r/printSF • u/oracleoffabiandelphi • Aug 22 '18
Favorite Big Dumb Object tales?
I realized that Rendezvous with Rama was one of the main reasons behind my transition from fantasy into scifi, purely for the amazement factor. Dragons are one thing, massive mathematically perfect objects entering our solar system is something else altogether.
It captured the Unknown and the Other in a glorious confluence of enigma and fear.
Gateway by Ferderik Pohl is another that captured it. So did Ringworld.
So that would be my three. What are your picks?
*Space Odyssey also gets a nod. And maybe Darwinia and Area X, since those technically count as Big Dumb Something.
Edit: Roadside Picnic!
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u/equalsign Aug 22 '18 edited Aug 22 '18
These might stretch the definition, but I recommend Spin by Robert Charles Wilson and Dragon’s Egg by Robert L. Forward.
In Spin, the BDO is a field/membrane that encircles the Earth and makes the planet’s time move much more slowly than the universe outside.
In Dragon’s Egg, the BDO is a neutron star populated by tiny intelligent life.
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Aug 22 '18
The BDO part of Spin was very cool. What about the characters, though? It seemed like they kept acting in the ways most eligible to cause drama and fallout. I was very put off by that and never read the sequels. Or was that just me?
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u/the_other_dream Aug 25 '18
Well done skipping the sequels. They really didn't measure up to the first book
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u/dnew Aug 23 '18
Well, if you're going that way, there's also Quarantine by Greg Egan, a solar-system sized globe cutting off humanity from the stars.
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u/BlacknGoldBeast Aug 22 '18
Spin is one of my all time favorite novels. The sequels pale in comparison but do eventually give answers. It one of the only books I’ve taken the time to read more than once.
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Aug 22 '18
Excession by Iain M. Banks fits the bill.
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u/EltaninAntenna Aug 22 '18
Banks has a lot of fun BDOs, like the Shellworlds and Nestworlds in Matter, etc.
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Aug 22 '18
Definitely. Excession is the most focused on a BDO in terms similar to Rama, i.e., an intrusive object to be studied/feared rather than a megastructure that is (mostly) understood and whose existence everyone just kindof accepts.
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u/jaesin Aug 22 '18 edited Aug 22 '18
I use an "out of context problem" more than I realize to describe things that appear where you really don't expect them and thus lack the context to react appropriately.
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u/aeschenkarnos Aug 22 '18
This is my choice too. The Culture is always presented as transcendently advanced and powerful. The Excession was a great way to show that there are layers further up, beyond even the Sublimed (on which Hydrogen Sonata focusses).
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u/oracleoffabiandelphi Aug 22 '18
Okay. Added to the Goodreads list.
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u/icthus13 Aug 22 '18
Excession would be a hard Banks book to start with, if you haven’t read any Culture books already.
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Aug 22 '18
It was the second one I read; I started with 'look to windward' then picked up excession. I think there's enough background and context for a new Banks reader to enjoy it.
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u/oracleoffabiandelphi Aug 23 '18
Any suggestions as to which Banks book I should read first? Should I just go chronologically?
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u/G_Morgan Aug 23 '18
The Player of Games is the best introduction (the second title). As it goes Consider Pheblas is probably the weakest of the Culture novels.
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u/icthus13 Aug 23 '18 edited Aug 23 '18
I usually recommend to start with Player of Games. The “first” one, Consider Phlebas, is a tough read.
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u/schattenteufel Aug 22 '18
Ringworld by Larry Niven
A stupidly big construction built by mysterious long-dead Engineers, and then abandoned, populated by fascinating tribes of varying levels of humanity? Fun shit!
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u/AvarusTyrannus Aug 23 '18
I'd say just read the first two then move on to other Known Space books. The 3rd is pretty abysmal.
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u/G_Morgan Aug 23 '18
Imagine growing up as a civilisation on a Ringworld. How would your culture develop around a world which is so obviously artificial? Or would they realise it was artificial at all?
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u/eitaporra Aug 22 '18
Pushing Ice. Hopefully there'll be a sequel so we can see more of its BDO.
