Marrow
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4.4 • 29 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The Ship has traveled the universe for longer than any of the near-immortal crew can recall, its true purpose and origins unknown. It is larger than many planets, housing thousands of alien races and just as many secrets.
Now one of those secrets has been discovered: at the center of the Ship is . . . a planet. Marrow. But when a team of the Ship's best and brightest are sent down to investigate, will they return with the origins of the Ship--or will they bring doom to everyone on board?
Robert Reed, whose fantastic stories have been filling all the major SF magazines for the past several years, spins a captivating tale of adventure and wonder on an incredible scale in this novel based on his acclaimed novella.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A ship the size of a large planet drifts through space far into the future, setting the stage for Reed's sweeping allegory dramatizing such cosmological questions as the origins of the universe and the relative nature of size and time. Humans are practically immortal with the improvements of bioceramics and repairing genes, allowing Reed (Beyond the Veil of Stars), a multiple Hugo nominee, to track the lives of the Great Ship's crew members and passengers through millennia. The Master Captain has directed every aspect of the ship via her implanted nexuses ever since human explorers first boarded the seemingly empty, ancient vessel, finding the enormous, lifeless ship equipped with adjustable environments that would allow them to create oceans and cities. The human colonists turn the ship into a luxury passenger cruiser carrying 100 billion members of various alien species. The Master and her captains administer the journey according to plans made eons into the past, handily neutralizing any threats or disruptions until the Master mysteriously sends over 200 of her brightest captains, including her ambitious first-chair, Miocene, and the talented alien greeter Washen, on an exploratory mission to what was thought to be the ship's solid iron core. Disaster befalls their mission, unleashing a 5,000-year course of events that will build a new civilization and eventually threaten the existence of the entire ship. The ship itself narrates italicized introductions to each of the book's five parts with thorny, theatrical language, echoing the ship's obtuse, unwieldy presence. Clumsy dialogue and melodramatic scenes render the human dramas far less consequential than the monumental construct in which they play. However, Reed's ambitious, detailed premise and thoughtful manipulations of space and time make for an enjoyable reflection on the size and shape of the universe relative to its human inhabitants.
Customer Reviews
First Work in the Great Ship Series
“Marrow” is the first work in Robert Reed’s Great Ship Series. It is a far-future space opera featuring trans-humans and aliens who have all become passengers on the Great Ship.
The Great Ship is an amazing setting, compatible to Arthur C. Clark’s Rama, or Larry Niven’s Ringworld. It is a giant alien spacecraft of extragalactic origin that was a derelict. Humans met it in intergalactic space as it approached the Milky Way and claimed it as their own. These humans became the Captains, and have steered the Great Ship into a course that will circumnavigate the galaxy. They have taken on many passengers, both human and alien. Billions of beings inhabit the interior and exterior of this craft, which is many times a planetary size. It is thought it was originally formed from the core of a Jovian planet by the mysterious Builders.
I was familiar with Robert Reed’s future humans from the Novella “Eater of Bone.” These beings are practically immortal, and their bodies are capable of surviving and repairing incredible amounts of damage. As long as their bio-ceramic brains survive, they can be resurrected. That’s just their bioengineered enhancements, before they begin adding in technological improvements. However, these trans-humans are still human enough to be relatable to the reader. These are the Captains and the passengers of the Great Ship.
So, that is the setting and the characters for the Great Ship Series. “Marrow” both sets the stage, and tells an epic story of a discovery at the heart of the Great Ship itself. The time scale of this story is vast, since the humans are practically immortal there is plenty of time for the story to play out without having to change characters. It’s an interesting tale that involves the mysterious Builders and the purpose of the Great Ship itself. There is plenty of action, including a war fought from the interior to the exterior of the ship.
If you like novels filled with big ideas and lots of things to think about, this is a good choice.