Titan

This is book 1 of Varley's Gaea trilogy and it was nominated for both the Nebula and Hugo awards when it was published, but sadly didn't win (Dreamsnake by Vonda McIntyre won them both). This series is like comfort food for me and I've read it multiple times over the years.

It tells the story of a NASA mission to Saturn's moons uncovers an alien artifact that turns out to be a sentient torus habitat, that once they are brought inside (and not through the front door), they find an old world populated with lots of genetically odd flora and fauna, including gigantic living blimps, centaurs and flying creatures called angels. The crew find themselves altered/adapted to this new world in a way that allows them to interact with the show more inhabitants, an interesting twist on how to get around the fact that alien species wouldn't automatically speak English. (I'm looking at you Star Trek :) )

Its really an origin story and a road "movie" where the commander of the NASA ship (Rocky) makes it her mission to reach the hub of the world where she believes the god/maker/controller should live and find out what's going on. I really like the "world" that Varley creates, one that seems locked in plausible science and far fetched fantasy combined.

10/10

S: 4/25/18 - 5/6/18 (12 Days) show less

The first manned expedition to Saturn discovers a new moon, but closer examination reveals it to be a huge space station.

Wait. What?

All kidding aside, the station is in the shape of a Stanford torus, albeit a thousand times larger. Attempts to dock with the station go horribly wrong for Captain Cirocco Jones and her crew. Stranded on the station, they have no choice but to find who's in charge in hopes of finding a way back to Earth.

Titan was published in 1979 and is the first book in John Varley's Gaea trilogy. I didn't find out that this was a series until after I'd read the third book, Demon. During the 80s, I'd joined a science fiction book club that sold hardcovers for paperback prices. Demon was one of the books I bought along show more with Varley's standalone Millennium. I enjoyed both, but I didn't find my way back to this series until recently when I'd heard that Varley was having heart surgery. But I digress.

At first blush, Varley's space station comes across as another Big Dumb Object (BDO). I admit to being a sucker for this type of story. Ringworld, Rama, the Halo videogame, etc. In BDO stories, exploration of the BDO is often the story itself. Cirocco's search for her crew runs parallel to her exploration of this strange new, and manufactured, world. But Varley's BDO has more going on that just a bunch of humans poking around in a sterile alien vessel or the ruins of an advanced civilization. Fantastic alien creatures are met. The sentient ones have a unique culture and speak of Gaea, the entity in charge. And so, Cirocco sets off on a quest to find Gaea, whether Gaea is an alien, a committee, or computer.

Varley was one of the few men in sci-fi that wrote strong female protagonists in the 70s. Cirocco Jones is the first woman to command a NASA mission, and the pressure of it weighs on her, though I wish that it had been explored a bit further. Instead, Varley explores sexual freedom among his characters. Bearing in mind that this was written in the 70s, Varley imagines that on long space missions, the crew will likely pursue sexual relationships because that's what people do. Details are light, just enough to give the reader an idea of what's going on. Once on the space station, Varley takes things a step further, not just among the crew but the aliens as well. With regards to the crew, non-binary relationships are explored. Among the aliens, the titanides have multiple sex organs, so keeping their genders sorted out would probably require a spreadsheet.

Personal transformation is another theme explored by Varley. Each of the crew go through some sort of change once they're on the station. While some changes are benign, like suddenly knowing how to communicate with the various alien species, others are darker. Certain aspects of one's personality are magnified. A loner finds herself transformed into one of the alien species who lead a solitary, predatory existence. Another finds his toxic masculinity magnified, leading him to become a rapist (again details are fortunately kept brief). No one in the crew is untouched, and how they respond to adversity under these circumstances is itself a transformative event.

Titan is all about discovery: a new world to explore, new life forms to interact with, self-discovery among the characters. I'll admit that sometimes the story bogs down in the space station details. I felt that Varley had to satisfy the gearheads by throwing out specifications about the place to justify how and why it works. While the place is wondrous, sometimes the wonder wore off with the minutiae. And the quest itself seemed rather long with rather little to offer the reader between momentous encounters. But the payoff in the end was worth it. What Jones discovers about Gaea is far from expected for just a BDO.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4 because of the ending. show less

A spaceship gets, literally, swallowed whole by what the crew had thought was an undiscovered moon of Saturn. As it turns out, it's a planet-sized living creature with a penchant for Greek mythology.
Weird? Yeah, but surprisingly entertaining. There's a lot of time spent on describing the strange landscape, which I neither liked nor completely understood, but the plot is inventive and fun, and the characters are interesting, with a healthy supply of strong females who contain a refreshing amount of complexity.

