Bowl of Heaven: A Novel

This book represents the last time I pay so much for a book, from someone I've never read before. The story, and I know this is my opinion, is boring. It's low in original sci fi content, and it's unsatisfying. It's a buncha future humans stranded in a jungle, flailing about, while super superior aliens study them, with typical faux-interesting oddball-alien terms thrown in. It's been done before. Steven Baxter has done humans in an alien jungle far more effectively than this. It have made it about 35% of the way into this book, and I've been bored with it since page 50. I can't bring myself to keep reading it; I really wish I could return it for a refund. Oh well. Win some, lose some.

Not a bad tale. Appears to be heavily influenced by Niven. (And I'm a big Niven fan having read almost everything he's written including collaborations) I recommend it to Benford and Niven fans alike. Not as descriptive as I'd like and at times a bit confusing as they switch between three main groups of characters. (You have to pay attention.) I AM curious to see where the series is going.

As with any Niven book, it's physics is solid and the engineering is great. Niven and Benford work so well together that the story is seamless. At times--because of the vastness of the vision--it's hard to follow the visuals. Even with that the book was riveting. Well worth the read.

I really have enjoyed Larry Niven's books. He has been inventive, desciptive and comprehensible. This co-author doesn't seem to have any new ideas. I had concerns about the similarities to Ring World and it's progeny. And I was right to be concerned. The only "new" item is the ornithological aspect that Niven hasn't done before. I can see why. Really difficult to make work. I thlink I'll wait in the future for books with ONLY Larry's name.

I keep putting this thing aside to read H.G. Wells, Edgar Rice Borroughs and H.P. Lovecraft because they are far more entertaining than Mr. Benford. I think I'm going to put this in storage for some future date.

The primary aliens were a bit cliched, (Slave owners with a belief that they are righteous rescuers of the savages?) but the sense of wonder and exploration was pretty gripping throughout the story. It felt like older Niven books, with more a diverse set of character voices.

This one of the weirdest books I've read. Larry Niven is a master of the science of this genre. Fully developed characters, a well-thought out plot. It's all there, like all his books, no matter who he writes with. Get this one and "Shipstar" and give them a read.

This is well worth the best-seller label. It harkens back to the formula for Ringworld, with another unbelievable artifact, and people caught up in the difficulties of dealing with an disorienting world and culture. Benford and Niven are a strong team.

I hated to put this book down at night, but I had to get to sleep. One thing is for sure I so looked forward to start reading the book the next day. I was drawn into the story from the getgo and as usual Larry Niven had me into the story so much I lost a lot of sleep because I just hated to stop reading it.

I have read both books in this series and i enjoyed them immensely. I only hope this series will continue. My only "complaint" is that the number of characters gets it a little complicated and I occasionally had to go back and figure out who was talking.

This is a fun book of an earth starship contact with an astronomic body with the surface area of 3 million earths. Great aliens, fun ideas about star travel, and deep time history of earth. Brought to a conclusion (or beginning) with the sequel "ShipStar'.

Don't be fooled, this isn't another Larry Niven masterpiece. It is edited very poorly (literally hundreds of passages like 'Fred stayed at the camp because he kept getting hurt. The explored for a few more miles inland and saw [something]. "Let's leave them alone and get out of here," Fred said.') There are numerous discrepancies in the tale, misuse of names, swapping characters back and forth between two geographically disparate groups, etc. Further, this is simply a derivative of Ringworld, and not worthy of the reference. I will not be buying the sequel.

Only good thing, if that, in this book is beginning. It is fairly lame all along, but beginning holds a promise of the story, which very quickly deteriorate. To make matters worse, this is not even a finished story, it ends abruptly, I guess with the idea you would buy another book. I quickly realized that even in 50s this story wouldn't fly, but I wanted to see how it will end only to be disappointed.

Spare yourself, read something else.

Oh and both writers should be beaten by hardcover edition of this book. This is disgrace not a book.

To say I was very disappointed in this book would be to engage in understatement. I've greatly enjoyed Niven's works in the past - Ringworld, The Mote In God's Eye and Lucifer's Hammer are some that immediately come to mind.

But if Niven had a hand in this book it's really hard to see.

This book rips people off by not telling them up front that it is volume one of who knows how many sequels. Larry Niven never ripped off his readers.

The errata for this book could go on for pages. Larry Niven would never have allowed an unedited manuscript to go to publication.

Look, I know it's hard to write a good, solid, entertaining book. And I know it's really hard to avoid borrowing from others' ideas. But I could swear there is a passage in this book that was taken almost verbatim from Heinlein's "Tunnel In The Sky" - the bit about seeing the tuft of the tail of some creature moving through tall grass - and the creature taking off at an angle when it smells the off-worlders. Larry Niven would never have copied the words of others - at least not intentionally.

The book contains not one new idea. Larry Niven has always been full of outrageous and astonishing new ideas.

Someone cadged the idea of living gas bags from Arthur C. Clarke or Vernor Vinge. Larry Niven would have never done so.

The idea of a Dyson hemisphere using a sun for propulsion is half baked at best. I'm trying to image what they are going to use for an astronomical topper in the sequels. A galaxy enclosed in a Dyson sphere? Maybe that would account for all the missing "dark matter" astrophysicists are always mumbling about. Or maybe our entire universe is inside a Dyson sphere that is being used to power God's toothbrush.

If anybody sees Larry Niven, please tell him his fans are still waiting to be amazed and entertained.

I really wanted to like this book, but I was apprehensive when I started to read this. Collaborations are always always a toss up. Here we have two of the masters of the big concept in SF, Larry Niven and Gregory Benford. Neither is particularly known as a great stylist, but their grand ideas and visions generally hold one's attention. However, all that I can say for Bowl of Heaven is that it is a cover version of the Ringworld series. A cool idea (Bowlworld), but the construction of the story, the writing, and the editing (actually, there doesn't appear to have been any editing) are all pedestrian at best. I am reminded of Kilgore Trout, the fictional character in several of Kurt Vonnegut's books. He also wrote SF - as Vonnegut described him, he had great ideas but was an awful writer. Unfortunately, the same holds for the two authors collaborating here.

I am a fan of both authors and their collaborations, but this is an example of when a joint product does not live up to any of the individual work. I have two major issues:

First, I was stopped dead in my reading by at least three inconsistencies in the plot, where events either were repeated, or events were revised without correcting all references to them.

Second, I purchased this book thinking it was a stand-alone story. Instead, it is apparently the first book of a trilogy. That is a major disappointment, as I am used to these "continuing stories" having each book be a stand-alone story. I had, instead, bought the first book of a serial. Whether or not this was clear to the purchaser (it was not to me), I expect a novel to have a beginning, middle and end. This had only a well-done beginning, an error-prone middle, and no end.

At least when Larry Niven wrote each volume of the Ringworld books it was jsut about complete, in and of itself. Not here! there is NO resolution at the end of this book, just cliffhangers to get youto buy the next volume (which may not even have been written yet!). Publisher and/or the store should have had the decency to tell us this fact - I would have waited until the saga was complete, before starting reading.

I guess I understand why this book stopped with so much left unresolved (more money in a series of books!),
After all it worked with Ringworld. But ... it is rather unsatisfying.
The premise is not as exciting to me as Ringworld. This "Dishworld" seems more contrived and difficult to visualize.
However, that said, I liked the characters much better.

I look forward to Dishworld part 2.

Good book, not great, but good. Maybe if there was an ending I would think differently. Started slow, but got more & more intriging. I was at the last 10 pages waiting for the big climax, and then.... Continues in book 2. WHAT,.... NO WAY! I would have waited until book two was released to read this one. Now I have to wait a year or two for the 2nd book. I don't think I'll still remember the book. It's OK, but not worth the wait just for a 1 or 2 page ending which should have occured in this book. How Disappointing.

Compared to the Ringworld series, Bowl of Heaven is a significant letdown. Lacking the touch of whimsy that makes Ringworld such a delightful read, Bowl of Heaven is a plodding, uninspiring read that, despite its attempt to surpass the Ringworld in sheer audacity, somehow fails to convey the same sense of grandeur.

The plot is bogged down by unnecessary minutia that lack sufficient development to be interesting in their own right. The engineering is impressive on paper, but misses the delightful, fantastical feel of Known Space tech, and as a result, fails to engage the reader. The alien biology and psychology, too, strive to differentiate themselves but come across as only marginally interesting at best (again, utterly failing to live up to Known Space standards).

The book strives to follow too many viewpoints, often leaving the reader confused as to which perspective is in use. The sense of time is off; the portion of the story starting after humans land on the Bowl allegedly covers months, but feels like mere days, or like we're missing out on significant and plot-critical events (or both). Information osmosis occurs without plausible explanation, with characters suddenly knowing things - or, worse, having changed their views on certain points - in ways that strain credulity. The "end" of the book is especially bad, as if it was originally written as a much longer volume and someone picked an arbitrary chapter break at which to cut it into two parts, with neither a satisfactory partial conclusion nor compelling cliffhanger.

Lastly, the major premise of the book is an evolutionist sermon that anyone critical of evolutionist dogma is going to find offensive; more so than in works that merely take evolutionism for granted. Even less forgivable, it parrots a number of evolutionist fallacies that have been thoroughly debunked by modern science, which comes across as either author rhetoric or poor science and further detracts from an already poor narrative.

First: A couple of comments about some of the reviews I've read about this book. One reviewer said it's boring. Clearly displaying a lack of imagination. Another said that there were too many technical terms and blamed this on the fact that one of the authors is a professor of physics. Three words: Science Fiction Genre. I would be disappointed if there wasn't some discussion involving technical and/or scientific terms. This from the girl who took one physics class in high school, sat in the last row and barely passed. The reviewer that complained about the poor grammar was spot on. I understand that grammar, punctuation and spelling are part of the mechanics of writing. There's nothing sexy about them. However, when I have to read a sentence four or five times (and it doesn't include any technical, scientific or unusual words) and I still don't understand it, there's a problem. Both authors have received awards. Surely the same rules of grammar, punctuation and spelling apply to the science fiction genre. I don't claim to be an expert in these areas, but I haven't had any books published either.

