tome15's review against another edition
3.0
Bova, Ben, and Bill Pogue. The Trikon Deception. 1992 Tor, 2006.
Longtime near-future science fiction author Ben Bova and Skylab astronaut Bill Pogue would seem to be the dream team to write a novel about life on a space station. Sadly, it doesn’t quite work out. The problem is not so much with the science and technology—though that is not everything I could wish—but with the characters who seem to have come right off the set of a bad 1970s TV movie. There is gender, cultural, and racial stereotyping. The scientists are all jealous marionettes and the villains would be kicked out of a Batman comic for being too over-the-top. It is interesting to note that assembly of the International Space Station began in 1998, the year the novel is set, only six years after its publication. Yet the private station of the novel is several times the size of ISS and it lacks any participation by the Russians or the Chinese. There is one character with an Indian surname, but we are told he is more Brit than the Brits. As to science, the novel is a mixed bag. We learn almost nothing about the biological experiments that are the station’s main effort or about the Mars survival project that is running in one of the station’s habitats. Station design is well-described and reasonable, and we do learn about the relationship between station orientation and orbital stability. It is too bad that Pogue did not draw more on his own sociological experience on Skylab for the novel. In his mission, a unified team worked hard to get back on schedule despite health issues and nagging from Nasa that inspired them to stage the first space mutiny by shutting off the Nasa radio feed. Here, the people on board the station are all at odds with one another almost all the time. Bova has done better.
Longtime near-future science fiction author Ben Bova and Skylab astronaut Bill Pogue would seem to be the dream team to write a novel about life on a space station. Sadly, it doesn’t quite work out. The problem is not so much with the science and technology—though that is not everything I could wish—but with the characters who seem to have come right off the set of a bad 1970s TV movie. There is gender, cultural, and racial stereotyping. The scientists are all jealous marionettes and the villains would be kicked out of a Batman comic for being too over-the-top. It is interesting to note that assembly of the International Space Station began in 1998, the year the novel is set, only six years after its publication. Yet the private station of the novel is several times the size of ISS and it lacks any participation by the Russians or the Chinese. There is one character with an Indian surname, but we are told he is more Brit than the Brits. As to science, the novel is a mixed bag. We learn almost nothing about the biological experiments that are the station’s main effort or about the Mars survival project that is running in one of the station’s habitats. Station design is well-described and reasonable, and we do learn about the relationship between station orientation and orbital stability. It is too bad that Pogue did not draw more on his own sociological experience on Skylab for the novel. In his mission, a unified team worked hard to get back on schedule despite health issues and nagging from Nasa that inspired them to stage the first space mutiny by shutting off the Nasa radio feed. Here, the people on board the station are all at odds with one another almost all the time. Bova has done better.
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