Long ago, humans evolved on another planet. They colonised other planets, then civilisation collapsed. The inhabitants of the planet of Mollan can travel from one planet to another with a thought, and live five thousand years. The gravitational influence of the moon is the reason Earthlings can't travel to other stars with a thought. A small group of radicals from Mollan plan to violate the noninterference policy by blowing up the moon.

I just finished this minutes ago. This is a rather short book, yet has enough character development to have one caring deeply. Almost every page past 30 is entertaining in its own right, and the exploration of mortality and the scientific framework for the story are unique and quite imaginative. I enjoyed Orbitsville, and was unimpressed by Orbitsville Departure. This is the best by far of the three, and a very pleasant surprise.

This book demonstrates the ability to have better and well prepare mechanics.Will give you an edge on your pitching to become the best!!!

Finally a book with a unhappy ending! These are hard to find these days.

The "hero" of the book, Warren Peace, finds himself in the army. Literally finds himself, because the troopers go through an operation that removes all the "bad things", killings, rapes, bad childhoods, from ones memory. And Warren doesn't remember *anything at all*. How bad can his past be?

This is a rather old scifi so it's from a period where scifi used to be "socially concious", but it can be read also as a great action mystery.

Bob Shaw's short stories about 'slow glass', were carefully crafted, moving and elegant. Unfortunately, this brilliance was somewhat subverted by the conversion of those stories into novel form.

Whereas the themes of the stories are centred around memory and loss, the novel turns this on its head with a recycled plot about the inventor who accidentally destroys the world. In the novel's case, the basic idea is almost entirely ripped off Asimov's 'The Dead Past', in which a technology is unleashed on the world which allows everyone to spy on everyone else. In Shaw's novel, Alban Garrod's invention of a new form of glass which slows light, results eventually in the government deploying ubiquitous slow glass dust, turning everything into a potential surveillance device.

The emotional development of the novel is also poor, not to say thunderingly misogynistic (a trait to be found in many of Shaw's novels of this period). Alban Garrod is held back by his nagging wife, Esther, whose father initially provided him with seed capital. He finds freedom with a beautiful, compliant, and vaguely oriental-looking secretary, while Esther is left blinded by an accident at his home laboratory. This blindness means she is able to hold on to Garrod and force him to act as her eyes, by making him wear a pair of slow glass 'lenses' which she can then wear the next day, so he is almsost literally forced to live in the past. It is all very heavy-handed and unpleasant, and there are similar strains of misogyny in other Shaw novels, especially 'Orbitsville'. It is odd, because I had never noticed this in his short pieces, and it unfortunately tends to lessen my appreciation of Shaw as a writer.

Despite all this, there is an intriguingly poetic technology at the centre of this novel, and some insightful commentary on the politics of surveillance and privacy, and you still get the excellent original short stories included as 'sidelights' to the main plot.

The discovery that a super toughened glass,first used in car windshields, actually delays the passage of light, is an intriguing concept for a s.f. story. Bob Shaw uses the "slow glass" to paint many different scenarios as to how this discovery changes the world for many different people. From its use as a window on different worlds (leave a large thick pane of glass, the thicker the glass the longer the light takes to pass through, beside a beautifull view for a couple of months/years then sell it to a householder - instant picture window) but beware glass is two way !! Say a crime is commited in a room with "slow glass" the cops take away the window and, after a period of time, the crime is replayed just like a movie. The possibilities are endless. A well crafted and enjoyable book by a much loved and sadly deceased author, one of my favourites.

I see that Amazon books lists very few of the works of Bob Shaw, probably mostly because he is British (no American outlet). He wrote an extensive number of books, always quite workmanlike. The earlier part of his oevre is quite imaginative, constantly picking up an interesting SF idea of one sort or the other. The later part, e.g. the trilogy on the "wooden spaceships", is a bit of a let down. At least Bob Shaw did not decline as fast or as sadly as Heinlein. He died in 1996.

"Ship of Strangers" is dedicated to AE van Vogt and is patterned on the classic "The Voyage of the Space Beagle". A ship with a mission to map planets brings the protagonist in a series of alien situations. Compared to the "Space Beagle" the ship is a lot smaller, does not have a nexologist, but does have an AI. The general run of adventures is more straightforward, as are the characters. Nevertheless, anybody who loved the "Space Beagle" will at least like "Ship of Strangers"

This sequel for Orbitsville must have been forced by the publisher because of the popularity of the first book. This book is not at all as fascinating as Orbitsville, and over all I do not recommend reading it. I myself would have preferred having the puzzle unsolved to the New-Age-style explanation offered by this book.

Garry Dallen, a resident of Orbitsville (a giant "Dyson sphere" surrounding a sun and containing the surface area of five billion Earths) returns to Earth and becomes involved with events which ultimately lead him back to his home. As with the original "Orbitsville," Bob Shaw tries to tackle too much with this 251-page (fairly large print) sequel--more on Orbitsville itself, scientific proof of life after death, the structure of the universe, a space-opera-style riff on Orbitsville's origin--and the result is somewhat of a mishmash and disappointment. The book's blurb talks about Orbitsville's origin being "the ultimate answer to [Dallen's] quest," but it's not really--this is just a book about a resident of Orbitsville who had some interesting things happen to him. Shaw keeps the story moving, but the overall result is, regrettably, less than memorable.

This story lacks the imagination or uniqueness of its predecessor, which I would have ranked higher. Perhaps there are common themes in Shaw's work, but his protagonist in this story goes through many of the very same personal difficulties and conflicts (wife, children, fidelity) as did the one from Orbitsville, although the two stories are separated by many years. This is in one sense a detective book. For those interested in the mystery surrounding Orbitsville ("Lindstromland") it is answered (although this is not the detective part of the story). I found the explanation a bit hoaky, but it is thorough. Overall, this is a quick read and may be worthwhile for those who enjoyed Orbitsville.

Should science fiction be more about scientific accuracy or should it emphasise the fiction department? Bob Shaw has devised an interesting compromise: forget them both and try to fill the gap with loads of sense-of-wonder.

In "A Wreath of Stars" a planet made completely out of neutrinos (or something like that) passes by Earth, and though it has little effect on the physical universe (as you know, neutrinos don't interact easily with other particles), it does reveal the existence of another neutrino planet inside our own globe. A playboy nuclear scientist and an aeroplane engineer end up studying this underground World called Avernus and succeed in making contact with its inhabitants. Hampered by political inconveniences and lack of time, they struggle to save Avernians from being extinct by the inevitable planetary catastrophe caused by the other planet mentioned earlier.

Sure, the plot isn't exactly intriguing and the cardboard-characters don't help. But what bugs me the most is Shaw's habit of bypassing scientific explanations while trying to amaze readers with weird ideas. And it's not just that he chooses not to use science, on the contrary: the novel is seemingly based on particle physics, but somewhere along the way Shaw simply switches to Star Trek science with parallel universes and non-existent particles. Pathetic.

(Okay, this was my subjective opinion. If you REALLY liked Orbitsville, you might get something out of this one too. Just don't get your hopes up.)

An American engineer discovers strange occurrences in another country. Native residents report seeing ghost like figures in underground mine shafts. Curiously, these incidents begin immediately following an odd astronomical event involving a planetary collision between earth and an unknown world. The engineer becomes involved in an investigation of a possible connection between the sightings and the collision. The story begins promising enough, but quickly gets bogged down in a subplot involving uninteresting political unrest in the foreign country. I suppose it was used to create some suspense, which it definitely does not. The book ends neatly and quickly, and ultimately disappointingly. Very, very far from the excitement created in Ragged Astronauts. Skip this one.