Moving on: What did I think of the story? A fast read, compelling, lots of description, and very imaginative. I understand one reviewer's complaint that it should have been a stand-alone book (as he/she didn't want to have to wait for the next book). However, I also understand that some stories grow too big to be housed in one volume.

One concern: There are two groups of humans on the bowl. At one point, the authors seem to have forgotten which group a particular character belongs to. I read the section numerous times. Either the authors simply made a mistake or there's some plot development that will become clear in the next book. I tend to believe that they made a mistake.

Conclusion: The story-telling outweighs the grammatical concerns. I look forward to the next book.

If you didn't think it could get any better than Ringworld, think again! There are a huge number of characters, artfully crafted with both alien and human personalities, an interstellar plot that spans billions of years, and hard-sci to fascinate physicists, astronomers, and especially biologists. The action moves fast, the writing is spare and scintillating. Highly recommended!

This book was choppy and needed polishing (scenes out of order, and needing more consistent description of the size of the Bowl), but I liked it and it stayed with me. Lots of big ideas to be fleshed out - looking forward to the next book in the series. Can't wait to see some good paintings or 3D renderings of this...might do it myself.

I loved Larry Niven.
But this book is just endless wandering in the forest or something. The opening was good, then they got there, and...
Heaven
Is a Place
A Place where nothing
Nothing ever happens
in 400 self-contradictory pages. Weird, very weird.

Go reread the Known Space canon instead, that sh*t totally rocked it!

I had to read it twice to really get it---maybe I'm just getting old :).

With the second reading, I was able to picture the bowl in all its majesty, kind of the way I've been able to picture Ringworld for as long as I can remember.

It is part one of a two-volume set, but as usual with anything Niven writes, there are clues allowing a careful reader to guess some of the resolutions of some of the mysteries (to be confirmed or debunked by Volume 2)

Larry and his collaborators have been my favorite SciFi writers since 1980. Larry is a masterful story teller and has made the known universe a fascinating place. The more books of his I have read, the more I want to read. I don't remember any that I would not recommend.

This is so foreign to what Larry Niven writes. It's essentially a story of what happens if you send a band of idiots to a first-contact. There aren't any likable characters. I'm still slogging through it, but it's no fun.

I'm not usually a sci-fi reader but this book was recommended by an aerospace engineer friend and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I particularly enjoyed the Bird People's perception of human thought and behavior and how the authors constructed the alien society and the world they live in.

I look forward to reading the sequel.

Niven is having terrible results with collaborations of late. While the concept of the book is a wonderful giant conceptual hard science exercise in speculation, and the opening chapters serve as an excellent teaser for a fine story -- it all goes to crap as soon as the landing party goes down. Nothing interesting happens in the story for nearly 3/4 of the entire book, and we end with a non-cliffhanger and a note that another book is coming next year.

Wow, what an amazing imagination! A planetary system sized ship! Millions of earths in land area!

The author not only has excellent ideas about technology and other beings, but does a wonderful job of human interactions. Not so much that the story bogs down in useless conversations, but enough to well define personalities and relationships.

As I got near the end of the book, I could not imagine how the story could possible be wrapped up in a short time. So I was not too surprised when the next book in the series was announced. I can't wait!!

A great read! Very hard to go to bed without finishing!

Why didn't the description mention this! This explains why the story was going so slowly, why the aliens weren't explained to the readers (me) satisfaction!

Grrrr, yeah, I'll read the rest ... eventualy

... and did not bother to read the reviews till AFTER I plunked down my hard earned cash for this mistake. I hope you, dear readers, were smarter than I. I only came here after I ran into the problems listed elsewhere in other reviews (character in two places, poor character development, disjointed story-telling...), this appears to be a second draft and NOT the final book.

I clicked buy because I have learned to trust the name Niven, but after this dreck no longer.

Cringe-inducingly bad writing, contradicts itself from one page to the next, no well-developed characters -- I wanted to learn more about the world, but couldn't take it any more and had to quit reading 1/4 of the way through.

I've read less than half of this horrible book & I'll never finish, not that big of a masochist. I pre-ordered this based on the authors, defintely a mistake.
Another mistake, believing editorial reviews by same genre authors, that's a truly incestous relationship.
The only good sci-fi I've read recently has been the cheap kindle books. Two best there, "Hegemony" & "Alarm of War".

I bought this book because it had Niven's name on it. It's boring. It has elements of Ringworld & A world out of time in it, but they are very minimal. Its almost as if it was mostly written by a physics professor.. dry, boring, and pays too much attention to things that don't need attention for a story (and yet somehow it manages to miss quite a bit of the physics involved.) Great for a lecture maybe, but SUCKS for a story. Particularly SUCKS for a Niven story. My recommendation? Skip this one if you are a Niven fan, you will find no satisfaction in this one. It's almost gotta be a contract book, did it for the check.. Skip this one. Larry.. How could you?

I have read Larry Niven for decades and always have been highly entertained. I read this and all I could think was WTF? This is a worthless story with unlikable characters. Why all the obsession with casual sex? Very strange, that, after all, people have been doing that for ages. Elephant sized birds? Really? And all that crap with the birdwatcher lore embedded in it, i.e. bird communications with feather fans, etc. Crapola!

The basic idea is not bad. It doesn't seem like the 2 authors really bothered to read each others work. A lot of the details just don't add up. The characters are weak. The whole thing seems rushed. A pity

Disappointing body of work from two great authors. I fully expected this to be a stand alone novel, no mention was made that this was book one of who knows how many. The editing was terrible to non existent.

Enjoyed the book immensely and look forward to reading the next installment / Have read both Binford and Niven before.

It brings Ringworld to the 21 st century with an interesting twist.

Anyone with a flaire for Si-Fi should enjoy this read.

The authors got way to deep into future science and details. The book could have been shorter, but, some of the long descriptions of things that were hard to understand to start. The are still hard to understand. They chacters were good to a point, the folk of the Bowl were a little hard to understand.

Have really liked this author in the past, need to make the story simpler to really enjoy.
CCG

i've been a Larry Niven fan for quite awhile, this book is co-authored by Gregory Benford & it is just not up to par with Niven's best. Started strong then bogged down big time by the middle & i couldn't bring myself to invest the time to finish it even tho i'd spent the money for a hard cover copy.

An excellent read. Niven's always been one of my favorite author's and while I haven't read much of Benford, I'll be sure to fix that after reading this work.

Bowl of Heaven is a hard sci-fi delight that reminds me of a cross between Ring World and some of Alastair Reynolds works. While a pretty fast read, it takes a bit of work to get inside the aliens heads; which is totally as it should be. My only criticism is that the end of the text sneak's up quickly when reading on the Kindle. Still, it left me anxiously waiting for the next volume.

Highly recommended.

Benford and Niven have been writing techno-scifi for years and do a damn good job of it. Although they sometimes get a little carried away with their technical explanations, you can always be assured the "science" in their scifi always accords with the universal laws of physics.

The story: Earth is overpopulated and polluted. A new planet has been found that seems able to support human life and shows no signs of already being inhabited by intelligent beings. A slower-than-light (STL) starship, with most of the crew either in deep sleep mode for the whole trip, or being awakened periodically for short periods to perform maintenance, is headed for the new star when it encounters a massive object in deep space, heading in what appears to be the same direction. The object turns out to be a very strange starship inhabited by intelligent, bird-like creatures.

When the Earth humans manage to board the strange ship half of the landing crew is immediately captured while the other half manage to stumble around getting into trouble and making big messes. The bird-masters of the ship find the humans as strange and scary as the humans do the birds.

It's an excellently written story. My only complaint is that it's just the first installment in a longer story. Since this isn't mentioned anywhere on the book jacket, from the reader's perspective, just as the story is really getting good, it ends!

I'm anxiously awaiting the second book.

Idea was very interesting. Felt the story line of the aliens on the bowl going after the humans was a bit to much of leap for me. I would think a race as old as these aliens would be a lot more curious and friendly, like this culture appears to be. The story is interesting.

I enjoyed this novel. It is the 1st part of a series, so be warned, you will be wanting more. The plot is original, the character development relatively good. The book ends with many loose ends waiting to be resolved in the next installment (or two). It will be worth purchasing those subsequent volumes to find out how it all wraps up.

This is not a novel for those who wish to have everything spelled out and put directly in front of them. It is sort of ring world-y, but not really. It is too early to tell where this series is going to go. We should be able to tell how good this book is by looking back from the next volumes.

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..

To start off im a huge fan of Ringworld so i was a bit fearful this book was going to be a quick knock off / cash grab by the author. I wish. This book gave me the impression it was made up as they went along. Boring characters and boring book. If your a Niven fan save your good view of him by skipping this book.

I've been a fan of Benford and Niven for many years and having read their new collaboration, I feel optimistic about the next book in the series.

Make no mistake, this is no Ringworld clone. I thoroughly enjoyed it an am looking forward to the next book in the series.

Once again, I find myself at odds with many the store reviewers of a hard-science science fiction tale. I wasn't disappointed in anything, except maybe the global-warming hype which I thought Niven, for one, was beyond. (I guess Benson isn't.) I was entertained by most of it, especially the major characters, the semi-Ringworld setting, and the several alien biologies and cultures. It was especially amusing discovering how the apparently over-matched humans proved formidable opponents of the smug aliens. My only regret is that I must now wait months for the sequel. But if it's even half as good as this book, it will have been worth the wait.

Both of these writers are excellent solo or in other cooperative creations! Together they really click. This is the best book I've read in a long time. Trust Benford to get the science right and Larry to concoct great aliens! I am looking forward to the sequel (s)? !

I've always loved both these writers. The scenario and world they've created is fantastic, yet believable. If you like hard science fiction with imagination, get this book. Be prepared to be jonesing for the next books though!

Larry Niven has often worked in collaboration, and it's good to see him working at all, given his age. Not many writers born in 1938 are still kicking out science fiction. Gregory Benford might have manned the laboring oar but, having been born in 1941, he's not much younger. Ignoring the trendiness of modern sf, Benford and Niven have crafted an old-fashioned story of space exploration and first contact. Unfortunately, while I have enjoyed much of Niven's writing and at least some of Benford's over the years, Bowl of Heaven does not match the best work of either author.

