Orbitsville, containing a habitable surface equivalent to millions of Earths.
The vastness of this alien construction is contrasted by the lives of various individual humans, such as Garry Dallen, a law enforcement officer seconded to Earth, whose wife and child are brainwiped with an energy weapon during a bungled raid on Garry’s office building.
The perpetrator is a drug addict who had already used the weapon to destroy a computer which contained details of his embezzlement operations. Garry subsequently gets involved with Sylvia, the wife of a dying scientist who believes he can prove that his ‘soul’ will live on after death.
All the major characters end up on the same ship to Orbitsville and Shaw has cleverly arranged it so that everyone has a good reason for being there.
However, Orbitsville’s outer skin of ‘ylem’ after two hundred years of tedious impenetrable inertness has now begun to exude green flashes of light, pulsing, at first slowly but increasing in intensity.
Like the lights in Orbitsville’s shell, the narrative starts very slowly and builds to a climactic finish in which the creators of Orbitsville are partially revealed.
I’ve always felt a sense of anticlimax when the presumed dead races who created big dumb objects are discovered. It’s better to leave them as a mystery, and Orbitsville Departure’s Elder Race is no exception.
‘Rendezvous with Rama’ is a perfect example of how to do it right (we’ll gloss over the co-written sequels which added nothing of any substance) and again Fred Pohl’s ‘Gateway’ was a stunningly constructed novel which was sadly lessened by the sequels and the exposure of the mysterious Heechee.
If in doubt, leave your mysterious dead races where they belong, in the imaginations of the readers.

[Rog Petersen · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars
In shifting the focus of the second Orbitsville novel to earth, and the effect on the human diaspora from their homeworld, Shaw loses most of the magic he created in the first book. It does circle back around at the end to Orbitsville and the next stage of the strange object's story, so having a strong ending goes a long way in making the reader forget the book wasn't as good as it could have been.

[Karl Stark di Grande Inverno · Rating 2 out of 5]

Seguito gradevole, con una trama totalmente diversa dal primo libro, afflitto però dagli stessi difetti del predecessore.
La trama narra di un giallo, un'omicidio, e la parte propriamente fantascientifica arriva solo ad una cinquantina di pagine dalla fine. Il romanzo scorre bene, con un personaggio principale ed alcuni comprimari tratteggiati in modo vivido e realistico.
Difetti: le parti che potevano innescare linee narrative parallele sono mal sfruttate, o non sfruttate affatto; alcuni personaggi secondari potevano essere usati meglio ed invece sono buttati li per qualche pagina per poi sparire dall'intreccio senza un perchè; infine la storia d'amore istantanea perchè si, è poco plausibile.
Inoltre, essendo un giallo, lo scopo ultimo dell'assassino non viene mai spiegato, mai, nemmeno alla fine; almeno, io non l'ho capito.
Nota positiva: almeno vengono svelati alcuni misteri sui costruttori della sfera di Dyson e sulle loro motivazioni.

Nota sull'edizione italiana: credo che abbiano tagliato almeno due parti del romanzo.
La prima circa a metà, quando il protagonista scopre l'identità dell'assassino; la seconda verso la fine, durante il colpo di scena finale.
Non sono parti lunghe ma proprio perchè poste in punti fondamentali della trama non aveva senso tagliarle.
Magari mi sbaglio ma l'impressione è quella. L'alternativa è che il traduttore abbia tradotto male quelle parti.
In entrambi i casi, il risultato non è bello.

[Karen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sequel to Orbitsville, set 200 years later.

Disappointingly this is set mostly on Earth and in space, and not much about Orbitsville beyond how its existence has changed Earth. And then a bit event out of nowhere in the final chapter.

[Frank Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is another good story in the series but I didn't think it was nearly as much fun as the first. We're 200 years after the reign of Elizabeth Lindstrom now, so there aren't any familiar characters. The new characters are probably a bit better constructed in this but are of a different ilk, not so heroic or visionary as Garamond and Co.

It's much less of an exploration of Orbitsville, less space opera, but we do learn about how society is changing there and on Earth. Orbitsville gets an official name (Optima Thule) but it's rarely used throughout the story with the characters commonly referring to it by either Orbitsville or The Big O.

There's some more cool tech and even more bunk science. The mind stuff being notably bunk, such as mental particles (mindons) in a "mental space"... but it's all a lot of fun. We've got Holomorphs and weird stun guns now, and we even get a pretty good description of how the Flickerwings work.

The old incorrect generalisations about gender seem more prevalent in this one, which is a frustrating contrast to some of the strong female characters the story has featured so far. Actually this story features a heck of a lot more sex stuff and to be honest the author doesn't excel at it.

The strength of these has been the speculative nature and I am hoping book 3 focuses on that a bit more.