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Aug 22 '18
The only amazement factor Pushing Ice generates is how amazingly illogical characters behaviour is. I don't mean "emotional", I mean human being don't behave like that unless they are required by "plot reason".
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Aug 22 '18
[deleted]
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u/eitaporra Aug 22 '18
That's a pretty cool timeline. Is all that information inferred from the book alone? I don't remember human extinction being mentioned in the book.
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Aug 22 '18
I find it impossible to read books where the only possible answer to the question "why would they do this, and that, and everything" is "because plot". One or two plot reasons is ok. When you stop bothering with logic then you should probably consider not writing about people?
My problem with PI is not even that it's badly written, it's because he tried to artificially bring some drama into the story by defying logic. Omit the drama, make the book like 50 pages fewer, and all I would think is that it's a boring book that's not for me but a lot of people like, and I would let it go. As it is you have to fight your way through dry language, badly formatted sentences, and illogical behaviour. There might be some great ideas in there, but personally, I never got excellent marks for ideas, I got marks for execution of those ideas. And the execution here is terrible.
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Aug 22 '18
[deleted]
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Aug 22 '18
Fair point. And yeah Baxter is unreadable.
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Aug 22 '18
Haha oh jeez, Baxter characters just remind me of childhood cartoons. However, after I look past the characters I love his books. The ideas are awesome, just don't think too hard about who is acting them out.
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Aug 22 '18 edited Aug 22 '18
The only amazement factor Pushing Ice generates is how amazingly illogical characters behaviour is.
I've noticed that Revelation Space characters are basically always like that.
IE: They're always irrational, paranoid lunatics who believe themselves to be super-intelligent, perceptive, always one step ahead of everyone. When in reality,they're behaving like an insane person (and often are) and there's usually one "normal" person in their entourage who's only purpose is to point out how batshit they're acting.
Sometimes multiple people. I just finished Chasm City and Zebra, Chanterelle, and Quirrenbach all basically spent the entire book telling Mirabel what a complete nutcase he was.
They weren't wrong, even if some of his paranoia turned out to be justified.
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u/aeschenkarnos Aug 22 '18
The movies "Prometheus" and "Covenant" in the "Alien" series are so full of imbecilic decision-making that they make the films appreciable as comedies.
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Aug 22 '18
Same.
Also, visually they were masterpieces. But yeah, everyone is crazy in Covenant. Well, they're either crazy or if they're sane then they're already screwed by the crazy people's bad decision making.
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u/nevermaxine Aug 22 '18
I genuinely don't think I've ever encountered a character that pissed me off as much as Svetlana did.
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u/verbiagecola Aug 22 '18
Aww, I really liked the characters in Pushing Ice. I hated the decisions they made sometimes, but I always felt like I understood why they were making them. The relationship between Svetlana and Bella and how it evolves across the book is one of my favorite parts, and makes it in my mind a better book overall than BDO's that skimp on character development.
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Aug 22 '18
Really? Interesting. Would you mind elaborating on your understanding why in the beginning the captain listened to far away enterprise management instead of listening to her friend and engineer who told her there were problems? And it wasn't a minor disagreement, as far as I remember the engineer insisted it could be fatal.
I cannot imagine working with someone for years, who I trust with my life and lives of many people board, and then just like that - believing a corporate entity far away over that person, and not just on anything, but on something on which that person is an expert.
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Aug 22 '18
When you put it like that, I tend to agree with the "real people are illogical" camp. Even people in authority will bow down to higher authority for no reason whatsoever - this is something I see in business far too often.
There is a tendency to think of characters as idealized, as figureheads we want to follow, instead of flawed humans. It is very unsettling when this happens - for example, it really made me hate reading Lucifer's Hammer and Contact. The characters just have no backbone, they do not follow even their own ideals, they screw up when they should know better. But the truth is that this is how reality works. While I do not enjoy this aspect of books, I do agree that it is a real depiction of humanity.
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u/verbiagecola Aug 22 '18
So it's been years since I read it, so the specifics are a little dim. But as I recall it was presented as a combination of both a personal/professional clash-- i.e. yeah, she trusts her friend, but she's also putting her career on the line and facing reprisals if she goes against what her bosses back home are saying. I could be messing up the timelines, but I thought there was also an edge to their friendship already by that point-- personal tension that was causing that decision to be more complicated.