Bowl of Heaven begins as a promising (albeit conventional) "scientists journey to a new world" story. In the prolog, they are preparing to leave on their newly tested starship. As the novel begins, Cliff Kammash is awakened from an eight decade sleep, well before the ship is scheduled to reach the planet they have named Glory. Cliff, a biologist, thinks it odd that he has been awakened to opine about an unusual star the duty crew have observed -- odd until he realizes that the star is partially surrounded by a hemisphere, an object that was clearly manufactured. For reasons they can't explain, their ship has been losing velocity, and the knowledge that they aren't going to make it to Glory alive prompts them to investigate the bowl-covered star. The bowl is actually a vast (and literal) starship, using the star as its source of propulsion. Once they are inside the bowl, Cliff and his buddies discover an ecosystem the size of the inner solar system.

The plot then follows two branches as half the landing crew is captured by feathered aliens while the other half escapes. Both branches morph into wilderness survival tales as the two groups investigate the planet. For the most part, the story is bland and uninspired. Slightly more interesting are the underlying questions that the humans must confront: what is the origin of the bowl, where did it find its star, where is it going and why? One of the groups improbably stumbles upon a museum that provides helpful clues, furthering my impression that life inside the bowl is just a little too easy for our friends from Earth, a flaw that hurts the story's credibility. Eventually the humans discover what the reader learns much earlier: other aliens from other worlds are trapped in the bowl, in much the same predicament. The question then becomes: Why are the Big Birds who seem to be in charge rounding up and "assimilating" intelligent life forms from other planets? It is rather frustrating that all of those questions remain unanswered.

The human characters lack distinctive personalities -- or any personalities. They are as bland as the story. They engage in random quarrels about points of science that have precious little to do with their survival, and a couple of them engage in hanky-panky, but for the most part the characters are interchangeably dull.

Bowl of Heaven works best when the focus shifts from the humans to the aliens. The not-very-alien Big Bird we encounter most often is Memor, who is charged first with understanding the humans and then with destroying them. The most interesting Bird chapters concern the aliens' attempt to understand the humans -- their speculation, for instance, about the evolutionary significance of facial gestures and human anatomy -- and the political consequences of Memor's repeated failures to bring them under control. A modest payoff comes when the reader meets a not-so-assimilated species that actually seems alien -- the politics of revolution comes into play -- but that doesn't happen until the novel's final chapters: too little and too late to redeem an uninspired plot.

The story hearkens back to an earlier, simpler era of science fiction in its conviction that humans, while not as technologically advanced as aliens, are clever and scrappy and so have the capacity to outwit their superior foes. Of course, it helps that the Big Birds are shockingly inept in their confrontations with humans.

Most disappointing is that the story ends abruptly -- not really a cliffhanger but leaving everything unresolved -- as the reader is encouraged to pick up volume two (Shipstar) to see what happens next. I'm sufficiently indifferent that I might not, but mildly curious about the unanswered questions noted above so maybe I will.

True, there are discrepancies with things a character said/does. For me though these did not tarnish the quality of the story at all. Some readers did not like/enjoy the characters. Once more a difference of opinion but I loved them. If you are a fan of not just Niven but of benford as well you should give this book a chance. The universe they created (including characters) is grand and beautiful. I am left waiting impatiently for the sequel/second volume. In my closing sentence I would just say once more that if you like me are a fan of these two I would forget any (my own included) review and try this book.

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.

This is not a Ringworld novel. I'm struggling to finish this. Imagine a colossal rock bowl the size of a "small solar system" (author's description). The inhabitants live on the vertical edge like in Ringworld. But the thickness of the edge, despite being maybe a 100000 km across is mere meters. Large aircraft are not allowed because they might "punch thru to vacuum". This reference is made several times. Yet, the "Birds" are unconcerned that the human's spaceship Sunseeker could damage the bowl because their ship is so small. I think Sunseeker is several hundred times larger than any aircraft and thousands of times more massive. Things just don't make sense. The story reminds me of Matthew Reilly's style, one long endless chase cover to cover. Also of Kevin Anderson's Superman, which contained so many unimportant details from every Superman comic ever written just to add volume but no substance. I will finish this book as I only have another 40 or so pages, but volume 2, not a chance.

Description: An expedition sets off from Earth to explore a distant star system and to populate a (hopefully) Earth-like plant. The journey will take many decades and most of the travelers are put into a deep sleep while skeleton crews take it in turn to pilot the starship. But after just eighty years Cliff Kammash, one of the lead biologists, is awoken early.

It soon becomes apparent to Cliff that there is a problem, but the problem pales beside the discovery of an unimaginably huge artifact that is the size of a solar system. Indeed, the bowl-shaped object seems to encompass a star and have a surface area that is millions of times that of earth. It also seems to heading towards the same star system targeted by the humans.

With the starship inexplicably losing velocity and struggling to reach its goal, the crew decide to investigate the bowl, hoping to replenish supplies that are being depleted too quickly. More of the crew are awakened and a landing party is sent down to the surface of the bowl. There they discover strange bird-like aliens, but half of the party are captured. The two separated groups then struggle to explore and understand the strange world, unsure of how they can ever get back to their own ship.

John’s thoughts: Oh dear. One of my pet hates is a book that masquerades as a standalone novel but in reality is only the first episode in a series – with no satisfactory conclusion to any of the plot threads. There are ways of creating a series that still provide a satisfying experience to someone who just wants to read one of the books, but no attempt is made to do that in Bowl of Heaven. Worse still, nowhere on the jacket or book description are you made aware that this is just the first in the series. This is the worst example of my pet hate that I have come across in a long time. Very frustrating.

Will I be tempted to seek out the next in the series? No. There are some interesting ideas in the book and I like some of the interaction between the different species, but the story drags on too much and lacks pace - I had a hard time reading more than a dozen pages at a time. It doesn’t help that the characters are all a bit two dimensional and some of the interplay between them just doesn’t feel plausible. It also doesn’t help that there is some weird editing in the book. There were at least three obvious discontinuities or contradictions in the story.

I can only rate this book 2 stars; and the only people I could recommend it to are die-hard fanatical follower of Benford or Niven who are prepared for the long haul of a series and can get beyond some of the shortcomings of this read.

I happened to pick this up in an airport bookshop. Benford and Niven, 2 of my favourite authors. Put them together and you get.... well, a lot less than the sum of the parts. The first couple of chapters start out promisingly enough. A decent premise, a couple of mysteries to be explored. Then it goes off the road and into the ditch. The "cream of humanity" are so stupid it's not credible. They make no real attempt to contact the advanced species creators of the "bowl" of the title. Instead they break in, then basically go on a rampage of vandalism and murder. A boring, endless, and pointless one at that. It just goes on and on. The only remaining mystery is why the aliens in charge are so inept they can't find and wipe them out.

It seems this book is mainly a setup for the sequel which, frankly, I have no interest in reading after this.

More like the Bowl of Toilet.

Unlike some other reviewers, I am not influenced by the Ringworld saga since I have heard of but, have not read any of it. I have read the entire Rama (Arthur C. Clarke) series which is of the same ilk. That said, I had no subjective expectations for the Bowl. It was easy to foresee a sequel at about one third into the book because there was too much missing on character development and not enough book left to accommodate it.

Generally I liked it and must read the sequel to realize the outcome. Obviously this first iteration is a deliberate effort to sell books but, an unnecessary tactic when the story is good and deserves more storytelling. Two volumes or twelve volumes...just tell a good story. I believe that most readers don't need to be so blatantly set up for a sequel (it's insulting).

To all Science Fiction Writer's: Please humor the weak minded science fiction reader. We at least have enough intelligence to pick up your stuff and read it.

This work as a whole is a bit disjointed and schizophrenic. (Rightfully so with Benson and Niven taking turns). There is an unhappy marriage among concepts such as environment, evolution, genetics and artificially contrived features of the Bowl or its creatures. The authors have failed to weave 'science fiction sense' among these complex themes into a harmonious story that allows the reader to imagine the possibilities. It's one thing to have a 5000 piece jig-saw puzzle to solve but made worse when pieces are missing.
However, the point of view is perfect for this story and allows the reader to participate.

I have never given a one-star review. In the past I've read and enjoyed Gregory Benford. This book, however defies description without using frustrating expletives.
A team of explorers set off on a multi-century journey to a distant star and planet. This is a good beginning.
The spacecraft, at some point in the journey (centuries I guess) come upon a planet/spacecraft/or something that is so large that it is propelled by its own star. A number of the travelers are awakened from suspended animation and take a craft down to the "thing".
The team is immediately split into two group upon landing and, for the next 400 pages" do essentially the same things, over and over and over again. They walk, eat, sleep. Walk some more. Eat some more and sleep some more. Essentially, nothing happens for hundreds of pages, no conflict, no action. Just page after page of boring talk and observations of the same things.
Finally around page 400, one of the groups encounters a rebel band. Gets involved in a short, poorly described battle with the masters of the "thing", the just when things begin to look up, I flip the page and read that "Volume two is forthcoming." No resolution of the fate of the other party. No resolution of anything. Just a promise of another $16.00, 400 page sleeper. I was speechless when I read this. It is one of the poorest ending of a multi part novel I've ever seen.
Gregory Benford is a better writer than this. I can only guess that he did little or no writing and just used his representation of sell books. Very disappointing.

Sigh. The parts that are in the authors' areas of expertise are quite neat and interesting. The mechanics of the Bowl are original an imaginative. The way that the Bowl is set up to be managed is as well.

But... the story is rather repetitive, which the authors telling you the same thing multiple times. The authors also seem to have forgotten what the characters learned on several occasions, as well.

There is lot of speculation on how things evolved in the book, but unfortunately, not only is that speculation beside the point, but in many cases, it does not reflect current thinking by evolutionary biologists. The books would have been much better without this... and shorter.

The authors also state that evidence of a technic civilization over 100 million years ago would be wiped out by subduction. Uh, basic geology disagrees with that. Not all tectonic plates will subduct. Just think about it ()minor spoiler): if all tectonic plates subducted, then we would not have any fossils of dinosaurs or anything before them... but we do. and lots of fossils.... even going back to the pre-cambrian. Some of those fossils are amazingly detailed, allowing us to see the impression of the skin of animals.

