Prolific hard-sci-fi author Greg Bear has come up with another winner with Hull Zero Three. It’s a space opera of sorts that pits a handful of human and humanoid characters against their ship, which has somehow gone rogue.
Some of Bear’s earlier works, including Queen of Angels and its sequel Slant, and Forge of God, are among my favorite science fiction books (*Slant in part because a hologram of singer-songwriter Richard Thompson makes a cameo appearance). But I’m not a fan of everything he’s written. I found Moving Mars to be turgid and Psychlone boring, although to be fair the science in the former went over my head and the latter was more of a horror story, not my favorite genre.
But Hull Zero Three sucked me in from the very first paragraph. The main character, who is for quite some time nameless, literally has to hit the ground running. He finds himself waking up — perhaps having been “born” — in a freezing room, and having to get up and run after the little girl who apparently pulled him from his birthing sac as they try to stay ahead of a series of slamming hatchways and make it to somewhere warm.
This hapless character, who is apparently known as Teacher, slowly comes to the realization that he is on some sort of ship, somewhere in space, and that the ship is trying to kill him and all the other humans and humanoids he encounters. And these other characters have different agendas, some of which he may or may not want to go along with.
The book is written in the present tense, which helps to convey the sense of immediacy as Teacher encounters each new obstacle or aide, and has to fit each into the puzzle of who he is and what’s going on. And he is rarely given adequate time to fit those puzzle pieces together before something else comes along trying to kill him.
Anyone who has read much science fiction will quickly pick up on the clues to make some guesses as to what’s happening. The ship was full of humans or potential humans on their way to colonize another world, when something or a series of somethings went dreadfully wrong. Now the mechanisms and cyber-creatures intended to maintain the ship during the long trip have been turned into hunters bent on killing, which they do quickly and efficiently.
This is a difficult type of story to pull off, in which the characters only slowly learn what the author of course knows intimately, and Bear succeeds at every turn. It reminds me, especially in the first half or so, of Niven and Pournelle’s Inferno.
The mysteries that Teacher must solve if he is going to survive keep multiplying: Who is the little girl, what is her agenda and why does she keep disappearing and reappearing? What is in the book she carries, and when will Teacher find his book, which she assures him exists? Are the other more or less humanoid creatures on his side or not? And most importantly, why exactly are some parts of the ship trying to kill him, and others seem to be trying to help him?
You’ll want to know the answers to these and other questions, so you’ll keep turning the pages quickly as I did.
Greg Bear is in top form with Hull Zero Three. It’s not an “important” book in the sense of delving into deep philosophical questions. But it’s a heck of an entertaining science fiction tale, one with a few messages embedded — about hubris and war-making, and about humans’ need for companionship and succor.
(Orbit, 2010)
