Titan Q5: Ending
How did you feel about the book's ending? Did it feel right? Did it ring true? Was it only to set up the trilogy? This book was from the time before trilogies were pretty much mandatory. Did you want to see more of this story?
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It seemed rather contrived and there to set up the next book. Varley had done all that work into the mechanics of how Gaia worked, so he was going to get a return on it if he could!
One thing that dated the book was the reliance on crewed exploration missions. The book was written after Pioneer 10 and 11 had surveyed Jupiter, and around the time of the Voyagers exploring Jupiter and Saturn. This book was written just before robotic, uncrewed exploration really showed what it was capable of.
I don't think it range any less true than the rest of it. Yes, it seems obvious this was meant to set up the next novel. I think that's OK. But I also think it worked to satisfactorily close this novel, so I didn't feel cheated at the end, like I missed half or two thirds of the story. It didn't end in a cliff-hanger. I like the first book enough to read the next one - but not enough to pick it up immediately and keep reading.
I did feel disappointed by this, I'm afraid - the switch from story to setup of the next bit seemed forced to me, and as mentioned before I'd have been happy for a stand-alone novel. Right now I don't feel drawn to read the next bit but that could easily change later in the year when my (mostly virtual) reading heap drops down a bit!
I thought @NeilNjae 's point about crewed vs robotic solar system exploration was really interesting, and adds another real-world dimension to the story. For example, how might Gaia have prepared herself to welcome a machine ambassador rather than another crewed ship?. It did occur to me at the time that the jump in ship size in what seemed to me to be only a few months (maybe I'm wrong about timescale?) was a bit weird. A sort-of equivalent is in Heinlein's Time for the Stars (mostly of course focused on twin telepathy, which maybe emerges in the twin/clone pair here) where the torch-ship is suddenly overtaken by an FTL vessel - but then a considerable number of years have passed by so the technological advance makes sense.