Given that Gregory Benford is a university professor, i would have expected a LOT better; e.g., if he just attended some introductory courses at the University where he works, he would not have made so many BASIC mistakes.

Do not waste your time. The idea is OK, but the execution is terrible. The characters are poorly written and simplistic. The descriptions of the location and aliens are poorly written and hard to follow - after hundreds of pages I still wasn't sure what the aliens actually look like. Even the descriptions of the bowl, which one would think would be the centerpiece of the book, are confusing and hard to follow. Everything is made worse by needless repetition.

Most of the book is the story of two groups of humans running around on the bowl, and most of it is actually quite silly. Aliens with advanced technology can maintain the bowl, but somehow they aren't able to keep track of a few humans running around on foot.

There are glaring errors in the editing - e.g. characters leave a room and then leave it again, or the communication with earth stopped years ago and then a few pages later there are messages as if it never stopped. Some characters are imprisoned and complain of being tracked by drones, but a few pages later they escape and there are no drones in sight.

This is not Niven on his own, or with Pournelle, or with Barnes. It's Niven and Benford- characters are sober, intelligent, upper middle class professionals. Hard science, far-out speculation, plenty of action, lots of clever lines in the dialog.

Wonder how many bad reviews come from today's SFWA weasels.

The main story itself is bland. Humans trapped on a solar system sized bowl/spaceship/planet/thing filled with different life forms. Ringworld redone. Blah, blah blah. The snippets that haunted me dealt with the main alien life form, the bird folk. The authors made attempts now and then to delve into the social and hierarchal structures of their society, but always stopped before those pictures became clear. I felt frustrated each time this happened because, had those scenes been properly fleshed out, they would have made the whole novel worthwhile.

I do need to add one complaint that always irritates me every time it happens. On the front cover, the back cover, the inside flap, or any of the front pages showing the copyrights, books by the authors, title page, or cast of characters, was any mention made that this novel is part one. I did not discover there is a sequel until the last page where it says end of volume one. Why do they hide that fact? It always gets me angry.

Nowhere (except in reviews) is there a hint that this book is part one of a multipart story, with the number of parts not determined. Mind you, we're not talking about multiple books set in the same universe (e.g., Ringworld, Ringworld Engineers, etc.). Not a single plot line is brought to any kind of a conclusion in this first book of the story. Perhaps the authors (or the publisher) thought the story was so good that it would entice people to buy the future parts ("volumes") to find out how it ends, but it's not THAT engaging.

I normally like these authors (and I have all the old Niven books), but I wish I had read the reviews before reading this one, which I received as a gift.

I rarely read reviews of a book before I read the book. Maybe I wouldn't have picked this up if I had. I only read a few of the reviews before writing this so hopefully I won't be too repetitious. If you pick this up because you're a big Larry Niven fan (and who isn't/) you're going to be disappointed.

Cliff and Beth are among a group of people sent out from Earth to colonize a relatively nearby star where an earth-like plant has been detected. Most of the ship's complement is put into deep sleep for the journey. Cliff is awoken by the duty crew some 80 years into the journey because their ship is approaching some strange object in space. It's a giant bowl rotating around a star. On the inside of the bowl is an enormous living space. Hey, It's Ringworld turned into a bowl!

I started having problems with the book early on. I had a hard time grasping what this bowl/star looked like from the description. It took pages for me to even figure out from which direction they were approaching it. Then the time/distance to earth was very confusing. They left Earth apparently 80 years ago. The various characters keep remembering stuff from Earth that happened centuries ago. I'm too lazy to look it up but I'm pretty sure that relativistic effects become important at the 0.95 light speed they were traveling at, but this is never mentioned. Every time one of the characters remembered something from Earth, that subjectively only happened to them months ago, they would stop and thing, oh gosh, that was centuries ago. Every time.

The ship's crew decide to go into orbit around the star for plausible reasons but the maneuvering required was completely baffling to me. They figure out that there is some sort of mostly transparent covering keeping the atmosphere in the bowl. They decide to go down to the surface and enter through an opening they found in the cover. But instead the fly right into a structure that extends through the surface of the covering. Much confusion ensues.

The party gets split up once on the surface. One group, led by Cliff manages to escape the resident aliens (who apparently look like Big Bird from Sesame Street) while the other, led by Beth gets captured. Beth and crew eventually escape, but they have no idea where Cliff and company are. The same time/distance problems that open the book occur again. It was impossible to figure out how long they were on the surface or how far apart the two parties were.

I had lots of problems with this book but I managed to finish it. About halfway through I started to think that this was going to be the first book of a series. The closer I got to the end the more I was sure of this as the story was moving too slowly to be wrapped up in the pages left. And sure enough, stay tuned for Volume 2. I'm not sure I'm interested enough to read more.

Sure there is interesting stuff here. The concept of this enormous bowl-like structure with immense living space is interesting, but, you know, Ringworld. The place is full of interesting plant and animal life as apparently the Big Birds collect species from whatever planet they pass. The Big Birds are also slavers as any intelligent species they pick up are genetically altered to serve them.

But the characters aren't too interesting. The humans are mostly one-dimensional who seemed to be stunned by what has happened to them. As another reviewer said, all the do is run and eat.

We get to meet one alien, Memor, the Big Bird charged with understanding the captured humans and then charged with killing them after they escape. She's sort of interesting but, really, it's hard to take giant alien birds seriously, no matter how smart they are.

On the back of the dustjacket are photos of Benford and Niven. They both look older... In 1987-8, I brought them to speak separately at talks at Caltech, for the student union. They seem to have aged visibly. Inevitable I suppose.

Ah, as for this book, it is certainly not Footfall or Lucifer's Hammer. In his prime, Niven co-wrote with Pournelle some fantastic science fiction that was also great action filled plots. Benford in his own books has done solid plot speculation, though I would never characterise those as tense drama. His books tend to be quiet reads, like McDevitt's works. The attraction of Benford is that the characters tend to be scientists [which is his own background], and their behaviours are professionally authentic. Which however will not make gripping reads, since scientists can be quite boring.

Given this, the current book reads like it was predominantly written by Benford. There are inevitable comparisons with Ringworld, and those done by reviewers here are uniformly negative on Bowl. Others have adequately parsed the plot. But I do have to say that some of those remarks posted are unfair. Like one by a reviewer who cited "bigger than the orbit of Mercury" and "it covered a perimeter about the size of Earth's orbit". He said "which is it?", which misses the point. The 2 quotes from the book are consistent, and are perfectly valid as literary narrative. You as author do not have to use the same description in different parts of a novel. You are allowed and probably expected by some readers to vary the description.

The reviewer goes on in this vein, where he tries to impose some strict consistency constraint that is non existent in literature. He cites a phrase about the Bowl rotating "every nine days" and later "in about ten days". Again, the phrases do not contradict each other. He cites this as evidence of flaws, yet I see this as deliberate variations in the narrative for stylistic reasons.

Which is not to say that I consider the book great. Rather boring, actually. But don't swing the pendulum too far the other way and try to pick out inexactitudes that are actually ok.

I'm a big fan of both Larry Niven and Gregory Benford. I was pleased with the world they created in the Bowl of Heaven. After I got over the obvious editing errors already mentioned in other reviews, I tried to focus on the story itself. I found it painfully tedious. The pacing was all off and the four viewpoints were disjointed at best. The ending was a rush job to make sure each viewpoint was addressed before they closed the book, if one can call it a closing. I likened it more to a release.

Coincidentally I just recently read Gregory Benford's 1986 work with David Brin in the Heart of the Comet. Now that work represents what could have been with Bowl of Heaven. There was a fantastic story full of rich details and a true inflection point in which the book could have closed or a door been opened for a second book. Comparatively, after the first "wow" impression of the Bowl of Heaven, the world description is bland particularly for hard science fiction lovers. The characters lack depth and I was often confused by their actions because so little time was spent developing them.

I wish I had a better review. I'm willing to give the second book a try. I'm calling this an "OK" book. I didn't hate it (or I would have dropped it), but I did expect more.

Okay, the Bowl of Heaven is an interesting variation on Niven's Ringworld design and that was compelling enough to read the book. But... the main characters do really stupid stuff. My expectation was the humans mission would be to make contact with the Bowl's inhabitants but, instead, they run away from these beings. Why? It seems to be a plot device allowing the humans (and us) to explore the Bowl whilst developing "conflict". It felt contrived.

Towards the end, I started to understand the truly psychological differences between humans and the Bowl's prime inhabitants. That's an interesting aspect... interesting enough that I intend to read the next volume "Shipstar"

BTW, there's a bizarre Editorial OOPS at the end of chapter 9. Howard had a "3-inch sliver of metal" stuck in his arm; Tananareve "extracted the metal shard" and patched him up. Four paragraphs later, Cliff pulls it out of Howard's arm AGAIN. It's like both authors wrote the same scene and the editor forgot to remove the duplicate version.

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'm a long time fan of Niven and of his collaborative efforts, but _Bowl of Heaven_ is a stinker

This novel is _Ringworld_ all over again. Awe inspiring architecture on the scale of planets, just like Ringworld. Our Heroes are trapped on the giant artifact and must find a way off, just like Ringworld. They encounter deadly predators and ambulatory vegetation, just like Ringworld. They find species from multiple planets that have been genetically engineered for sentience and to serve the purposes of their creators, just like Ringworld. We even have large, predatory talking cats.

Unlike Ringworld with its long dead civilization, the builder civilization still runs the giant space artifact of "Bowl," though there are hints that they may be approaching a crucial political tipping point. The arrival of uppity primates on their primitive rocket may be the catalyst that triggers revolution to end the tyranny of the giant bird-like "Folk."

Or maybe not. With the horrible editing, obvious contradictions, meandering plot and weak characterizations already mentioned by several other reviewers, it's difficult to know where this story is going. The narrative implies a few days of travel on the artifact when, suddenly, a character remarks they've been traveling for months.

