The Ceres Solution
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This is the gripping story of the collision between two vastly different human civilisations. One is Earth in the early 21st century, rushing toward self-inflicted nuclear doom. The other is the distant world of Mollan, whose inhabitants have achieved great longevity and the power to transport themselves instantly from star to star. Bob Shaw's novel unfolds a tale which spans thousands of years and the reaches of interstellar space. On Earth's side, there is Denny Hargate, whose indomitable courage drives him to alter the course of history. On their side is the Gretana ty Iltha, working on Earth as a secret observer, who dreams of returning to the delights of her world's high society, but who gets caught up in a cosmic train of events leading to an explosive climax.
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This is my favourite book by Bob Shaw, though I haven't read many of his. It's an original and ingenious concept and plot, with a most unusual crippled and bad-tempered hero who comes over as real.
It also contains the Mollanians, who are human but somewhat different from us. They're less real to me, I don't find them entirely convincing; but I suppose it would be hard to describe such people convincingly.
Not one of the great big novels of sf, it's an enjoyable short novel that takes you briskly through the story. I find it refreshingly unusual and good to have in my collection; the characters are flawed as people normally are, but some of them are quite likeable.
3 stars - Metaphorosis Reviews
A handicapped boy sees a woman disappear. The young woman is an observer from another human planet, where people live for centuries, and teleportation is a matter of course. Eventually, they meet, and both learn secrets about their worlds.
Bob Shaw's greatest strength is in his ability to humanize his characters - to make them both engaging and appealing, and to focus the story more on them than on the grand events in the background. In The Ceres Solution, he fails at that key task.
The book starts well. (Actually, it starts and ends with framing paragraphs that add nothing, should have been removed, and can safely be ignored.) We have a young, determined, not very pleasant boy, a run-down Earth, a mystery to solve. Unfortunately, after introducing him, the book almost immediately loses its way. We shift to a mildly interesting young woman in a mildly interesting other-human culture. But after meeting her, we shift into long chunks of expository text. Not only is it not graceful, it's not interesting. It's a very slow start to the book, which never really recovers. The tone is dry throughout, almost clinical, with none of the warm personality that most Shaw books have.
All in all, a middle of the road SF book - mildly interesting with competent writing, but not exciting. Irritatingly, the Gateway edition is marred by very sloppy copyediting. The book was clearly produced via OCR, apparently without much care. There are dozens of errors and artifacts sprinkled throughout. Nothing major, but if you like your books done right, this will get on your nerves. Gateway had a great sale a while back, and I bought many, many books. I hope they're not all as sloppy as this one.
