obert Reed first conceived of his "Great Ship" in 1994. Take a world as big as Jupiter. Equip it with engines and myriad other technological features, inside and out. Cover it in durable "hyperfiber." Lace the interior with tunnels and passages galore, of all shapes and sizes. At the hollow core of the planet, install another entire livable Mars-sized world. Populate the place with 100 billion practically immortal sentients of varying races, a population that doesn't even come close to filling the available living space. Send the result on a tour of the galaxy. Now you've got one hell of a venue for storytelling.
Reed published several tales about the Great Ship, including "Marrow" in the pages of the late, lamented Science Fiction Age (a certain familiar name, Scott Edelman, appearing on the masthead of that 'zine as editor). These tales cohered eventually into novel form with Marrow (2000). Here we witnessed the history of the Great Ship and its daily routines, which were interrupted by the discovery of the mysterious Marrow, the world at the core. The main revelation of this volume was that the Great Ship was a prison, holding inside Marrow a mysterious being or beings known as the Bleak. After a civil war involving Marrow, the Great Ship was left in a somewhat precarious state.
Our next encounter with Reed's vast conception occurred in a Golden Gryphon chapbook titled Mere (2004). Here we were not actually on the Great Ship, but we did meet the title character as she grew up alien, before becoming poised to play a future role on the interstellar wanderer.
Now comes the current novel, picking up exactly on the heels of the first. The Great Ship is wrested from plunging into a black hole by its masterful and ingenious Captains, who include most notably the woman named Washen and her lover, Pamir. They are the first and second ranks below the Master Captain, who has been rendered an ineffective figurehead by the civil war. In reality, Washen and Pamir hold the fate of the Great Ship in their hands, their every decision affecting millions of beings.
The Ship is now headed toward a mysterious nebula as the best path away from the black hole. Into the Inkwell they plunge, their sublight passage across it estimated to take 30 years. But what they do not realize at first is that the Inkwell is home to a singular intelligence, the polypond, who lives on the Blue World. This monumental watery entity, which can assume any shape, appears to the Great Ship in human form and invites a delegation. Not entirely trusting the polypond, the Captains order Mere to trail behind the diplomatic ship in her own stealth cruiser. Her expertise in dealing with alien minds will serve to disclose any tricks of the alien.
But although Mere does learn useful secrets, she cannot make it back to the Ship before war breaks out. The polypond seems intent on destroying the Great Ship, for no apparent reason. Immense destructive campaigns are waged by both sides over the course of years, taking their toll on Washen and Pamir especially. And in the end, all seems lost for the Great Ship. And what's worse, cracking open Marrow and releasing the Bleak, as the polypond intends, spells death for the whole universe.
Big Dumb Object, big smart book
The history of Big Dumb Objects, as they are labeled in John Clute's The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1993), contains many of the masterpieces of the genre. Something about large artifacts just lends itself to inspired speculative flights of fancy. The instance of BDO that springs most readily to mind in connection with Reed's books is Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama (1973) and its sequels. In both cases, an alien-created craft of mysterious provenance is found by humans, who adapt it to their needs, little realizing that they are leaving deeper enigmas unplumbed. Reed's ingenious twists to this conceit are twofold.
First, his Great Ship is empty of life from the outset, unlike Rama and its thawing life forms, and thus the vessel is a blank slate on which humanity can write. And what they choose to write, ironically, is the itinerary of a cruise ship. The Great Ship has no real purpose other than to carry rich races on a multi-millennia tour of the galaxy. Reed is perhaps initially commenting here on certain less savory aspects of capitalism and the marketplace. But he turns his own thesis around several times by showing us how genuine communities grow organically out of such mercenary foundations.
Secondly, of course, Reed changes the literal shape of Rama from a boring tube to a Swiss-cheese globe with a deadly morsel at the center. This layered construction reflects the more sophisticated societies and plotting that Reed employs. (Mere's backstory, by the way, is "retconned" into this book, so familiarity with her chapbook appearance is not necessary for your enjoyment.)
Over the course of a decade, Reed has envisioned the Great Ship, its cultures and mores, so clearly for himself, and cast his visions into such clean, assured prose, that the place in all its complexity truly comes alive for the reader. His various aliens are all vivid, and his human characters equally so. And they are genuine posthumans as well. Washen, Pamir, Mere and the rest have self-repairing bodies and "immortal genes." They can suffer tremendous bodily insults that would kill you or me, and eventually bounce back. Moreover, their infinite lifespans promote an outlook unlike ours and engender memory issues unique to their kind. In his presentation of these brawling demigods, Reed utilizes vast swaths of time in nonconventional ways, producing a true sense of estrangement.
For all its sophistications, Reed's book also shares a bloodline with the first space operas of Doc Smith. Consider this battle description: "But the shields kept finding the strength and integrity, surging to meet each onslaught; wild purple flashes and blistering UV bolts. ... Then in another instant, ten thousand columns of laser light punched upward through the shield, each bolt calibrated to boil away an ocean ..." Establishing the context in which such super-science dazzlement can consort smoothly with mature evocations of character is the mark of a master writer, and Reed has certainly attained that status with this fine book.