Our protagonists are not nearly as memorable as Louis Wu, Teela Brown and the rest of the cast of Known Space villains and aliens. When a red shirt is crushed to death while escaping Shelob's Lair, nobody cares. I found myself skimming the last few chapters and then the story just ends in the middle of nothing. Nothing is wrapped up, and we find no cliff hangers either. The writers met their 400 page quota and shoved the manuscript to the inkjet without benefit of proofreading or editing.

What will happen in Book 2? Will Captain Picard threaten the use of the ionizing engines on his ship to persuade the Powers That Be to let his people go? Will we discover a telepathic underclass of sentient cats? Will we find Pierson's Puppeteers on the destination planet? Did the artifact builders direct human evolution? Perhaps Builders and Humans will cooperate to overcome an even larger enemy, the looming (and still mysterious) "gravity waves" that emanate from the direction of the target planet.

Nothing of the story's resolution is hinted at in this first book, and I honestly don't care what happens in the promised sequel.

I give it 2 stars instead of 1 because the human speculations about the Builder origins is moderately fun. The Builders' ability to directly consult their limbic system in a controllable fashion for insights is a nifty trick, too. Otherwise, go re-read Ringworld for fun and sci-fi adventure and hi-jinks.

Gregory Benford & Larry Niven's "Bowl of Heaven" is a complex story of space exploration that tries to redefine the wonders of the universe as we know it. The book revolves around the crew of the SunSeeker who are headed toward the planet Glory in an attempt to make contact with other species outside of our own. When the ship encounters an unexpected world in a "bowl" things change from there as the exploration of what this bowl really means along with the consequences for humanity itself. Benford & Niven's story isn't badly written, however is more complicated than it needs to be especially with the encounter with the aliens on Cupworld. They additionally attempt to redefine exactly how humanity got where we are now. Overall not a rather uneven but interesting book that leaves a sequel open to determine the origins of this mysterious place in the galaxy.

Pretty good. Very interesting takes on possible alien and actual human neuropsychology. The engineering and the biology of the Bowl are also interesting. (The Bowl both gives us millions of earths in livable acreage and reflects some of the starlight back at the star, boiling it into a jet propulsion system, moving us along slowly through the galaxy.) Writing and characters are okay. As "Rendezvous with Ringworld," if you will, a success. (Myself, I'm a fan of "Rendezvous with Rama" and Benford's jewel of a sleeper, "Against Infinity". I've never gotten around to Niven's "Ringworld" but intend to do so.)

I don't get all the bad reviews.Disappointment that the book wasn't great? There are some rotten SciFi novels out there. This isn't one of them. It's pretty good.

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'm a long time fan of Niven and of his collaborative efforts, but _Bowl of Heaven_ is a stinker

This novel is _Ringworld_ all over again. Awe inspiring architecture on the scale of planets, just like Ringworld. Our Heroes are trapped on the giant artifact and must find a way off, just like Ringworld. They encounter deadly predators and ambulatory vegetation, just like Ringworld. They find species from multiple planets that have been genetically engineered for sentience and to serve the purposes of their creators, just like Ringworld. We even have large, predatory talking cats.

Unlike Ringworld with its long dead civilization, the builder civilization still runs the giant space artifact of "Bowl," though there are hints that they may be approaching a crucial political tipping point. The arrival of uppity primates on their primitive rocket may be the catalyst that triggers revolution to end the tyranny of the giant bird-like "Folk."

Or maybe not. With the horrible editing, obvious contradictions, meandering plot and weak characterizations already mentioned by several other reviewers, it's difficult to know where this story is going. The narrative implies a few days of travel on the artifact when, suddenly, a character remarks they've been traveling for months.

Our protagonists are not nearly as memorable as Louis Wu, Teela Brown and the rest of the cast of Known Space villains and aliens. When a red shirt is crushed to death while escaping Shelob's Lair, nobody cares. I found myself skimming the last few chapters and then the story just ends in the middle of nothing. Nothing is wrapped up, and we find no cliff hangers either. The writers met their 400 page quota and shoved the manuscript to the inkjet without benefit of proofreading or editing.

What will happen in Book 2? Will Captain Picard threaten the use of the ionizing engines on his ship to persuade the Powers That Be to let his people go? Will we discover a telepathic underclass of sentient cats? Will we find Pierson's Puppeteers on the destination planet? Did the artifact builders direct human evolution? Perhaps Builders and Humans will cooperate to overcome an even larger enemy, the looming (and still mysterious) "gravity waves" that emanate from the direction of the target planet.

Nothing of the story's resolution is hinted at in this first book, and I honestly don't care what happens in the promised sequel.

I give it 2 stars instead of 1 because the human speculations about the Builder origins is moderately fun. The Builders' ability to directly consult their limbic system in a controllable fashion for insights is a nifty trick, too. Otherwise, go re-read Ringworld for fun and sci-fi adventure and hi-jinks.

Gregory Benford & Larry Niven's "Bowl of Heaven" is a complex story of space exploration that tries to redefine the wonders of the universe as we know it. The book revolves around the crew of the SunSeeker who are headed toward the planet Glory in an attempt to make contact with other species outside of our own. When the ship encounters an unexpected world in a "bowl" things change from there as the exploration of what this bowl really means along with the consequences for humanity itself. Benford & Niven's story isn't badly written, however is more complicated than it needs to be especially with the encounter with the aliens on Cupworld. They additionally attempt to redefine exactly how humanity got where we are now. Overall not a rather uneven but interesting book that leaves a sequel open to determine the origins of this mysterious place in the galaxy.

Pretty good. Very interesting takes on possible alien and actual human neuropsychology. The engineering and the biology of the Bowl are also interesting. (The Bowl both gives us millions of earths in livable acreage and reflects some of the starlight back at the star, boiling it into a jet propulsion system, moving us along slowly through the galaxy.) Writing and characters are okay. As "Rendezvous with Ringworld," if you will, a success. (Myself, I'm a fan of "Rendezvous with Rama" and Benford's jewel of a sleeper, "Against Infinity". I've never gotten around to Niven's "Ringworld" but intend to do so.)

I don't get all the bad reviews.Disappointment that the book wasn't great? There are some rotten SciFi novels out there. This isn't one of them. It's pretty good.

Author Larry Niven is a member of a three-writer collaborative team-up responsible for one of my favorite books of all time: THE LEGACY OF HEOROT. Along with authors Steven Barnes and Jerry Pournelle, Niven helps to shape one of the greatest series' in science-fiction history. So when I heard he was teaming up with another legend in science-fiction, Gregory Benford, to create another new series, I knew I had to give it a look. Although BOWL OF HEAVEN is not perfect, it is an exciting and fun jaunt into first-contact territory.

When you have two icons of science-fiction working together like this, you know you're in for a treat. The combined minds of Benford and Niven give readers a wonderful, mysterious scenario and then plunge them deep into the heart of its intricacies. Only two masters such as these could offer such depth.

As expected, the writing in BOWL OF HEAVEN is smooth and fluid, with strong wording and sentence structure. The prose is strong and flows at a perfect pace with a fine voice and plenty of spirit. The story itself is presented well for the most part and moves at a nice clip. I do see some inconsistencies with continuity in regard to the plot, however; I will not go into full detail because this might actually be on purpose. My gut tells me there will be future volumes in this universe, and they could potentially explain what happened in this one.

The characters are fleshed out nicely, and there are no stereotypical science-fiction cliches within them. This is of particular note because stock characters seem to abound in the genre these days. Originality, even within the cast, is extremely important in a market that is overrun with new authors trying to carve a name for themselves.

BOWL OF HEAVEN is entertaining on many levels, and I highly recommend it to fans of science-fiction. Benford and Niven are two writers who have navigated the story-telling waters for many years and their expertise shines in this collaborative debut. Give this one a look for sure.

Well, I finished the book so 2-star at minimum...science was disappointing and became "word salad" (magnetic this, convergent evolution that). Descriptions of "aliens" were always compared to Earth counterparts and many things were never clearly described. Plus the occasional fragmented sentence and poor word choices (character said his "piece" - peace???) took me out of the flow of the book often.

Overall, this is a book that you can read quickly and not miss anything. The story itself is not bad and kept me going. I am disappointed because I was looking for more science.

There is a blurb on the cover that says (in part), "...masterful, mind-expanding book. I am in awe." Mind-exploding is more like it. Apparently, developing and describing interesting characters is too much work. The humans are zero-dimensional, while the aliens barely reach one-dimensional. OK - what about the plot or context? Nothing we haven't seen a thousand times before. I am also in awe - that this book was published.

Bowl of Heaven is the first book by either Larry Niven or Gregory Benford that I've ever read. They've both been well-regarded science fictin authors for many years, and I figured this would be a good opportunity to get a taste of what both of them have to offer.

The premise is great--a group of astronauts leaves earth on a voyage, many centuries long, to a newly-discovered planet called Glory. On their way there though, they discover something that even the most advanced minds on earth could never have imagined. While most of the time the crew is kept in a state of deep sleep, in order to survive the voyage, some are periodically awoken in order to get them to Glory. When Cliff, a biologist, is woken up, he initially believes it's because they've finally reached their destination,k but he soon finds that that's not the case. Two things have occurred that have prompted the skeletal crew to begin waking other key members of the crew early--after only 80 years.

The first is that they've discovered the ship is inexplicably losing velocity, and if the problem can't be fixed, they'll run out of supplies well short of Glory. The second is that they've discovered something relatively nearby. It's manufactured, it's moving, and it's the size of the entire solar system they left behind. It's a bowl-shaped starship, its surface area is millions of times that of earth's, and it's harnessed the power of an entire star for its means of propulsion.

The ship's commander has no choice but to land inside the bowl.He neds to determine what's behind their loss of velocity, and hopefully replenish their supplies. What they find as they arrive on the inners surface of the bowl continues to defy their perceptions of what could ever be created.

Unfortunately for Niven and Benford (and me) their idea, is great, but their story isn't. Their characters are flat, the alien races they encounter are disappointingly uninteresting, and while they intentionally end the book with many unanswered questions in order to build anticipation for the next book, they didn't pique my interest enough to make sure I'll be reading it.

