Titan Q2: Setting

clash_bowley

Gaia is a megastructure - a gigantic place - yet it is also a creature, with other creatures living inside it. How does Gaia compare to - say Ringworld, or Rama, or other such megastructures? What intrigued you about Gaia? What were you not convinced worked? Could you imagine living on Gaia? Did Varley make it alive for you?

NeilNjae

Yes, it was another Big Dumb Object book. As you say, that's a fine tradition to join! But this book seemed just a bit too much like a low-budget Ringworld knock-off, even to following many of the same plot beats.

As for the object? I guess we shouldn't think too hard about the internal environment being well-suited for humans (temperature, pressure, light, atmosphere mix, etc.). If you're designing an eco-system, you can do without predators I suppose. But generally, Gaia came across as a contrived setting for a standard story in the genre.

I liked that Gaia was a worn-out structure, near the end of its life. That's something that I've not seen done before.

One miss was that the central intelligence seemed very human. I'd have expected something stranger there. Even the Titanides were more alien.

Apocryphal

Though I'd agree this is a Big Dumb Object book, the twist here is that the

BDO isn't dumb (it speaks) and isn't an object, but an organism. So this is really more like a Big Vocal Organism book

except we don't find that out until the end.

I'm not sure I was all that convinced by Gaia. Varley never says what she's made of - all those cables, and whatever else - made... grown... from what? Also, how do Gaias reproduce? I'm not sure we needed all those details for the story, but the suspension of disbelief here did require some effort. But apart from that (and as with the Virga novel we just read) I was absorbed enough by the story to let it slip by. I think Varley did a lot more than Shroeder did to answer potential reader questions - largely thanks to the big Gaia monologue toward the end. The ship-mind being able to appear so human thanks to TV? I don't think this idea originated with Varley, did it?

I couldn't really imagine living there - seems a nice enough place, but kind of... artificial. And there may not be predators, but an insane ship mind fragment might suck you into the earth at any time. So no thanks lol.

RichardAbbott

Yes very Ringworld like, and my impression was that some of the descriptions were nearly verbatim (though it's a long time since I read RW so that might be mistaken).

But... one big difference was the introduction of the Greek mythic elements. So Gaia is a titan and hence a demigod, but the topmost tier of beings she created are almost the same in strength and so can't be simply coerced or defeated. There's a war-in-heaven motif, and her victories are self destructive in taking her energy and ability to manage the planetoid.

I wasn't wholeheartedly convinced by the setting (of which more later) but thought it an intriguing and different take from Ringworld or Rama, which were basically very large buildings!

NeilNjae

We learnt about the reproduction of Gaia-things in one of the exposition monologues at the end. A seed grows into a ring around a moon, it puts down roots to extract matter to grow, and eventually pops off. This has been going on long enough that Saturn's moons are mostly "mined out"

Apocryphal

But is it asexual? Is there a fertilization?