duntemann.wbst@XEROX.ARPA (07/11/84)
Lordy, it was such an awful book I had plum forgotten it... Patra-Bannk was the hollow planet from THE WORLD IS ROUND by (I think; book's at home) Tony Rothman, who is the son of another Rothman who occasionally writes SF. (First name escapes me right now.) THE WORLD IS ROUND was a sad example of a book containing a well-worked out technological concept and entirely too much filler. Patra-Bannk was a titanic shell surrounding a black hole, rotating very slowly as it revolved about its star. The combination of slow rotation and period of revolution made for some very bizarre seasons, alternately hideously cold and killingly hot. End of interesting stuff. What remains is silliness overlaid upon silliness, loose ends galore, and an ending which left one most thoroughly disappointed. This might have been something as novel as Ringworld, had the author taken the time to concoct something clever to happen on or inside the planet. Instead there is a stupid war among stupid humanoids and no identifiable motivation for any of it. The best parts of this book were the cover painting, the essay on the seasonal dynamics of Patra-Bannk, and the name of one (minor) character: Paddleack. The rest, after a year or two, has simply faded into the mud. Skip it. PS: Do remind me of any other Constructed World stories you are familiar with... --Jeff Duntemann The Carbon Filament Rat duntemann.wbst@xerox
VLSI%DEC-MARLBORO@sri-unix.UUCP (07/14/84)
From: John Redford <VLSI at DEC-MARLBORO>
Here are all the constructed worlds that I can think of, including the
ones that have been mentioned already:
"Ringworld" and "The Ringworld Engineers" by Larry Niven - The classic example.
There is some planet-shuffling in "The World Out of Time" as well, but
no planet construction.
"Orbitsville" by Bob Shaw - Dyson sphere with Earth-like condtions inside
(well, Earth-like except that the sun never sets).
I think there's a sequel out now.
"The World is Round" by Tony Rothman - Jupiter-sized hollow planet
whose main reason for existence seems to be to make it tough for
the people on it to realize they are living on a sphere. They go
ahead and prove it anyhow, using the same techniques we did.
"Wall Around a Star" by Jack Williamson and Fred Pohl - Extra-galactic
star-size planet attacks the Milky Way. "The Farthest Star" also
has the same premise.
"Strata" by Terry Pratchet - People find Earth-moving machinery left over
from an alien civilization and start to roll their own.
"Cageworld" by Colin Kapp - Four volumes in this series are out now. Giant
computer builds shells around the Sun to provide more living room. The
old planets (the "cageworlds") sit in gaps in the shell like ball
bearings in a race. Kind of glosses over where all the material comes
from.
"Starmaker" by Olaf Stapledon - A history of intelligent life in the universe,
with lots of macro-engineering towards the end, eg hollowing out crusts
of dead stars.
"Titan","Wizard", and "Demon" by John Varley - Creatures a hundred
kilometers across with habitable conditions inside and eccentric masters.
"Maker of Universes" by Philip Jose Farmer - Humanoid aliens make pocket
universes as playgrounds. Earth is one of them. There are several
books in this series, but this was the only title I could remember.
"Riverworld" only counts as terraforming (not that digging a million
mile long river is easy), not as real planet construction.
And finally let me mention "The New Cosmogony", a short story by Stanislaw
Lem (collected in "A Perfect Vacuum"). The trouble with all this cosmic
engineering is that we don't see it taking place. Surely if re-arranging
stars were possible, some alien race would already be out there doing it.
Lem's answer is that the early civilizations have gone beyond that;
instead of manipulating crude matter they work with the stuff of physical
law itself. Anomalies like quasars are past mistakes. Asymmetries like
the spins of muon emission are problems that are not yet worked out.
The theory would be proved if we saw these wrinkles being ironed out.
And why aren't there any intermediate level civilizations? Because the
big boys don't want anyone else to play. It's time to start
shielding our TV broadcasts.
/jlr
--------jonab@sdcrdcf.UUCP (07/16/84)
I am suprised that no one has mentioned Larry Niven's latest
"constructed world", from his book "Integral Trees". This world
is very interesting, because it is not a world, per se, only a breathable
gas torus around a neutron star.
Jon Biggar
{allegra,burdvax,cbosgd,hplabs,ihnp4,sdccsu3}!sdcrdcf!jonablgondor@utcsrgv.UUCP (Les Gondor) (07/17/84)
How about Niven's fact article "Bigger than Worlds"? This appeared in
an anthology of his (A Hole in Space? my memory fails me) some time ago
and described a variety of constructed worlds. The Ringworld, by the way,
was only middle-sized by his reckoning (imagine a Dyson sphere around
a galactic core!).