In the midst of their voyage, a troubled colony ship encounters a strange object, a bowl shaped structure half-enclosing a star, with a surface area many times that of the Earth. The ship's crew decides to investigate, both out of curiosity & in hope of restocking their dwindling supplies. Of course the landing party encounters problems, with half being captured while the other half are hunted across the Bowl.

Early in their adventures, a group encounters a large animal emerging from water. Amazed, they realize they are viewing a dinosaur. In a nutshell, that's my reaction to Bowl of Heaven. For better or worse, it reads much the same as a hard SF novel from 30 or 40 years ago.

The strength of the book is the artifact itself. An immense, self-propelled shipstar (yes, that is the phrase that is used) created from repurposing the mass of a solar system. Extensively modified, it is home of seemingly hundreds of species and ecosystems. Benford & Niven develop the Bowl in great detail and apparent scientific rigor. Fans of SF built around BDOs are sure to enjoy the descriptions.

Benford & Niven provide insight into the people and culture of the Bowl via the use of Memor, an Astronomer of the Folk, as a POV. Memor is tasked with observation and interaction with the captured colonists. We learn about the Folk as she contrasts the colonists with herself and her people.
Given the chase/escape plot of most of this book, the story zips right along. The colonists race from one danger to another, with their explorations providing an opportunity for the reader to discover and explore the strange world of the Bowl along with them. It's a simple devise, but in this sort of novel, where the location itself is the primary interest, it works wonderfully.

Unfortunately, while the object is so loving developed and described, the same cannot be said for our human protagonists. Their side of the story is told primarily through the POVs of 3 crewmembers, Captain Redwing, Cliff Kammash, & Beth Marble, both biologists. All three are little more than thinly constructed pieces of cardboard that function more as plot devices or as opportunities for exposition. Who are they? What are their motivations? By the end of the book they were just as enigmatic as they were at the beginning.

In fact, by the end of the book, I seemed to have as many questions as I did upon the start. Why were there no military or security personnel on the ship? Were all the colonists primarily technicians of one sort or another? Did they really expect to force their way into an alien artifact and not encounter any aliens? Shouldn't someone have mentioned that at the staff meeting so that they could plan for it?

Your enjoyment of Bowl of Heaven is going to be directly related to how much you enjoy certain types of hard SF as written 30 years ago. Be forewarned, this is only the first half of a duology, with the second portion expected next year.

I liked Bowl of Heaven, by Gregory Benford and Larry Niven. I grew up on Asimov and Clarke, Kornbluth and Simak and Pohl, and Bowl of Heaven is very much like the stories those guys wrote - take a big idea and let a group of scrappy humans figure out how to build it or figure out what it does and how it works, and in the process use explanations of current science and extrapolations of it to provide a grounding in reality. Of course, there must be aliens who want to dissuade the humans from these endeavors and maybe have them for lunch or keep them as slaves. The pace is not rapid, shoot from the hip melodrama; it's a thoughtful, trial and error driven exploration of the Big Idea and its effects on both aliens and humanity. Aliens change the pace, making the humans drop everything and run or fight, but that is used to maintain the conflict of the story, to build tension and suspense, and to demonstrate the character of the personalities involved.

Arthur C. Clarke, Charles Sheffield, Robert Heinlein, Kim Stanley Robinson and probably at least a half dozen others have discussed the ins and outs of a space elevator, rising from earth to geostationary low-earth orbit as a way to more economically move a payload out of earth's gravity well. This isn't just a big idea, it's a huge endeavor, but still, it's small potatoes compared to Benford and Niven's bowl of heaven. That is a craft that is powered by a full-size sun with a manufactured bowl the size of our inner solar system wrapping around it. Various kinds of aliens live in the bowl. And it just so happens that a human starship, on its centuries-long voyage to another planet, passes by the alien craft and the crew decides that they need to stop and resupply.

Of course, the aliens are going to try to dissuade our intrepid travelers. Some of the landing party are captured and the rest escape, running for their lives within the confines of the bowl. This all is the setup for the story. The setting is an unimaginably huge artifact; the problems to be solved are to determine what the aliens are after and what the purpose of the artifact is, how it works and who built it and runs it, all the while trying to stay alive in multiple alien environments while being chased by some of those pesky critters (who resemble huge ostriches.) Other aliens provide further danger and, in some cases, aide.

Because some of the landing party are captured, we get to see different facets of the antagonists' character. Their actions and dialogue tell us about their biological drives and we see how those affect their dealings within their society; we see what kind of power and political structures they have developed and the affiliations and quarrels they experience. Significantly, we learn that they are personally driven by their status; they have a strong class hierarchy (pecking order) and the highest class has arranged life in the bowl over the course of millennia to allow the individuals at the top to maintain their position and perquisites. This desire to maintain the status quo and the pride of place that the highest caste enjoys explains the architecture of the bowl, the structure of the society, and may turn out to be the weakest link in their system.

To the humans, the gigantic structure is an enigma and, of course, they know nothing about the aliens. They will only be able to survive if they learn enough about the aliens and their society and the structure on which they are trapped and are able to leverage that knowledge. By comparing and contrasting their perceptions of the bowl and its denizens with their knowledge of science (physics, astronomy, biology, meteorology, ecology) on earth, the humans gradually piece together several hypotheses.

The pacing is critical for enjoyment of the book. The give and take between the intellectual conflicts involved in dealing with the terrain and the structure and the urgent physical conflicts in dealing with the alien antagonists sets the entire pace and tone of the story. To the reader who likes to settle in and enjoy the gradual piecing together of solutions to the enigma, this book will be a pleasure; for the reader who desires constant action and quick resolutions, who favors the parts of the story that feature the dangers and escape of the humans from the aliens, while there is plenty of that, this book may still seem a mite tedious. I am very definitely in the former group, enjoying the puzzle and the "hard science" style, seasoned with enough action to keep the story moving and maintain suspense.

Both Niven and Bedford have written much better books than Bowl of Heaven. Ultimately this novel is not fundamentally
different to many bad old-fashioned adventure novels, written more than a century ago. You just have to substitute the African jungle
for an alien planet, and the African natives by the aliens, and the schooner by the ramscoop starship. Neither the aliens nor the humans are particularly interesting or original or have anything particularly interesting to say. When one looks at how many better novels describing first contact with aliens have been written before, one easily concludes that Bowl of Heaven is a) quite routinary and unoriginal and b) it is unnecessary. It is also contemptible that the fact that this novel is the first part of two (or more) is left totally unmentioned on either the cover page or back page or the flaps of the hardcover edition.

Really more like a 2.5.

Niven and Benford are doing their standard, massive world building here, and after reading a number of the works of each of these authors over the years, the charm of their gigantic constructions, the unique problems--deductive and physical--that they present, and their alien builders is starting to wear off.

For me, the main interest here is in the clash of viewpoints and levels of understanding, as our home team tries to understand and outwit the much more powerful alien builders, who would seem to hold all the cards. Unfortunately, though, I have seen this movie before, and many times at that.

As I have observed happening with a depressing number of other older, established "name" authors, this team is resting on its laurels, just coasting along, and producing in "Bowl of Heaven" a not very appetizing or exciting dish.

Just one illustration of the various problems with this work, pointed out by another reviewer here, is with what in a film would be called "continuity," i.e. on page X someone drops into the conversation the major fact that Earth mysteriously quit responding a hundred years ago and then just leaves it at that, but according to page Y the voyage so far has only lasted 80 years, but, then, according to page Z, sometime later the crew is pouring over the latest messages from Earth. So, which is it? Editors and attention to detail anyone?

Bottom line, Bowl just ain't doing it for me, and I am pretty doubtful that I will avidly try to find and read volumes II, III, IV or however long this pieced together, lumbering Frankenstein is scheduled to live.

Overall, I'd describe this book as tiresome; I finished it by sheer force of will. The writing was not cohesive, and the events in the book got repetitive. I enjoyed descriptions of the "bowl", the great structures built by the bird-people, and their societal norms - the expression of emotion via a change in plumage color was particularly interesting - but they were so often submerged in the non-sci-fi thread of narration that it watered down the pleasure. I do enjoy innovative descriptions of foreign worlds and their inhabitants in sci-fi heavy books; "Bowl of Heaven" unfortunately was sci-fi in name only. It read like it was written by a non-scifi writer - "Indiana Jones" propped up by a thin science fiction construct. Plus I didn't get to know the humans in the book well enough to like them, so wasn't invested in their well-being or their story.

A sequel to this book, Shipstar, is promised. While I hope that that is better than this, I'm not sure I'll be lining up to read it.

I am one of those who never put Niven at the very top, a little surprised at the accolades he received early in his career, but felt he was reliably interesting and still did hard science at a time when others abandoned it. From a high but not top perch, I thought he went downhill in the later stages of his partnership with Pournelle and stopped reading him for a while. But I definitely enjoyed this -- might have given it a 4 until I read the other reviews. Why do I like it? First, you have to work very hard to come up with a made thing that is more impressive than the ringworld. They succeed admirably on that front. Second, there is an ambitious element -- describing a different way of organizing the functions of the alien brain and exploring the consequences of this. Are the characters truly memorable -- no. Are they dislikable or poorly defined -- I respectfully disagree with those opinions I have seen here, and care about what happens to them. Finally, and embarassingly, I did not notice the "continuity gaps" to borrow the term from film. Finally, there is a mild sense of wonder that shows promise of expanding into a broader sense in the next volume.

Niven / Benford / Tor / Macmillan - You owe the purchasers of this book three things: An apology, a refund, and another apology.

Errata of all stripes abound, see other reviews for an (incomplete) catalogue of continuity errors.

It works better as a "How not to collaboratively author" manual than it does as a work of fiction.

I'll add my one star review to the many already extant here, in the hopes that those involved in its production will somehow fix this mess.

Bowl of HeavenImagine if you will, a hemisphere 93 million miles in radius with a hole in the bottom and the sun in the center of said bowl. Imagine large portions of the interior of this bowl are mirrors to reflect the sun's light back to it, causing a huge jet to stream towards the hole, and in fact through it. Imagine that the star moves; slowly, to be sure and dragging the bowl by gravity, but it does move, and never stops.
That's the artifact that intrepid (aren't they always?) colonists in The Bowl of Heaven stumble upon in their comparatively fast ramship. How they meet and interact with the very alien beings occupying this artifact is the other half of the amazing idea of this book, although having conceived the thing in the first place is the astonishing bit, I guess.
The aliens are mentally and physically very different from humans and I will in my usual way refuse to tell you more, except that I do not spoil a garden by running through it. Read the book. There may be an audiobook of The Bowl of Heaven by now.

Bowl of Heaven by Gregory Benford is a Sci-Fi book that puts a twist on the Dyson Sphere theory. The twist being that instead of a sphere surrounding a star, there is a half-sphere shaped as a bowl. The interesting part of this bowl is that instead of being a permanent structure around a star, the star was modified into a form of propulsion.

This book is the first in a series by Gregory and I think it's a well thought out plot, if a bit lengthy of a book. There is a lot of detail provided but I don't feel it hinders the read at all. This is more of a slow story with action packed sequences scattered throughout the pages. There is a bit of mystery in the plot as the team is trapped on an alien world with little contact to the outside, forcing them to fall back on their training to survive.

The character development is not as great as some books I have read, but their quirks and traits are slowly revealed over the course of the 515 page novel. The characters are set into a cryostasis for a few century journey to a distant star hoping to colonize and form a new Earth. During the trip they encounter this strange bowl, and due to circumstances beyond their control, their best option is to land and seek resources.

The timeline is easy enough to follow, no gaps in the sequences or scenes that would confuse the reader. There are a few unanswered plot lines at the end of the first book, but not in the sense of a cliffhanger ending.

The writing has an intellectual feel to it, basically due to the details given on the alien world, inhabitants and local geology. I would say it is one of the more traditional science fiction book styles using an original concept based on an old theory.

With that all being said, I did enjoy the book and look forward to the release of Shipstar, the next volume of the series.

This is hard SF though the scientific and technical aspects do not detract from the story. I thoroughly enjoyed this read and went on to devour the sequel. A great book that wove multiple plot lines together, various alien races, and an ancient civilization.

It really is a silly book. It is a variation on Niven's original Ringworld, but by this token it's no longer original. What throws me against the wall though, as I read it, is indescribable naivete and, frankly, lack of imagination of the book's authors. Here we are in this unfathomably huge, superbly engineered magnificent Bowl of Heaven, its builders and engineers evolved tens of millions of years, if not hundreds, ahead of humanity and... they behave like 20th century school children!!! Silliness prevails in every concept, every action and every scenery. Perhaps it's all written to become a yet another equally silly Hollywood or SyFy production. There's clearly money there. After all, movies and stories have to relate--to the lowest common denominator--to sell. But it's not top class Science Fiction, not by a long shot, nowhere near the original Ringworld, even if it is a passable read. And it's not even funny. What happened to Larry Niven of yore?

I wanted to like this. I've greatly enjoyed other Larry Niven novels. But the characters are so uninteresting and flat. I was so bored I only got about 40% of the way through before giving up. Normally books that I can't finish only get 1 star. The extra star is for the very clever concept and out of respect for Niven's other works.

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 the store 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.

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 started to read this but was so bored and disappointed, I couldn't continue. Later I read Shipstar, which apparently is the final draft of this story, and it was so good, it left me wanting more. I returned to this book to see how similar they were. Bowl of Heaven is so poorly done (compared to Shipstar, by the same authors) with too many minute details of the scenery and not enough character development compared to Shipstar, that it's hard to keep reading.

Bowl of Heaven, I've heard, is the first draft of the story, and Shipstar is the final draft. Why on earth these two great authors would release a first draft (which is poorly written) instead of waiting till the final and edited version was completed, I have no idea. My suggestion: DEFINITELY buy the book, Shipstar, but save your money and pass over Bowl of Heaven.

Saw this in the library and checked it out on the basis of the authors. I shouldn't have bothered. Okay, the idea is great: a huge alien starship in the form of a bowl with a star shining down on it that a human ship sent to colonize a planet around another star comes across. But then our human heroes and heroines land on the bowl, one group is captured and one escapes, and the book goes on for literally hundreds of pages of pointless filler about what happens to each group. All the while I'm looking at the dwindling number of remaining pages and wondering when we're going to get to a climax and resolution. Well, we don't - it just ends, with the promise of a sequel. And at the pace this book's been going at, you've got to think it's going to be a trilogy at least. But not for me - I'm done with it.

If its sci-fi, I'm going to read it. I've enjoyed the best and slogged through some of the worst, because once I start a book I usually see it through. Timescape and the Across the Sea of Suns Saga author Gregory Benford drew me in, despite my misgivings of reading anything again from the nasty little person Niven became. Dumb, deeply boring, painfully stereotypical. Thrown in the trash after the first 150 pages,

I just don't get this: Why does a respected publishing house like Tor need to mislead consumers into buying a book - in this case, "Bowl of Heaven" (Tor, $25.99, 412 pages) - by never once mentioning anywhere on the jacket that it's the first of a series? What's the point? Do they think that fooling readers is going to build customer loyalty down the road? Or do they just not care that the investment from a buyer triples when it's a trilogy?

And in any event, this Gregory Benford/Larry Niven collaboration is essentially Ringworld 2.0, except it's not nearly as good. Cardboard characters, human and alien, lots of fanciful technology and a couple of secrets that will be revealed sometime in book three, when the parted lovers finally reunite (I know that's a wild guess, but I feel safe in the assumption).

If Tor had made it clear this was a trilogy, I would have said wait until at least book two before jumping in - but corporate greed always angers me, so on general principles, now I'm going with the check-it-out-of-the-library option.

I was pleasantly surprised to see a Sci-Fi book being promoted in standard news media outlets. That in itself was a welcome enough change from Oprah picks, and James Patterson formulae to make me want to read this book.

I picked up the book and while it sat in my queue on my Nook I systematically ignored other reviews, willing to live with my decision and not let other opinions jade my own expereince.

Opening the book it had promise, from the chapter and section layouts, the quotes, and the illustrations near the front. I looked forward to immersing myself in a rich new world. I applaud the authors at an attempt to create an epic sci-fi world of such monumentous structure and history that the possibilities were endless. I jumped in with both feet and found out the water was only one inch deep.

There was barely anything new, riveting, original, or interesting about this book. Anyone who has read Ringworld, Riverworld, or any other explorer in a strange, hostile new world style book will find anything remotely inventive in this book. I read 800 pages, and I still don't care about any of the characters. The point of view changes were so non-linear you often had no idea to what the aliens were refering.

The most strenuous imagination I had to use was force myself to see the aliens as feathered velociraptors instead of Big Bird from Seasame Street.

So what, it was the first of a series. Anyone who is complaining about that is an infant when it comes to sci-fi or fantasy.

I can say without a doubt I will be not be buying the upcoming volumes, and will limit my search for new sci-fi to younger authors who may be able to implement new ideas a little more effectively.

About four decades ago I was working in Portugal and had exhausted the reading material I had carried whenI found a tourist shop with a shelf of English language books and my first Larry Niven, "World of the Ptaavs." I was hooked and have, I think, since read everything he has published. Much of it is great, all of it, until now, has been enjoyably readable. I began to skip-read "Bowl of Heaven" about a third of the way through and abandoned it about the mid-point. I didn't care what happened to the characters and I couldn't be bothered to keep track of them.
Larry Niven has given us some of the most brilliantly imagined aliens in science fiction and some of the most visionary settings for which I, for one, am grateful. I'm saddened that it has come to this.

First of all, I should admit that I never finished this book. From other reviews, I see that it apparently just sort of stops, in an attempt to force readers to get the sequel. I'm here to tell you that you don't need to worry about that! The book is so boring, the editing so poor, the characters so flat, and the "hard science" so lame and implausible, that you won't even want to get to the end of this first book.

The Italians I think have a saying that there is no worse thief than that of a bad book. This is burglar extraordinaire. Do not waste your time like I did if you like even mediocre science fiction. I really need to come here in a check reviews before I read things... Arghhhhh!

This book never gets better even though you think it has to.... arghh.

First you have to buy into man made global warming on an epic scale totally caused by CO2 specifically. Especially now they say warming stopped in 1998 (did Al Gore use some of his money from selling his TV Station to the terrorists to pay these guys? ) and you have to totally rule out the solar activity completely even though they then talk about how much it affects a planets weather. No contradictions there.

The lamest sci-fi I have read in memory. Characters suck, plots suck, writing looks like it was done by a teenager, and you have to wonder what these two men were thinking. And I liked both of these guys up until this one. Do not waste your time or money, go ready anything else and I do mean anything.

And you two guys. I know you can do better. Do not let half-backed stuff like this get published for yourselves and your readers. :)

... so I was pretty disappointed by this from them together. I won't go into the plot failings, the uni-dimensional characters (amply discussed in other reviews), the meandering nature of the story (with no seeming destination), or the gaping logic holes (really - no security personnel on the ship, very limited attempts to contact the inhabitants of the bowl, and leaving Earth with apparently no plans for first contact with other intelligences during the journey).

What I found pretty unforgivable was the quality of the publishing itself. Other reviews have mentioned some of the continuity errors (earth hadn't contacted the ship for a century, except it had), but I found the simple spelling errors to be the straw that broke this camel's back: green cork tamales is just one of many. Spell checkers avoid most spelling errors, but it takes human editors to catch stuff like this, and this book shows no evidence of actually having been given a final edit. Whether it was rushed into print or there is some other explanation (well, I have the electronic version, so that's not even an excuse), I expect more from the publishing companies and the authors.

I am a fan of both Niven and Benford, and have been for years. This book shows little of the writing brilliance I expect from either of them individually, and certainly not what I was hoping for from the collaboration. The follow on book will not be something I will buy automatically (as I did this book); it will need to get some good reviews before I will spend my limited reading hours on its 400 pages (it will take that long to write their way out of the hole they are in now....). I really hope they can write their way out of this mediocre start and into something worthy of either of them.

I regret not having paid more attention to the book reviews/evaluation by other readers. Thought the story might be awe inspiring like Clark's Rendezvous with Rama. Kept reading till page 210 and gave up. Should have trusted my instincts and stopped at 25. The one star is for an idea for a good story.

