Big Dumb Objects

[Teresa, Plan B is in Effect]

One of the suggested themes is Big Dumb Objects. It's not one I'd planned to start a thread about any time soon, but I just read an article on the subject, so I'm sharing it here. You are free to discuss the topic of course.

https://www.tor.com/2018/01/08/a-brie...

This refers to books such as Ringworld by Larry Niven and Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke.

[Book Nerd]

I have a weird love for megastructures,
Here are some more:

[Steph]

Yes! I suggested this theme. One of my favourites is Terry Pratchett's Strata, which I believe was intended as a parody of Ringworld.

Another is Orbitsville, Bob's Shaw's tale of an alien Dyson sphere.

[Keith]

Stephen Baxter's Xeelee series features Bolder's Ring, one of the largest Big Dumb Objects in sci-fi history - a spinning ring of cosmic string millions of light-years across, so massive it draws galaxies towards itself, built in order to produce a naked singularity that can be used as a portal to other universes.

[Steph]

I suppose the monolith at Saturn in 2001: A Space Odyssey (Jupiter in the film) qualifies as well.

The replicated Earth in Century Rain is a good twist on the theme, in that its inhabitants are blissfully unaware of the situation. Now I think about it, Alastair Reynolds uses alien megastructures a lot, like the zoo in Pushing Ice or the machines built by the Inhibitors in Redemption Ark,

[Ally]

I love BDO, thanks for the article, I discovered old titles I didn't know.
I think we should accept Small DO too, why do you need it to be planet size. It just a question of triggering curiosity and a sense of wonder.
Ringworl win the category Sense of Wonder for me so far.

I just finished a book in the SDO category by Juan Miguel Aguilera
La red de Indra
(in a French translation, can't find the English title)
If you read Spanish !
Interesting SDO with a bit of hard SF.

I remember a short story by Alastair Reynolds Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days Diamond Dogs, with a nasty BDO, a good parable.

[Teresa, Plan B is in Effect]

I just thought of another BDO. Midnight at the Well of Souls by Jack L. Chalker. The well is inside a structure that is at least as large as a planet and likely larger, with the surface partitioned into mostly hexagonal sections, with one intelligent species residing in each section. Over 1000 species if memory serves.

[Trike]

Teresa wrote: "I just thought of another BDO. Midnight at the Well of Souls by Jack L. Chalker. The well is inside a structure that ..."

I was originally going to add this but then reconsidered since the “dumb” part doesn’t really apply. The Well World is literally a planet-sized computer that runs the entire universe. It is very smart indeed.

[Teresa, Plan B is in Effect]

Hmm good point.

[Trike]

I think the other aspect of BDOs is that they are mysterious relics. At least that’s how I’ve always thought of them. So the Ringworld would qualify but not the Death Star.

Also, they are massive, which is a quality I got from Larry Niven’s essay “Bigger Than Worlds.” Thus the titular Halo from the videogames would qualify but not the Monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

I am completely willing to change that definition if authors have pushed the envelope on the typical BDO story. I personally wouldn’t consider The Chronoliths to be BDOs even though they check the boxes of mysterious and large, like the Monolith, but I don’t know if anyone has come up with a name for them.

[Trike]

Follow-up pregunta:

Rama is a BDO, but what do we call V’ger? V’ger is gigantic and initially mysterious, but it’s not ancient or dumb in either sense of the word.

[Don]

The definition is as varied as Science Fiction fans themselves. Some see BDO as needing to be "dumb" others think it must be dumb and ancient. Still others think it doesn't need to be big if it a center part of the story. I think BDO's can be all three (and more) depending.

Gregory Benford's Artifact is a good example of this. It isn't huge, in fact the actual item inside is quite small (but deadly). But it is big to the story and certainly dumb (meaning the object itself not Benford's idea). It is also old.

[Trike]

I haven’t read Artifact, so what do you mean by small?

I think at the very least a BDO should be gigantic. Meaning “we can drive our space truck inside it” big. I don’t know what that exact minimum size would be, but at least the equivalent of a suburban shopping mall on the smallest end of the scale.

I would go for the Well World being a BDO way before something like Sphere.

[Teresa, Plan B is in Effect]

Another point about Well World is that we don't know at the beginning that the computer runs the universe. IMO it's fine for a large mysterious object to end up being not so dumb after all, as long as it has no clear purpose for the first half of the book. Shrug... I'm more interested in sparking suggestions of good books to read. ;)

[Trike]

That’s a good point about the Well World. Although don’t we find out about it early on?

I need to reread those books.

[Teresa, Plan B is in Effect]

It's been a while since I've reread the Well World books myself, so I might be misremembering, but I thought in Midnight it didn't get revealed until nearer the end, at least the part about it running the universe. Running Well World, yeah, but the initial impression was that it was running the neutral zones at the poles and the transportation to and from the poles, and not much else. The trilogy that followed had more facts from the start.

[Don]

Trike wrote: "I haven’t read Artifact, so what do you mean by small?

I think at the very least a BDO should be gigantic. Meaning “we can drive our space truck inside it” big. I don’t know what that exact minimu..."

At the risk of spoilers ... the container is sizable, though not "drive our space truck inside it" large as it can fit inside a lab/on a truck. What is inside it is a (view spoiler)[type of very unique and deadly particle. (hide spoiler)] Of course they don't figure that out until later what it is and what is going on. Not to mention the amount of danger they are in.

It is a good story, but only if you like really HARD science fiction where a good section of the book is discussing the science. But one can skip that section to "get back into the action" if it reaches beyond one's tolerance.

[Anya]

The World of Tiers series by Phillip Jose Farmer has planets and entire Universes constructed by a family of godlike, dimension hopping immortals. It's more science fantasy than science fiction, but most space opera is when you actually look under the hood!

[Teresa, Plan B is in Effect]

I’m currently rereading The Scent of Metal by Sabrina Chase. I’d say that fits the BDO category. One of the characters just called something a BDR (big dumb rock) but that BDR has an FTL drive on it.