©2025 Fable Group Inc.
2.5 

Uranus

By Ben Bova
Uranus by Ben Bova digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

Ben Bova, author of Earth, continues his exploration of the future of a human-settled Solar System with the science fiction action adventure Uranus, the first of his Outer Planets trilogy.

On a privately financed orbital habitat above the planet Uranus, political idealism conflicts with pragmatic, and illegal, methods of financing. Add a scientist who has funding to launch a probe deep into Uranus‘s ocean depths to search for signs of life, and you have a three-way struggle for control.

Humans can’t live on the gas giants, making instead a life in orbit. Kyle Umber, a religious idealist, has built Haven, a sanctuary above the distant planet Uranus. He invites ”the tired, the sick, the poor“ of Earth to his orbital retreat where men and women can find spiritual peace and refuge from the world.


The billionaire who financed Haven, however, has his own designs: beyond the reach of the laws of the inner planets Haven could become the center for an interplanetary web of narcotics, prostitution, even hunting human prey.



Meanwhile a scientist has gotten funding from the Inner Planets to drop remote probes into the “oceans” of Uranus, in search of life. He brings money and prestige, but he also brings journalists and government oversight to Haven. And they can’t have that.


At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Download the free Fable app

app book lists

Stay organized

Keep track of what you’re reading, what you’ve finished, and what’s next.
app book recommendations

Build a better TBR

Swipe, skip, and save with our smart list-building tool
app book reviews

Rate and review

Share your take with other readers with half stars, emojis, and tags
app comments

Curate your feed

Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities
app book lists

Stay organized

Keep track of what you’re reading, what you’ve finished, and what’s next.
app book recommendations

Build a better TBR

Swipe, skip, and save with our smart list-building tool
app book reviews

Rate and review

Share your take with other readers with half stars, emojis, and tags
app comments

Curate your feed

Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities

9 Reviews

2.5
“2 stars, https://reviews.metaphorosis.com/review/uranus-ben-bova/ <strong>Summary </strong> Financed by billionaire Evan Waxman, Reverend Kyle Umber has set out to create a haven for Earth's huddled masses - in an orbital around Uranus. But Waxman isn't quite the philanthropist he seems, and when newcomer Raven Marchesi gets on the wrong side of him, the haven isn't as safe as she'd hoped. When she offers to help astronomer Tómas Gomez search for life on Uranus, his discoveries complicate everything. <strong>Review </strong> I was never a huge fan of Ben Bova. As the editor of <em>Omni</em>, I had my doubts about him – the magazine was slick, but none of the stories stuck in my mind. As a writer, I mostly passed him by. But at some point, the first books of what became the Grand Tour series came to my attention. They were, in typical Bova style, dry and technical, but gripping in their own way, and I started buying them as they came out. The series is so convoluted that I’ve lost track over time, but I have at least 15 of the books in it. <em>Uranus</em> – apparently the start of a new sub-trilogy – is unfortunately not one of the best parts of the Grand Tour. There’s just too much that’s not credible and glossed over, and the characters (never Bova’s best suit) are generally cardboard thin. Worse, they play pretty heavily into outdated stereotypes (e.g., men are ever ready to rape a woman, and woman are the only ones interested in fashion), and some of the moments of biggest potential emotional impact fall by the wayside pretty readily. It’s clear that Bova is interested here primarily in the hard SF side of the story, and making only minimal effort to provide a supporting cast for it. That SF element is interesting, and promises to play out on a grand scale in the next books of the trilogy, but the character side of the story is composed almost entirely of stock characters never taken out of their original wrapping. Oddly, Bova also muddles the character perspectives, hopping from one head to another at random without much signaling, and not in the way of an omniscient or partially omniscient observer. It’s confusing at times. Equally confusing is the socio-politics. A major problem is solved through non-violent resistance, but aside from a token mention of Gandhi, I didn’t come away with any confidence that Bova understands how this works; his use of it in the story certainly didn’t convince me that the application was even credible. Equally odd, he seems to muddle some of the science – suggesting, for example, that an EVA suit radio could reasonably call Earth from Uranus. All in all, an interesting scientific theme, but a disappointingly thin and dated-feeling entry from an author who can do much better. <strong>I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review.</strong>”

About Ben Bova

Ben Bova (1932-2020) was the author of more than a hundred works of science fact and fiction, including Able One, Transhuman, Orion, the Star Quest Trilogy, and the Grand Tour novels, including Titan, winner of John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel of the year. His many honors include the Isaac Asimov Memorial Award in 1996, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation in 2005, and the Robert A. Heinlein Award “for his outstanding body of work in the field of literature” in 2008.

Dr. Bova was President Emeritus of the National Space Society and a past president of Science Fiction Writers of America, and a former editor of Analog and former fiction editor of Omni. As an editor, he won science fiction’s Hugo Award six times. His writings predicted the Space Race of the 1960s, virtual reality, human cloning, the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars), electronic book publishing, and much more.

In addition to his literary achievements, Bova worked for Project Vanguard, America’s first artificial satellite program, and for Avco Everett Research Laboratory, the company that created the heat shields for Apollo 11, helping the NASA astronauts land on the moon. He also taught science fiction at Harvard University and at New York City’s Hayden Planetarium and worked with such filmmakers as George Lucas and Gene Roddenberry.

Start a Book Club

Start a public or private book club with this book on the Fable app today!

FAQ

Do I have to buy the ebook to participate in a book club?

Why can’t I buy the ebook on the app?

How is Fable’s reader different from Kindle?

Do you sell physical books too?

Are book clubs free to join on Fable?

How do I start a book club with this book on Fable?

Error Icon
Save to a list
0
/
30
0
/
100
Private List
Private lists are not visible to other Fable users on your public profile.
Notification Icon
Fable uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB