Bowl of Heaven: A Novel

Not only is it a draft, which I discuss in detail below, but it's only the first volume of an indeterminately long series. Nothing about the book description, nothing in the dust jacket flaps, nothing on other book selling sites (b&n, sfbc) suggests that this is anything but a complete story except the last page which proudly announces that volume two will appear soon. How is this not a blatant attempt to trick people into paying (let me guess how many volumes) three times?

Rant, part one, complete. On to the content.

BEWARE SPOILERS

This is not a finished product:

(1) On one page Tananareve is roughly picked up and thrown into a holding tank. One the very next page, she's with the other group on the other side of a diamond wall. Two drafts of the 'landing party is broken in two' event, perhaps?
(2) There are two different descriptions of the treatment of one person's serious injury which immediately follow each other. Said treatment describes *the* injury in two different ways and it is treated by two different people. Either the first person shoved the metal rod back into the guy for the next person to take out again, or this is two different drafts of the same event.
(3) At one point the captain leaves the bridge and a page or less latter leaves the bridge again. Did he get lost? Or is this two different drafts?
(4) Near the end of one chapter an offhand comment is made that communications from Earth stopped 100 years ago for no apparent reason. Yet a few chapters later we are treated to a page of discussion of the latest communication from Earth as if it were a routine event. So this *published version* hasen't even decided if the Earth has gone missing or not?
(5) It was previously established that ship has been in motion for approximately 80 years. How then can they have lost contact 100 years ago? Is one supposed to take the time since last contact to be *Earth* time?! For what possible reason? Have the authors even decided, at this early stage of story development, how far Glory is from Earth and how long it would take to get there?

Did anyone at any point along the line of production actually *read* this book before they pushed the industrial 'print' button? Did they send the wrong file to the printer?

Oh, that's right, I forgot, the entire point of the process was to sucker people out of cash (three times I suppose), not tell an entertaining and mind expanding story. Silly me.

I enjoyed the Ringworld books so I foolishly ignored the tepid reviews and read Bowl of Heaven. Might be better titled "Bowl of Purgatory" because the poor reader, after being drawn in by a fairly interesting beginning, finds himself wading through a swamp of meaningless action performed by unlikable characters. We are supposed to believe that these people are highly trained space travelers? A troupe of Webelos would do a better job of establishing contact with an alien civilization. These people spend pages and PAGES doing nothing but squabbling, running away, hunting and eating. After a few chapters you are rooting for Big Bird to just finish them off and put us out of our misery. Bowl World sounded promising but it is no where near as interesting as Ringworld. The aliens are derivative and bird races have been done much better elsewhere. And despite long monotonous descriptions the reader has a hard time visualizing the so-called wonders of Bowl World. The authors bend over backwards to get a dinosaur in there but the place is still as exciting as Sesame Place.

This book is a vivid example of how writers with formerly good reputations can become lazy, churn out utter dreck and yet be published. If an unknown author had written this any publisher would have thrown the manuscript in the trashcan and not even bothered with a form letter because he/she knew that such an unimaginative, untalented author had no chance of ever being published. It is mind boggling that a publisher is actually paying for a sequel. Benford and Niven are probably laughing their behinds off.