On a smaller scale, there are A. Gilliland's Rosinante novels, where most
of the action takes place on O'Neill-type space habitats (munditos, in his
terminology).
Les Gondor, U of Toronto CSRI
{cornell,ihnp4,allegra,uw-beaver,decvax!utzoo}!utcsrgv!lgondor
"Strange women lying in ponds and distributing swords
is no basis for a system of government!"Poskanzer.PA@XEROX.ARPA (07/17/84)
From: Jef Poskanzer <Poskanzer.PA@XEROX.ARPA> All the constructed worlds messages, though fairly repetitive, missed one very good example: "Moonbow", by J. P. Boyd, a novelette in the May 1981 IASFM. It was not a particularly good story, but the construction was excellent. Imagine a very thin donut about one-fifth as big as the sun. Specifically, it's got a major radius of 150,000 km, minor radius of 1500 km, surface gravity 0.2 Gs, about 1 Barr of air pressure, toroidal spin of 6 km/sec, and 16 times the surface area of Earth. I call this type of object a torusworld. At the time the story came out, I was investigating them on my own, so the story got me pretty excited. One thing I like about torusworlds is that, unlike EVERY other non-trivial constructed world in SF, you can build them with known physical laws and without unreasonably strong materials. Another thing I like is the gravitational dynamics. Boyd's story did not say much about that aspect, but I can tell you they are pretty wild. For example, there is a helical orbit looping through the "hole"... The best technical reference on torusworlds is "Hydrodynamics", by Sir Horace Lamb, first published in 1878. There is also a paper by Laplace, published in 1780, looking into whether the rings of Saturn could be a torusworld. "Plus ca change..." --- Jef
dave@garfield.UUCP (David Janes) (07/18/84)
[die hobbit!] | From: VLSI%DEC-MARLBORO@sri-unix.UUCP | Newgroups: net.sf-lovers | Subject: constructed worlds | | From: John Redford <VLSI at DEC-MARLBORO> | | Here are all the constructed worlds that I can think of, including the | ones that have been mentioned already: | (somewhat cut) | "Ringworld" and "The Ringworld Engineers" by Larry Niven | "Orbitsville" by Bob Shaw | "The World is Round" by Tony Rothman | "Wall Around a Star" by Jack Williamson and Fred Pohl | "Strata" by Terry Pratchet | "Cageworld" by Colin Kapp | "Starmaker" by Olaf Stapledon | "Titan","Wizard", and "Demon" by John Varley | "Maker of Universes" by Philip Jose Farmer | | /jlr You forgot Zelazny's Amber (+ shadows), which is a *lot* bigger than anything else mentioned here (and might even include them.) dave ------- - David Janes (Memorial University of Newfoundland) {allegra, inhp4, utcsrgv}!garfield!dave
perl@rdin.UUCP (Robert Perlberg) (07/18/84)
[ I have this terrible pain in the diodes down my left side ] Sorry to put a damper on this discussion, guys, but I don't think planet-building will ever really catch on. Remember the planet builders of Magrathea? I'm sooooooo depressed. Robert Perlberg Resource Dynamics Inc. New York philabs!rdin!perl
duntemann.wbst@XEROX.ARPA (07/20/84)
Moonbow wasn't the first torusworld; that belongs to Larry Niven, from PROTECTOR; it was called Kobold, and it had a miniplanet in the donut hole if I recall. I had trouble with Kobold; it didn't seem large enough to have appreciable gravity. On the other hand, the Protector who built it (crazy Jack Brennan) had sufficient gadgetry to provide the equivalent of artificial gravity, but I don't think Niven stated it that p[lainly. The best part of Protector is perhaps the snippet of dialog I imprecisely quote here, between the man and the woman when Brennan goes off and leaves them to wander freely on Kobold with the warning, "Don't open any locked doors. Remember Bluebeard." [She]: "What did he mean, 'Remember Bluebeard?'" [Truesdale]: "He meant, 'REALLY don't open any locked doors.'" Not one person in ten understands the allusion; I myself only heard the story at a boy scout campout at age 12. I wonder if the Bluebeard story is in print somewhere... --Jeff Duntemann duntemann.wbst@xerox RF: KB2JN PS: At the risk of sounding wearisome, let me repeat: Constructed as in BUILT. The Smoke Ring from Niven's INTEGRAL TREES was a natural consequence of a peculiar stellar system. Nobody went out and put it together with a wrench.
berry@zinfandel.UUCP (Berry Kercheval) (07/27/84)
If we are restricted to 'Constructed as in BUILT' worlds, then Gaea from Varley's Titan, Wizard and Demon doesn't count, as she(?) is grown, not built -- the descendent of a long line of organisms. Berry Kercheval Zehntel Inc. (ihnp4!zehntel!zinfandel!berry) (415)932-6900