Orbitsville

by Bob Shaw

Book Overview

A BSFA Award-winning novel. For centuries the men of Earth had scoured the cosmos for habitable planets, but had found only one. Then Vance Garamond discovered something infinitely better - a Dyson... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0330250132
• ISBN13: 9780330250139
• Release Date: January 1977
• Publisher: Ace Books
• Length: 243 Pages
• Weight: 0.20 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A typical, competent and interesting Bob Shaw effort

I'm yet to read a bad Bob Shaw book, but neither have I read an absolute masterwork by him. He tends to find an idea and sets out to examine it within the plot of a story, 'Orbitsville' is no exception. The captain of an exploration starship, on the run from a corrupt regime, discovers an enormous hollow sphere. This metallic sphere completely surrounds a sun, with a radius akin to the distance of the earth to the sun. The inside surface of this sphere is billons of times larger than the surface of the earth and is covered with soil, seas, grass, mountains etc and is just ripe for settling on and the perfect escape for the denizens of an overcrowded earth. This is the background of the short novel that Shaw has whipped up. ‘Orbitsville’ will unfortunately draw unfavourable comparisons with Larry Niven’s ‘Ringworld’ and although they are outwardly similar, they principally concern different subjects. Where ‘Ringworld’ is about the exploration of the Ring, Orbitsville is more about size of the object being explored. Regardless, 'Orbitsville’ is still a fine read and Shaw skilfully holds the attention of the reader. 3.5-4/5

Rural utopia

Although the idea of a dyson sphere is not new, the author has managed to include in a reasonably interesting story. I do not like , however, that you read half the book before you get to the interesting parts. the ideal of the story, the utopian rural society, has proved to be disastrous when tried in cambodia, I dont think that this should the future of the human race.

Pretty good book

I read this book after reading Shaw's Wooden Spaceships series. Both are fairly good, and I have always wondered why more people don't know about Bob Shaw. Someone above said this book is worse then Ringworld which is totally false. Whatever you do don't read the sequal, Orbitsville Departure, as it was pretty awful.

Very good book with good storyline

This book, with its imaginitive theme and good implementation, this is a very good book. The writer takes Freeman Dyson's idea of an artificially-enclosed star with an earth-like environment of enormous area and all its unique problems and situations is very good. I recommend it for any sci-fi fan.