But, as a paid product? Simply inexcusable. I find it hard to believe that this book had an editor -- if it did, that person should be fired. It reads as though the publisher thought "oh these guys are a Known Entity, I'm sure whatever they come up with will be just fine!" and meanwhile the authors just sort of .. dialed it in. They had some cool ideas about space travel and thought the world needed more dyson sphere speculation and then sort of as an afterthought threw in some people for "narrative." The characters are 100% interchangeable - don't even bother trying to keep them straight, because it doesn't matter! They just rotate saying lines of dialoge. Meanwhile, the whole lack of a capable editor thing - it's like no one read this story before sending it off to print. It is FULL of inconsistencies and contradictions - often times only a paragraph apart! Person A is over here, oh nope just kidding they're over there now. A group is facing one way, then they're pointedly facing a different way (and oblivious to danger) and then they're suddenly actually in a different location all together! They've been traveling for 80 years? No wait, it's been centuries! The aliens analyze the communication chatter with earth. Wait, no contact from earth for over a hundred years? J/K message from earth incoming! It's really horrible once you start noticing, and then add in the bland characters .. through a sense of masochistic completionism (and also a bit of "whatever, it's short") I pressed onward only to find that it just sort of randomly stops after a while. It's not even like you'd expect - most of the major plotlines resolved, some sort of cliffhanger to bring you back for more - nope, it's pretty much right in the middle of some action, everyone is running around either trying to kill / not die, the spaceship is just idling for "months" like no big deal even though their supply margin is measured in a scale of days, the main alien is in some political hot water and kind of a screwup, a whole new subplot of revolutionaries were just introduced ... ok, good stopping point! Literally nothing is resolved. They don't even tell you what's wrong with the damn drive. There is no reason to read this book, at all. It's poorly written, poorly edited and doesn't even have the dignity to just end, already.

[[ASIN:0765328410 Bowl of Heaven]]
Caveat Emptor - Buyer Beware! Don't buy this book unless you are satisfied with reading about fifty pages inf which the launch of a cold-sleep starship is described to my heart's delightor if you want to read about some world building.
Forget the characters - they are two dimensional (if they are human) or incredibly prone to psychobabble about things like the Undermind if they are aliens.
Niven wrote the greatest SF I ever read (THE MOTE IN GOD'S EYE and Benford wrote many goodies - but this one is just not worth the money.

I starteed stumbling over discrepancies and made a list of them, but one of the reviewers did this in a perfect manner, calling the book a "draft" that there is no need for me to repeat them...

Sorry, I wish I could get my money back - and I have read probably more than a thousand SF books between 1950 and now and this - to me - is one of the worst. And coming from two giants of the field really hurts..

[Pages recovered from the journals of the Smythe-Blitherington Expidition.]

Page 1. We are off! Our trusty native guides, Niv'n and Benf'rd, know this territory very well. I know them of old. True, there is a younger generation who have been perhaps more active, more daring, in recent years. And yet, I cannot find it in my heart to abandon these faithful scouts who in my youth helped guide me into the SFNal Jungles.

Page 10. We are steadily working our way up the Backstory River. Along the way we see a number of infodumps--the spoor of Authoris inelegans. This portion of the trek is happily short, but in my impatience I could wish it shorter.

Page 42. We have reached our jumping-off point, where a well-traveled path awaits us.

Page 90. As anticipated, we draw near the Big Dumb Object. Thus far we have had good maps, derived from the cover blurb, and have made steady if unspectacular progress. The thorny underbrush of technospeak has perhaps slowed us down. With what eagerness do we espy the looming foothills of the Plot Range ahead of us, with the lofty peaks behind them!

Page 130. A bitter disappointment--the high mountains have proven to be a mirage! The hills we beheld with such joy were but an isolated, outlying cordillera. Behind them lies, not the Plot Range, but a wide expanse of descriptive text. Still, we shall press on, and not be disheartened, for our guides Niv'n and Benf'rd promise us that the Plots lie not far ahead.

Page 188. The Descriptive Veldt unrolls before us. The characters are uncooperative, refusing to take action or indeed to adopt any goals. We come across various trails that look like they may lead somewhere, yet each one peters out before long. The going is not unpleasant, nor even difficult, but I long to see the fabled Adventure Falls.

Page 227. The Veldt continues. Only some outcroppings of incident, and the occasional butte of an action scene, relieve the monotony. There are grumbles among the readers. I must display firmness. There are occasional Wells of Ideas, but they are not enough to sustain us, not for long. Should we turn back? Nay--never! Niv'n and Benf'rd remain determined to plow onward. Can I do less?

Page 255. The action scenes rise up more frequently. Is this--could it be--the Plots? I dare not get my hopes up.

Page 342. "What is our goal?" the characters ask each other. "Then--where do we go?" I fear I cannot answer them.