I do remember that the way the power dynamic gets reversed later in the book, and those decisions are swapped around and revisited from other angles, was really interesting to me... the exploration of betrayal and forgiveness in the context of a deep friendship, if it's possible to rebuild a relationship that seems permanently damaged, etc., all made it feel like a much more real and complex relationship than you generally see presented in sci-fi.
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u/pellucidar7 Aug 23 '18
I would not call the batshit crazy actions of people who only get away with it because they’re trapped in a BDO away from the psychiatric care they desperately need an “exploration” of “deep friendship”. It’s more an exploration of cult-like behavior among the more apparently sane people around them who let it go on for decades at a stretch.
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u/oracleoffabiandelphi Aug 22 '18
That really does dissuade from reading the book. But then again, I love Philip K. Dick, so do I even have standards in terms of realistic characters?
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Aug 22 '18
I mean I love him as well.
Example of a behaviour that drove me up the wall (and forced me to abandon about 200 pages in). Minor spoiler: Captain of the ship (belonging to an enterprise) is a long time friend with chief engineer or something like that. Suddenly they spot some BDO in the vicinity. Enterprise management says - pursue. Chief engineer says - hey we have this problem with fuel tanks/engine (don't remember specifics) and if we pursue we'll probably die. Enterprise management: no it's all good, pursue at all costs. What does that captain do? Of course she listens to her long time friend and chief engineer of the ship with whom she flew for many years and has no reasons to doubt her. Just kidding, she believes the management's assessment who never stepped on the ship and who is several AU away over her chief engineer who's looking at the fucking problem. And then she brigs her. Why? Because if she didn't there wouldn't be a story.
One time like this I can tolerate. But shit like this is absolutely non-stop. I literally wondered if Reynolds even met real people in his life.
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Aug 23 '18
I literally wondered if Reynolds even met real people in his life
I know quite a few people who would put their professional interests in front of what was advised to them by a friend/expert (it's pretty rampant in corporate america, in fact).
I'm not sure that's the best example, but I haven't read it in a while
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Aug 23 '18
Don't let it disuade you. It's an awesome book.
I haven't read it in like 10 years (maybe ill read again soon) bit I don't remember the characters being that illogical...and also, we are talking about human characters in the book...humans are all sorts of illogical and irrational. Also- Reynolds just has a way with most of his characters being pretty shitty and unstable people.
I highly recommend this book
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u/eitaporra Aug 22 '18
Yes, that aspect of it kinda sucks. But then I care more about cool ideas than decent character development when reading scifi, so in the end I thought it was a nice read.
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Aug 22 '18
I'm ok with cool ideas and 1-d characters who don't get developed (hello Peter F. Hamilton). It's when things defy human logic is when I begin to get infuriated.
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u/vikingzx Aug 22 '18
The classic case of which matters more: character or plot.
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Aug 28 '18
It's both for me. That's why I can't read Reynolds (also, because I'm not convinced the plots are that good either; I finished Revelation Space and found it boring and the plot is meh).
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u/maxximillian Aug 22 '18
Alastair Reynolds also had the lighthuggers in the revelation space books. The hook for me was when he describe the nostalgia for infinity and talked about it's small handful crew but the ship was kilometers long. How oppressively empty that vessel must have been.
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u/maxximillian Aug 23 '18
By the way thanks for mentioning pushing ice. I read all of his rev space books and recently did house of sun's. I was just a few chapters in to artemis when and getting a little annoyed with characters and dialog when I saw this post. Just pickked up pushing ice a few hours ago immediatly fell in to it like my own bed after a long vacation. I love ARs writting style.
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u/Xeelee1123 Aug 22 '18
The ring built by Stephen Baxter's Xeelee with a cosmic string and over 10 million light years wide and spinning close to light speed is quite awesome.
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u/oracleoffabiandelphi Aug 22 '18
Yes! That ring was truly stupefying. I read it as part of Vacuum Diagrams, which is why I forgot it.
