The Shattered Sphere

Year: 1994

Abstract:
Five years ago, humanity activated its first, artificial gravity generator, unknowingly awakening the Charonians. The Charonians were a race of living machines who's only purpose was to devour the solar system. The Earth was forced through a wormhole, and taken to the Multisystem, a place with many stars and planets that had been taken from their home systems. This gestalt machine entity began rebuilding the solar system to suit their needs. Desparately, mankind found a way to turn them off. Five years later, Earth doesn't even know if the people of the solar system are still alive, and likewise, the people in the solar system have no idea if the Earth is still around. Both are searching for each other. Earth discovers the nature of their neighbor worlds in the multisystem, and find them all dead. Coming towards Earth is a fleet of sentient asteroids. Can Earth open communications with what's left of the solar system, and find some way of saving the people of Earth before it's too late?

Advanced Mind
Exploration/Quest
Military/Fighting
Horror
Magic
Advanced Technology
Time Travel/Alternate History
Science
Aliens/Beasties
Contemporality

Other books in this series:Hunted Earth
The Ring of Charon [1990]

Spectre's Review
I remember reading somewhere a while back about what life forming on a neutron star would be like. First of all, I must rant and rave my political spiel on those ignorant, closed-minded fools who say things along the lines that life, in anything but a carbon based form, with water and oxygen dependencies, etc., etc., could not exist. Damn them. Damn them all. Who says intelligence cannot be garnered by non-organic (I'll use the term 'vehicles' for lack of a better term)?
Enough. Allen introduces to us two unique life forms which I think are very interesting. One, the Charonians, are the oppressors of the human race. They are living machines controlled by a gestalt mind, with communications based on gravitics and radar. And then there's the Adversary. This particular life form is likewise a gestalt mind based species, that also just happened to form on the surface of neutron stars. It's dense, and feeds off gravity. Because the Adversary feeds off gravity, the Charonians are its prey. The adversary has destroyed many multisystems (think of a Dyson sphere type construct), and is now targeting the multisystem where the Earth resides. Humans stand in the middle, and the story gets interesting.
I did not totally like the ending, though, just too much good news. More people should have died, something left unresolved, or something. I also found some of the problem solving abilities of the characters (specifically Sianna always having something just out of reach) to be annoying.
On a closing note, one of the more redeeming qualities of this book is the utter lack of sexual promiscuity and excessive gore. Not that some books shouldn't have these elements (take Gregory Benford's In the Ocean of Night and Stephen R. Donaldson's 'Gap Cycle'), it was simply refreshing to have a successful hi-tech idea go over well without such things. I recommend it for the read, and I'll probably keep it. However, it NEEDS the unknown to keep the story going, so once you know what's going on, it's all over (unlike Ben Bova's 'Orion' series, where I could read it over and over just for the scenery).
Date posted: 2000 03 07

Spectre's Rating
A solid OK rating, but not quite in the 7 range.

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