Page ??. Lost. Supplies running low. Many desertions. Too late to turn back. Must [unintelligible] more pages. Is this all there is? Surely there is more!

[End of Volume 1.]

The concept of the book was awesome. A half sphere world using the sun to propel itself across the universe that a crew of human explorers find. I've liked everything else that Niven has done and I expected a solid read here.

The book started off solid. The science was interesting and the characters leaving earth showed good potential development.

Then it went quickly downhill. Once they reached the bowl the aliens were boring and strangely inept. They constantly talk about the vastness of the land then fail to really take advantage of it with any type of interesting descriptions. It is supposedly home to many different alien species that you rarely see and when you do they are boring and glossed over. The human technology is strangely advanced over what it should be and they escape dangerous situations way too easily.

The pacing is crappy at the end and the author fails to paint a good picture of the world. The book also ended at a weird point. There was no cliff hanger or major scene or build up. It just ended. I'll definitely not be buying the next book in the series which I had very high hopes for.

Thanks to the other reviewers of this awful book. I thought I had become senile while reading a book by two of my favorite authors and wondering what was I missing! I only lost the time it took to read this pablum because I got my library to make the investment. Neither of us will buy the next (and succeeding?) volumes.

I bought the hardback version,based on the solid literary history of Niven and Benford and it gave me conniption fits until I realized what was actually going on: this is not a novel..it is a practical joke! The idea, it appears, is for readers to go over and over and over the book looking for the numerous errors, contradictions and incongruous behaviors. Just a few examples of the irrationality of this book begins when the crew starts off trying to chop open the aliens' airlock..while the aliens look on. How stupid can you get? And how rude! And in the first part of the book we are told that the alien Sil were marauding space pirates who attacked the Bowl, attempting to steal it's technology, then at the end of the book we learn that the Sil were abducted from their home planet while they were still in a primitive hunter/gatherer stage. Huh???
There are many many more incongruities..so many that it is inconceivable that authors of the caliber of Larry Niven and Gregory Benford could have made so many mistakes...unless it was deliberate. This is a giant practical joke, and since David Brin endorsed the book, he's in on the joke as well. THIS IS A CONSPIRACY!

I must say I had a very good long laugh over the "green cork tamales", as it reminded me of the time I had an encounter with that very dish...if not actual corks, then at least the consistency thereof.

If you love spending time tracking down scientific errors, misspellings, inconsistencies and blatant contradictions then this is surely the book for you. Enjoy!

Green Cork Tamales for everyone!

I was very, very disappointed. This book most certainly was not your typical Larry Niven creation. My suspicion is that the collaboration with Niven was done by Benford to allow a rip-off of the Ringworld concept: and a very poor one at that. I did not realize when purchasing this book that this was the first in a planned series; in fact, I don't think the description on Amazon ever states that. I read the first one hundred or so pages, and then got so bored that I jumped to the end to find out what was the big significance of the planet Glory. Well, that is when I learned that there are more volumes to come. I will not buy any others. The 2nd volume appears to be set entirly on this Ringworld rip-off, and if the next volume is similar to the first, it too will be a bore.

Sadly, this book is similarly disappointing as was another recent so-called Niven collaboration, but with Ed Lerner. That book, titled "Fate of Worlds" was very sub=par compaired to previous collaborations in the Ringworld series. Not Niven at all.

So, no more purchases of Lerner or Benford collaborations with Niven. I honestly believe that the name "Niven" is on the jackets only to lure-in the unsuspecting. I would have given "Bowl..." less than 1-star if a lower rating choice were offered.

These are two of my favorite science fiction authors, and I wonder what mad party gave rise to this collaboration and this book. It started off on an irritating note (to this scientifically conservative old physicist) on the premise that global warming had melted the polar ice caps and earth required terra-forming to return to its idyllic 20th century state.
And then everything went downhill. There are echoes of the characters and situations in Benford's "Across the Sea of Suns", but not as interesting... And the bowl gimmick is derivative of Niven's Ringworld, but bigger isn't better.
Another review citing "boring characters" hits the nail on the head.