And I mean literally. That's where I just pitched it.

I reached page 225 or so and started asking myself why I was still reading. I'd been repeatedly jarred by poorly-handled context switches, disappointed by characters I couldn't care less about and, to tell the truth, I was downright bored.

Bought this in paperback without reading any reviews. After all, how can you miss with something by the two guys who wrote "Ringworld" and "Timescape", huh?

At page 200 of 418, I realized something was seriously busted so I read some reviews. Aha! I WASN'T going bonkers; it really WAS that bad.

Slogged through another 25 pages; it didn't get any better.

So I just did what I haven't done more than a few times in a lifetime of reading hard sci-fi: I threw it in the trash.

Obviously, I have absolutely no intention whatever of buying "Shipstar". If there are enough like me, that brings up a semi-existential question: If two dudes write a book and nobody reads it, is it really a book?

My lesson learned for next time: read some reviews!

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.

The concept was very cool. Waiting for the meeting of the two species to see how they interact....and waited...and waited.... WHAT A BORING STORY. Just a bunch of rambling, redundant silliness. All we are given is a bunch of Junior High insights into psychology, physics, biology and leadership. Plus a totally implausible, boring story that takes up the bulk of the book. A 400 page snorer that could have easily been a 150 page short story. Then on top of it all, we are left hanging as it is only part 1. With this pathetic effort, why would anyone want to read future volumes?

I firmly shelf this one among books I'm willing to read but NOT willing to recommend to anyone else. So year. So yeah, I'll tune in for the sequel, but I'm disappointed by the first and not holding my breath.

I feel like a rebel - Although the other reviews here point out some flaws I found this book to be an excellent read. The writing's crisp and the pace rather than bogging down quickens throughout the second half of the novel.

There are some editorial issues and they've been ponted out. Here's my take.

I have been a long-time fan of Niven and have also read a lot of Benford, so I was looking forward to this book. I'm pleased to say that with a couple of reservatios I found the novel engrossing. It's not there best work, but it's certainly not as bad as the other reviewers paint it here.

Like the other reviewers I noticed some editorial issues, characters injured, fixed, and then injured again, timeline troubles and the 'infamous' abrupt ending. Although these issues possibly shouldn't have made it into the final draft, though once seen and understood, they had little affect on my eventual enjoyment of this novel.

It's well worth a read and has all the things fans want from a Niven/Benford collaboration. Sense of Wonder, intersting aliens and an ever present sense of exploration - What's over the next hill, around the corner, down that canyon?

Old fashioned? Yes. Is that a problem? No.

Bring on the next volume, I want to know what happens.

I've been a Larry Niven fan for decades. His Ringworld series, the Tales of Known Space, and his collaborations with Jerry Pournelle have all be great reads. Not so this book - it's boring, fragmented, and incoherent. There is no character development and, for the most part, the characters are unsympathetic. One of Niven's great strengths in earlier work is imagining and making believable alien races; the "Astronomers" of this world are anything but, nor are the "Adopted" races. I suspect that one of the problems here is that too little of the book is devoted to describing them and there is too little interaction between the human characters and the aliens. In any event, although the book ends with the promise of the story continuing in a later book, I will not be reading that later novel.

I got this book out of the library and I am grateful I didn't waste any money, just time. The authors would be better off publishing their bad reviews which are much more entertaining than their book. Other reviewers do a terrific job with pointing out its many, many flaws so I won't bother. If you must read it, do what I did and go to the library. Don't give the authors any more money as it might encourage them. The sad thing is that there must be so many other better books that can't get published because publishers are printing junk like this apparently without even reading it. Oh, and trying to follow the silly plot gave me a migraine so if you are prone, take an Imitrex.

It's as if Benford and Niven got elements and plot points from half a dozen other books, blended them all up, and pasted them back together with uninspired prose.
It's like Ringworld without the humour. It's like Orbitsville, but we've already been there done that. It's like every other book about Big Objects In Space you have ever read, except while reading you're aware it has been done before, and done better.
The editing is an insult to the reader, with many small problems as described by other reviews.

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.

Seems like it is more space and tech focused in a way that makes the survival story and concerns feel more viable. Events are a little happenstance. Hoping for less contrived feeling of accomplishment as the series works toward resolution of open items.

I've been a Larry Niven fan for a long time and this was quite a let down. I'd had hoped that this would be a story of exploration of a new mysterious civilization, but it turned out to be more about a bunch of people running around in the woods. Admittedly, I haven't finished it yet (which is pretty telling in it's own right--I haven't felt compelled to pick it back up for a while) so maybe there is some big ending, but I don't have high hopes.

I really can't add anything to Scott R Crittenden's review. The "story" is dull which is bad enough. But to get through all that tedium and discover this was just part one? On the last page? Yeah, don't waste your money.

I wanted to like this collaboration between Niven and Benford. If this had been had been release as one volume instead of two I would have. As it stands, I feel ripped off by either the authors or the publisher or maybe it was a joint decision to shaft their fans. Well sorry Larry and Greg, you have just moved to the bottom of my desire to read more of your stuff list.

I liked this book ! The concept was novel and surprising and I wanted to know more about the Bowl of Heaven. While this story did not grab me as hard as Nivens Ringworld , it did entertain me. I would buy it again.

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.

More very high-level concept scifi from Niven and Benford. Just a bit long for my taste, but very solid and interesting. A natural extension of the Ringworld and Dyson sphere concepts, and plenty of plasma physics courtesy of Benford to boot.

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.

This book falls into a category of "You are billions of miles from nowhere, why would you do something that stupid?" Aside from the perplexing and rather risky actions of the humans of an sub-light interstellar ship, the story is rather fun. The book deals with first contact and a completely alien environment. The story is a fun read, and sets up the next book Shipstar quite nicely.

i agree with the reviewer who said it looks like two stories mushed together, hence the contradictions between consecutive paragraphs... that it looks totally unedited, actually... a draft.

my idea is this: a challenge to rewrite or Perform The Edit That Never Was... we out here do it and present it and/or publish it free on the internet - if anything, the finished product would survive down thru the ages as THe Real Bowl of Heaven (or somesuch)

...wanders off muttering

As others have pointed out, this book is unfinished and unfit for publication. Evidently each author wrote a book and then someone mashed together passages with no regard for consistency. Strangely, the tone of the book IS consistent.

I have read over 3000 sf books and this is the worst one.

I am really enjoying this book. It's Benfords most entertaining book since his galactic center series--which was epic.

If you want fully realized characters you should be reading other genres not hard Sci-Fi.

Yeah it is highly derivative of Ringworld, but that is not a bad thing. The alien culture depicted here is fascinating and so is some of the science

Bowl of Heaven is a fun and great read. I was quite immersed from the start and found it hard to put down. Despite the reviews who have whined about this being the first in a series I am looking forward to the next volume. NPR gave it a good review and that is what caught my interest.

Niven - from an admired Hugo award winner to a disdained Profit Mongering award winner. What an incredible spiral into irrelevance. And who the heck is Gregory Benford? A conspiracy of hack-ism! Just go away and come some time when you have a credible work of literature to offer.

This book falls into a category of "You are billions of miles from nowhere, why would you do something that stupid?" Aside from the perplexing and rather risky actions of the humans of an sub-light interstellar ship, the story is rather fun. The book deals with first contact and a completely alien environment. The story is a fun read, and sets up the next book Shipstar quite nicely.

These two authors are two of my favorite writers. The bowel is a much more believable massive world that matches my understanding of physics and engineering. This book is also more contemporary with how we are heading socially. My only complaint is that like most of Nivens books. It was too short! I hope the next book goes for epic broke, and doesn't tease with a very fast paced cliff hanger ending. Leave us with some more info to think about please.

Idea was very interesting. Felt the story line of the aliens on the bowl going after the humans was a bit to much of leap for me. I would think a race as old as these aliens would be a lot more curious and friendly, like this culture appears to be. The story is interesting.

How the authors can work GLOBAL WARMING HYSTERIA into a far-future inter-planetary adventure is testament to the fact that they are just another of the 90% of contemperary cookie-cutter SciFi authors that worship at the altar of self-deluding anti-American liberal foolishness. As I always say - how can you take any SciFi writer's predictions of the future serious, if they actually believe this ludicrous global warming garbage - and that mankind is "causing it", to boot... in other words, these "savants" couldn't see 5 years into the future on this provable issue, on which they've all been proved wrong now - yet STILL INSIST on propagating this nonsense 10 years after Chrichton's STATE OF FEAR debunked this self-serving hucksterism - so, how can they attempt to seriously look hundreds of years into the future? Answer: THEY CAN'T.

This novel is only going to appeal to some people. Larry Niven wanted to write another Ringworld, so he started with the premise of a giant space ship and then worked backward to come up with a story. Niven has been doing this lately, writing sequels to Ringworld and other stories. It seems like at this point maybe he's having trouble doing a whole writing session so he just gives the ideas to some other author and has then write the book. The result is... okay. In all of them.

The short version is that humanity sends out a "freezer ship" to colonize another planet. This is a concept where people are put into stasis as the ship drives at regular speeds- think Alien. Things don't go to plan when the spaceship detects an alien spaceship floating out there near their destination- a spaceship as huge as a solar system. Alien intrigue ensues.

I think this book commits a few big sins. First, mild spoilers, some parts of the story are written from the perspective of the aliens. Writers need to be more careful about doing this, ESPECIALLY when the human beings don't even know yet if there are aliens on the planet. The story would be a whole lot better if this was left until later in the book or left out entirely. The second is that the "bowl of heaven" is basically just Ringworld. The whole point of this book is that Niven found a way to make the Ringworld fly through space to make it a spaceship- except the Ringworld novels introduced (again, spoilers) the ability of the Ringworld to fly in FTL across the universe, so the Ringworlds were already spaceships to begin with. It's a little frustrating that this idea isn't as original as it needs to be. But it is a cool concept, and they put some science into it.

Not a bad book, but it does get a bit by-the-numbers at points so I can't hold it as an all-time classic. A decent read, and another entry into the pantheon of massive sci-fi spaceships. Neat concept.