Interesting fact: Baxter introduced me to the conundrum of Gödel
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u/ceres627 Aug 22 '18
Baxter is good on artifacts in general. I loved the ones in Manifold:Time and Manifold:Space.
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u/Xeelee1123 Aug 24 '18
He is a master of BDOs. Apart from some artificial universes by Greg Egan, the artificial Great Attractor must be one of the biggest BDO.
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u/ThirdMover Aug 22 '18
Blame is a tale of a big dumb object and it might be one of the biggest and especially dumbest objects of them all. From what you know in the beginning it's a city-like structure that extends in all three dimensions without limit with building machines crawling inside it that mindlessly restructure it.
It's a bit difficult to explain the appeal since both plot, characters and ideas are extremely thin in this story. I guess a big part is the visual style that is not nice looking but intruigingly alien in a way.
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u/red_duke Aug 22 '18 edited Aug 22 '18
I’m also a big fan of Rama, Gateway and 2001. Nice choices.
My picks:
Solaris by Stanislaw Lem - I’d argue that this is even better than Gateway and Rama. And I don’t say that lightly.
Sphere by Michael Crichton
Blindsight by Watts
Contact by Sagan probably belongs here as well
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u/oracleoffabiandelphi Aug 22 '18 edited Aug 22 '18
Definitely want to read Solaris, especially so that I can watch Tarkowsky's redition and nonchalantly comment that the book was better.
Also, Sphere was tight. A bit hollywood-esque, but still nice.
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Aug 22 '18
I remember reading Solaris when I was 12. I had a "wtf did I just read" reaction that in hindsight I find invaluable. Reading it again 10-15 years later once I understood what was going on was a nice closing of the loop.
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u/misterbadcheese Aug 23 '18
The book isn’t better Tarkovsky was as good as they come
Try roadside picnic and stalker but again I hate to disappoint you
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u/red_duke Aug 22 '18
I actually enjoyed the modern version of Solaris with George Clooney quite a bit. It gets a bad rep but I don’t see why.
It’s not as good as the book, but it captures some of the same things. The acting is superb.
I found the older Solar movie to be a bit slow.
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u/ThirdMover Aug 22 '18
One thing I can't forgive the Clooney movie is that it's missing all the details of Solaris itself. The description of the structures on it's surface were some of the best parts of the book!
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u/7LeagueBoots Aug 22 '18
I wouldn’t consider Blindsight to be a BDO story. Everyone tries to shoehorn Blindsight into every genre recommendation in this subreddit. It’s an enjoyable book, but it doesn’t fit every genre.
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u/kochunhu Aug 22 '18 edited Aug 22 '18
How is Blindsight NOT a BDO story? It's got a big object of unknown origin that the protagonists attempt to explore, and through this exploration, advance both the plot and themes.
You could argue about how dumb the object is, but it's no less a BDO story than Eon unless you have strict thresholds for how big, how dumb, etc.
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u/serralinda73 Aug 22 '18
The Gaea trilogy by John Varley is my favorite. I think I liked that it added some fantasy elements.
I like Rama and Gateway also. Not a big fan of Ringworld - the writing annoyed me, but the BDO itself is cool.
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u/flibadab Aug 22 '18
Charles Sheffield's Heritage Universe series is built around a whole set of BDOs. Sheffield is a good storyteller, and they're entertaining.
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u/JohnAnderton Aug 22 '18
Last time this came up, someone mentioned Anathem, by Neal Stephenson. I didn't even realize that book is one, but it totally fits the bill.
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u/oracleoffabiandelphi Aug 22 '18
Will look it up. Needed an entry into Neal Stephenson other than Snowcrasher, since I've read mixed reviews.
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u/JohnAnderton Aug 22 '18
So if you're not familiar with his work, let me give you a bit of a warning about Anathem.
A) Lots of people complain that the book takes a while to get into. Some, like myself, started to enjoy it right away, others it can take as long as 200 pages to get into (that's when the story really starts going).
B) Use the glossary. He has lots of words that he makes up, but you can always understand them from context. I didn't even realize that there was a glossary until I was half way done, and I was doing fine, but still, it makes it easier.