[Malcolm Cox · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first book covered the discovery and some of the exploration of Orbitsville. This book returns the focus to Earth 200 years later when most of the population have emigrated to Orbitsville and is a detective story, of sorts, where a man tries to find the man who wiped the minds of his wife and son.
Although I was looking forward to learning more about Orbitsville itself, I enjoyed the story on Earth. The story moved along nicely and had some interesting developments. I found the plight of a man looking after a wife and son who have no idea who he is and been reduced to mental infancy deeply impactful.
The final events had that typical sci-fi style ending, but it worked for the most part.
All in all, a pretty decent follow up to book 1.

[Karmakosmik · Rating 2 out of 5]

Francamente non sono riuscito ben a capire il senso di questo secondo volume della trilogia di Orbitsville. Si ha un soggetto decisamente interessante come l'immenso mondo di Orbitsville tutto da sviluppare, ed invece il suo autore preferisce concentrarsi su alcuni personaggi della vecchia Terra e lentamente creare l'intensità per la svolta "new age" del finale di cui non accenno nulla. Sicuramente questo secondo libro ha una scrittura e trama molto più curata del suo predecessore, ma è molto lento e spesso si ha la sensazione che si trascini un po' a caso. La parte finale è quella dove il libro si riaccende improvvisamente, ma per poi spegnersi con il megapippone filosofico sbattuto praticamente in chiusura del volume. Speriamo bene con il terzo volume della saga.

[Hugo · Rating 3 out of 5]

A novel full of good sci fi concepts, but suffering from a bad case of impossible-to-like protagonist and poorly written female characters (e.g the author can’t stop talking about Sylvia’s boobs). Good fun as a quick read. I enjoyed the exploration of Earth’s fate in a scenario where humanity has discovered a utopian alternative in space: the large-scale abandonment of towns and cities and the “museum-ification” of the ones that are left. The ending, though, was kinda absurd and felt unrelated to the rest of the story.

I haven’t read the first one so can’t really judge its effectiveness as a sequel.

[Donald McAlpin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Anyone expecting an exploration of the possibilities which living in a Dyson Sphere offers will be sadly disappointed. Instead, the reader is asked to trudge through a prosaic emotional drama for much of the novel. It is only in the final fifty pages that the author returns his focus to Orbitsville itself in a quite unexpected denouement which sets up nicely the conclusion of the trilogy. I can only hope that the finale is better than this instalment.

[Todd R · Rating 1 out of 5]

Is this an Orbitsville novel? It feels like Mr. Shaw had some stories laying around and the publisher told him to rush another Orbitsville out to market. He gathered up what he could and slapped a few Orbitsville references into those forgotten stories and crossed his fingers.
Well, it didn't work for me. Shaw's writing is really good, but Orbitsville is no more...it should have remained a single book.

[James Marshall · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read Orbitsville back in the 1980s. I picked up this copy and thought how outdated it is. There's no way it would be published today: some outdated, sexist tropes and a plot that lurches from detective to hard SF!
However, some parts drift along nicely.

[Darlene Maynard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book as I followed the main character and how he dealt with what happened to his wife and child. Good ending, but would love to learn more about those aliens, interesting take on the universe!

[Earl Truss · Rating 1 out of 5]

After the first 100 pages I started skimming to the end. It was pretty disappointing.

[Metaphorosis · Rating 3 out of 5]

reviews.metaphorosis.com

3.5 stars

Two centuries after the discovery of the Orbitsville Dyson sphere, Earth is a backwater, inhabited only by tourists and a few non-conformists. Garry Dallen, an Orbitsville native is working on Earth as a ranger. When his wife and child, on a short visit, are badly injured, Dallen's focus narrows to revenge, but behind the scenes, much greater things are happening.

Where Orbitsville's strength was its focus on individuals, Shaw here takes a good idea too far. Departure is basically a mystery story in an SF framework. It's good, and Shaw shows his usual deft touch with human character. Dallen is a complex, conflicted man, but also a bit slow. His struggles with how to deal with the emotional difficulties of his situation are tone perfect. Unfortunately, they're a bit overwhelmed by his simultaneous obsession with a simple plan - vengeance.

There's also an interesting large scale science fiction story here, but Shaw provides it in a clumsy chunk that screams "cash-in sequel". I wish he'd taken more time to lay the groundwork instead. There are good traces, but the resolution of the story is just too unwieldy for that thin framework to hold.

Probably best read for the mystery element, and the portrait of a stolid, physical man in distress. A decent story, but ans of Orbitsville may be disappointed.

[Rich Meyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great follow-up to the original novel, but has no real linkage to those events so it can be enjoyed as a standalone story. 200 years after the discovery of Orbitsville, Earth has emptied out and is on the decline. However, crime and terrorism still exist, as Dallen finds out,much to his chagrin.

A rare story that combined soft and hard science fiction with a "murder" mystery. Well-written with excellent characterization!

[samuel · Rating 3 out of 5]

weak ending

[MissJessie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not to my personal taste.

[Luigi · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good sequel

[SciFiOne · Rating 2 out of 5]

1989 grade D+

series book O2