ver the past 15 years, Ben Bova has produced some 10 novels of a future history that has come to be known as The Grand Tour. (A handy list of these books is appended to the current volume.) This elaborate literary forecast focuses on the exploration, settlement and exploitation of the solar system. Naturally enough with such a huge canvas, there are some corners left unexplored in the longer works, and this assemblage of 12 shorter tales seeks to fill in these niches.
The stories may be grouped into several categories. First, there are four excerpts from the Grand Tour novels. "Muzhestvo" comes from Mars (1992) and concerns the initiation rites one astronaut must undergo. A titanic Martian sandstorm afflicts separated parties in "Red Sky at Morning," from Return to Mars (1999). Taken from Venus (2000), "Death on Venus" concerns the first attempt to reach the surface of that broiling world and the life forms encountered there. Finally, "Leviathan" lets us inhabit the point of view of one of the natives of Jupiter (2001).
Several stories feature recurrent protagonists famous in Bova's universe. "Sam and the Flying Dutchman" finds wily entrepreneur Sam Gunn out in the asteroid belt trying to deal with a space pirate while avoiding his own impending marriage. Chet Kinsman performs a heroic lunar rescue in "Fifteen Miles." And the egomaniacal billionaire Martin Humphries finds his self-assurance shattered by contact with an alien artifact in "Sepulcher."
One-time heroes pop up in "Greenhouse Chill," the story of an Earth reduced to pre-technological times by global warming; in "Monster Slayer," where a Native American construction worker in space learns that there's more to his job than a paycheck; in "High Jump," which follows the exploits of a stuntman diving through the Venusian atmosphere; and in "The Man Who Hated Gravity," the biography of a shattered circus performer who comes to an epiphany on the moon. Finally, "Appointment in Sinai" uses a multi-character, widescreen approach to chronicle the first landing on Mars.
Exploring an old-school solar system
Ben Bova is old school. There's no two ways about it. If your idea of a likely future history for the solar system is Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix (1985), then you are going to find Bova's Grand Tour a little cautious, a little old-fashioned, a little too neat. But given the tenor and scale of present-day developments—the international space station, the Mars Spirit rover, President Bush's call for a return to the moon and a manned Mars mission—Bova's vision looks inherently sane and likely. You won't find here the skewed posthuman futures of Sterling or Alexander Jablokov or Simon Ings or Stephen Baxter or John Varley—all of whom have worked the same Nine Planets territory as Bova. Even Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series looks way-out compared to Bova. But what you will find is the nuts-and-bolts approach to our probable entrance into the larger solar system, combined with traditional storytelling values, honest characters and ingenious plotting.
The novel excerpts work OK on a stand-alone basis, and I suppose help introduce new readers to Bova's universe. Still, they feel a bit like padding. Much more interesting are the stories conceived originally as short stories, and among these it's actually the most peripheral ones that strike me as the most engaging. After all, a book that seeks to explore niches should not feature too many tales that go over the same high points as the novels.
For instance, "Greenhouse Chill," with its characters who resemble a post-apocalyptic Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, has a wonderful kind of Edgar Pangborn vibe. "The Man Who Hated Gravity" gets into Sturgeonesque emotional territory. And "High Jump," with its intricate details on the strata of Venus' atmosphere, reminds me of the kind of techno-poetry Scott Westerfeld produces. And of course, a lot of the fun with this book, as in any future history (credit Heinlein for the invention of that concept), lies in seeing recurrent characters and events from different angles, building up a mosaic impression.
The other author whose work most closely adheres to Bova's example is Allen Steele. Like some kind of father-and-son team, both men are intent on presenting almost journalistic slices of life in space for our descendants, the foundations of which we may very well be building right now.