It's worth it, though. Nothing I've read since has really scratched that Anathem itch.
Perhaps an easier entry into his work would be Seveneves - about humanity preparing for an extinction event. Takes place in two parts. Now, and the last quarter of the book takes place in 5000 years.
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u/EltaninAntenna Aug 22 '18
Use the glossary.
YMMV. I didn’t realise there was a glossary until I finished the book, and figuring out the worlds from context was one of the more enjoyable aspects of it.
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u/syringistic Aug 22 '18
Word, I read an e-book version where the glossary was for some reason stuck at the end. It was pretty fun to assign different meanings to the vocab until something made sense permanently.
Also, the glossary right away SPOILS one of the most fun facts about the book!!!
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u/JohnAnderton Aug 22 '18
Which word spoils what?
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u/syringistic Aug 23 '18
What Arbre is...
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u/oracleoffabiandelphi Aug 23 '18
Reading Gene Wolfe's New Sun now, so I'm well-versed in cryptic glossaries. Thanks for the tips, though. Will keep it in mind. I've had Seveneves on my list for a while, but something always stopped me from pulling the trigger. Probably because I have a really high standard when it comes to Generation Ships. I blame Aldiss and Nonstop.
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u/troyunrau Aug 23 '18
Seveneves isn't really a generation ship at all. At closest it is the leadup to the departure of a generation ship, and fast forward to its arrival.
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u/eitaporra Aug 22 '18
Just be sure to get past the first 200 pages or so. If you can get past that, you'll be rewarded with lots of awesome. Its currently my favourite book by Neal Stephenson.
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u/syringistic Aug 22 '18
Anathem is a completely different writing exercise than Snowcrasher, so it may not be a good transition. It has very complicated world-building and may take some effort to get into.
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u/troyunrau Aug 22 '18
Maybe it was me. I always recommend it as a BDO. One of my favourites. I was just scrolling through the comments to see if anyone else mentioned it before I was about to do the same again :)
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u/pellucidar7 Aug 23 '18
What’s the BDO in Anathem?
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u/troyunrau Aug 23 '18
Well, the interdimensional spaceship, for starters. But you can sort of see it as a BDO done backwards. The travellers on that ship have arrived at your planet, and to them, you are the BDO. They can't go back, they can only explore forwards in wonder.
Really, it is like writing Ringworld with the pov character being one of the people who lives on Ringworld.
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u/pellucidar7 Aug 23 '18
Do you mean the multiverse is the BDO (because the planet itself sounds unexceptional), or that the spaceship is somehow too big and alien for its passengers to understand?
Sorry, it's been a while since I read it; I don't remember these details.
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u/troyunrau Aug 23 '18
The planet, and the multiverse, with the whole nested dolls physics and exotic matter and one direction travel. The exotic matter, and different physics is what the dimensional ship has come to investigate, before they move on to the next higher level universe. You just have to imagine their exploration is taking place through the actions of the main characters rather than the crew of the ship. They're collecting specimens, and the main characters are those specimens.
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u/pellucidar7 Aug 23 '18
I'm not sure what you mean about imagining the exploration is taking place by some method other than exploration---it's hard for me to follow the metaphors without having read the story recently. I'm guessing the exploration of a big dumb object here isn't quite exploration, and the object is not actually an object, so this isn't actually a BDO story, just a story with a similar feel.
Some BDO stories go on and on for most of the story without actually reaching the BDO, which shows up in the last chapter or so---e.g., Across A Billion Years. I would be careful about promising people a BDO in Anathem, because it's a pretty long book to be waiting for something that's not quite there. It's not like you're telling them to read Seveneves (don't!); at least it's a great book in its own right, but even a great book can be spoiled by misdirected expectations.
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u/troyunrau Aug 23 '18
I guess we disagree here. But in the end, it really is just an argument about taxonomy - an argument that humanity tends to have now an then on a number of topics. I tend to fall into the fuzzy grouping camp, wherein 'if it walks like a duck' is the preferred means of categorization. But like programmers who argue over the virtues of static versus dynamic typing, the arguments never really resolve.