Titan is a rather surprising and accomplished find among ANY SF collection. There's a lot of imagination and world-building stuffed in these pages. I'd say it's better than Farmer's Riverworld series, but since I hadn't read them all, I can't say for sure.

Here are the really cool bits: Varley literally builds a world with a vast intelligence playing god within it. I was reminded of Bear's Eon at first until I realized that Titan came first and the whole tunnel of alternate dimensions doesn't show in Titan, either. :)

BUT when it comes to sheer adventure and exploration and learning about the modified intelligent creatures within it, Titan wins the contest hands down. I was already hooked by the Saturn expedition even with the whole show more 70's sex focus (which got old pretty quick), but everything else surrounding it, even the cocaine addiction, did wonders for getting my interest high. Cirocco Jones is a rather interesting female captain. After things go to hell and the strangeness begins, I'm all behind the rest of the novel.

Except.

I'm of two minds about the end. One part of me was all nuts over the SF and Fantasy homages. I really got all giddy over the way Varley incorporated everything and the twist at the end were just so delicious that it turned this damn solid worldbuilding hard-SF novel into a popcorn read.

And the very same twist and incorporation of nerdiness kinda threw me for a loop.

I almost wanted more mystery and a much more complicated reveal rather than a gimmie *oh that's cool* crowdpleaser. There was already so much going on. It almost feels cheap.

And yet, I loved it and it makes me yearn for the next book! Oh, the conflict.

Even so, everything about this was pretty jaw-dropping and gorgeous and the whole idea is made all the more delicious because it's fully realized and focused. It has more reveals than Rama, more intelligent life than Eon, and enough nerdy entertainment to fill three books of lesser quality. :) show less

As I expected with “classic” science fiction, this stuff is just weird. A group of space explorers (including a set of incestuous test-tube twins) find a Dyson sphere that’s part living, part machine. Inside the sphere, our heroes find giant landscapes, geographical features akin to Avatar’s Pandora, and a war between centaurs and angels (their names for these alien beings).

It reminds me of “Jitterbug Perfume” and “The Demolished Man” — critically acclaimed and difficult to understand. And like those books, there’s a lot of unncessary sex in there. It’s really obvious, like the sex was put in there to sell the book.

I’ll be honest, I came here for the centaur sex. But there isn’t any. There’s naked centaurs show more who have both man junk and horse junk. But that takes the fun out of it. And that’s when the book is going off on weird tangents. You can tell this guy is a gardener, not an architect, but there’s nothing here to sell it.

There’s really no reason to read this book. I didn’t get what I wanted out of it and neither will you. It’s too ridiculous to be considered sci-fi and too scientific to be considered fantasy. I do not recommend it. show less

John Varley was a good example of a 'drug-induced' (imagination) Writer amongst many. None-the-less, he made a real good read of it. His sexual inputs were near-perfect in their amount and variety without overdoing it. Do I sense a early 'Ripley' (Alien)? His writing style definately emphasises the 'visual' aspect of all things - sometimes to the ridiculous.
I can say that these books are good to read if you need to learn how to not take Sci-Fi/Fantasy ...toooooo seriously.

Ripping good Sci Fi. How could you not like centaurs with three sets of genitalia? I was hooked instantly when the first scene is zero gravity sex. I was house ridden for a few days with a sinus infection and it made for perfect awake-at-2am reading. I thought Gaea was deliciously funny and original "God" and the fact that she stole all her ideas from American television really funny (I do have a few questions about electronic speed of light travel v.s. how far into the future things are) Some times it's better to just roll with the story though. The main character Rocky and her relationship with Gaby seemed like a riff on Frodo and Sam, but then again I think most Sci-Fi is a rif on that because it's so heavily grounded in archetypes. show more Which doesn't mean it doesn't make for great reading. I enjoyed the authors imagination in making up the world and characters. Genetically engineered incestuous twins? All in all a good read. show less