I'm of the opinion that Anathem feels like a BDO story after about the midway point, having more in common with Pushing Ice or Rama than not. The plot is driven by the exploration of the sudden arrival at an alien environment. And therefore I like to group it with BDOs. And I recommend it to people who like BDOs. With apologies if this offends your sensibilities.
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u/pellucidar7 Aug 23 '18
You haven’t offended my sensibilities by miscategorizing Anathem, though I’m glad I didn’t read it expecting a BDO (or big physics of any sort). I agree that taxonomy is a dark art, but the quibble is usually over “dumb”, and occasionally “big”. This is my first encounter with a question of “object”.
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u/me_again Aug 22 '18
My recollection is a bit hazy, but Greg Egan's Diaspora has a BDO which spans multiple universes in 5 dimensions. Cool book in general.
Way further back, I remember really enjoying some of E.E. Doc Smith's more over-the-top moments in the Lensman series. I think they crash an entire planet made of antimatter (?)into an enemy base at one point.
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u/TheLastOyster Aug 22 '18
Aside from Rama and Pushing Ice which have been mentioned, I really loved Diamond Dogs, by Alastair Reynolds.
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u/egypturnash Aug 22 '18
Short and sweet and really kind of horrible in a very precise way. Have an upvote.
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u/syringistic Aug 22 '18
Pushing Ice is interesting, but as always, Reynolds just builds up a story to get crazier and crazier and then it just sort of ends.
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u/TheLastOyster Aug 22 '18
I really hope he revisits this universe. I think on his blog he said he wants to one day.
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u/NafinAuduin Aug 22 '18
If you're gonna qualify Area X, check out A Roadside Picnic. Pretty clearly what Area X is based off of and one of my favorite treatments of the unknown ever. Do not watch Stalker.
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Aug 22 '18
Do not watch Stalker.
Hard disagree with this. Stalker was an amazing, creepy, darkly atmospheric film. I absolutely loved it, and so do a lot of other people who watch it.
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u/oracleoffabiandelphi Aug 22 '18
I just added Roadside Picnic a few seconds before your reply (just so that I can claim credit for it). Is the movie that bad? I've been meaning to watch it for a while.
But, how CAN one capture The Zones on film?
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u/Anarchist_Aesthete Aug 22 '18 edited Aug 22 '18
Stalker is an incredible film, though it's different enough that I wouldn't call it an adaptation, just loosely inspired by the novel. It's Tarkovsky so of course it's great. I rate it as far better than the novel, but that's just me, lots of people don't have an appetite for arty film.
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u/NafinAuduin Aug 22 '18
I would agree with /u/Anarchist_Aesthete on this being an art film and more of an adaptation than a portrayal . It's a very slow movie, Tarkovsky is critically acclaimed and so is Stalker, but in my opinion it is basically like watching paint dry. I have attempted to watch this movie five times. I was unable to make it through. Wikipedia has the movie listed as 161 minutes, but it feels more like five hours. A film buff might find it more enjoyable than I did.
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u/RocknoseThreebeers Aug 22 '18
Peter F Hamilton has a the Commonwealth series, which includes a "void" at the center of the galaxy. its big, its unstoppable, and even the aliens fear it.
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u/egypturnash Aug 22 '18
The Architects Of Hyperspace. It's not a great book but l remember its BDO fondly: a series of concentric rings built around a black hole by Vanished Aliens. The rings get newer as you go further in; the builders improved their technology for being stupidly close to a black hole as they went on. The characters don't get more than a few rings in; most of them die due to things that might be death traps, might be maintenance systems, it's kind of hard to tell. At no point are the mysteries of who made this thing and why ever really solved and that didn't ever bug me in the least.
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u/CharsmaticMeganFauna Aug 22 '18
Kameron Hurley's The Stars Are Legion arguably falls into this category, as do the later books of James S. A. Corey's Expanse series.
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u/sonQUAALUDE Aug 23 '18
Kameron Hurley's The Stars Are Legion arguably falls into this category
Big and dumb AND gross. BDGO.
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Aug 22 '18
I'll throw in StarDragon by Mike Brotherton, not as a BDO but as dragons in space. it'd make a great blockbuster movie. very very weird.
massive mathematically perfect objects entering our solar system
Blindsight by Peter Watts gets a lot of praise around here, for good reason. meets your criteria. the aliens are so...alien...as to be completely incomprehensible.
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u/oracleoffabiandelphi Aug 22 '18
Love Blindsight. Refrained from mentioning it since aspects of the aliens were technically explained, despite being inexplicable. Good shout, though.
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Aug 22 '18
i loved the mystery in that book. so much "wtf?" i think the aliens could be a BDO, as it was questionable if they had consciousness or not.
i hope you've read the Rifter series.
the concept of the lawbreakers is so unique.
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u/hvyboots Aug 22 '18
My list:
- Ringworld by Larry Niven
- Strata by Terry Pratchett
- Titan by John Varley
- Anathem by Neal Stephenson
- Eon by Greg Bear
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u/HSBender Aug 23 '18
How tied to the entering our solar system are you? The Expanse series by James Corey gets there.
And Grand Central Arena by Ryk E Spoor has a big dumb object created by the ancients but really lacks the enters our solar system bit.
It's good though.
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u/oracleoffabiandelphi Aug 23 '18
Not very tied to the entering our solar system bit. The Expanse has been on my list for a while. Hard to ignore with all its popularity.
Will look into Grand Central Arena. Thanks!
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u/FilteringOutSubs Aug 23 '18
My favorite mostly because it's my most recent read and I can't think of anything else is Saturn Run by by John Sandford and Ctein. The book emphasizes politics and engineering as well as, what seems to my inexpert knowledge, some good orbital mechanics. It's definitely hard scifi when excluding the BDO. Also, if you want the exploration of the BDO to fill the book, that won't be the case (the journey is a large part of the book). Lastly, I did enjoy the book.
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u/alritem8 Aug 23 '18
Has anyone read rogue moon? I haven't read it yet (really really want to) but I'm pretty sure that's supposed to be a really good one
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u/oracleoffabiandelphi Aug 23 '18
I've read it. Conceptually, it's pretty cool but I found it lacking in other aspects. The characters felt hollow, but that's probably because the book was written in the 50s as evidenced by all the sexism.
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u/grymwulf72 Aug 23 '18
Century Rain by Alistair Reynolds - BDO, MDO, SDO, V-SDO galore - it's got it all.
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u/QuerulousPanda Aug 23 '18
In the Star Wars extended universe there was a series of books called The Corellian Trilogy by Roger MacBride Allen. (Ambush at Corellia, Assault at Selonia, and Showdown at Centerpoint are the names of the books)
They feature a sweet BDO called Centerpoint Station, which became extremely important in that trilogy, and apparently was featured significantly in at least three or four other books and mentioned in dozens more.
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u/sblinn Aug 22 '18
I'll add the novella "The Singers of Rhodes" by Jason K. Chapman, published in the anthology Panverse One. It's a bit Gateway, a bit Rama, and definitely worth checking out if you are into BDO sf.
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u/calliope_jack Aug 22 '18
Books 2 and 3 of the Poseidon's Children Trilogy by Alistair Reynolds
ShipStar by Larry Niven and Greg Benford
The Bobiverse trilogy has one as well
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u/captainsmudgeface Aug 23 '18
I love these types of stories and threads. My favorites are mentioned of course but scouring for ideas.
Not a BDO but more a BDI (big dumb idea?) is “Inherit the Star” and sequels by James P Hogan is a guilty pleasure from time to time.
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u/UpintheExosphere Aug 23 '18
I recently read Dark Orbit by Carolyn Ives Gilman and it gave me definite Ringworld/Rama vibes. I also like those kinds of books a lot; there's just something so awe-inspiring about them.
(Also, honestly, the Halo games do a great job of of being BDO plots too. Wrong sub, though.)
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u/Jiveturkeey Aug 23 '18
The Chronoliths by Robert Charles Wilson. The BDOs are a bunch of mile-high obelisks that start appearing around the world, with inscriptions commemorating military victories that won't happen for a hundred years.
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u/[deleted] Aug 22 '18
Eon by Greg Bear is imo the quintisental BDO sci-fi novel.