Last year we sadly lost Ben Bova, one of my original go-to authors when I first started reading “grown-up” SF in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Because of his reputation as an editor of Astounding and Omni as well as a writer of solidly science-based novels, I grabbed anything I could get. They felt real.
So it is with a little sadness that I picked this one up, one of Ben’s last to be published, I assume. Ben has worked with scientist and Nebula Award nominated author Doug Beason here* and written a cracking technothriller.
From the publisher: When an ultra-rich space tourist visits the orbiting International Space Station, NASA expects a $100 million win-win: his visit will bring in much needed funding and publicity. But the tourist venture turns into a scheme of terror. Together with an extremist cosmonaut, the tourist slaughters the astronauts on board the million-pound ISS and prepares to crash it into New York City at 17,500 miles an hour, causing more devastation than a hundred atomic bombs. In doing so, they hope to annihilate the world’s financial system.
All that stands between them and their deadly goal is the lone survivor aboard the ISS, Kimberly Hasid-Robinson, a newly divorced astronaut who has barricaded herself in a secure area.
I didn’t know what was going to happen before I started to read, although the title and cover pretty much give you the focus of the plot. The initial attack is shocking, because most of Bova’s books have dealt with how well the astronauts (mostly) get on with each other whilst on the ISS.
The book is nicely contemporary as it involves the Dragon spaceships and the Boeing Starliner. No sign of Branson or Bezos, though. But it is interesting to see how the ‘new’ modern NASA deals with the new kids on the block, as well as all of the usual political shenanigans on such matters.
Whilst the terrorists are your standard template “bad-guys”, this stereotype becomes less important as the tension ramps up through the novel. The possibility that the ISS could be turned into a bomb seems plausible as the science explains it all along the way, as too the ways in which the ISS could be stopped should such an event happen.
Unlike some recent popular SF novel writers (mentioning no names!) the authors are careful to avoid dropping huge dollops of science into the plot to show they’ve done their homework. Whilst there is undoubtedly a lot of shorthand codes, enough guidance is given for the layman (like me!) to follow without impeding the pace of the plot. Most of my original ideas – leak the air out, cut off the power – are explained why they can’t happen, and some others as well.
The drama of Kimberley surviving in the ISS – an enclosed space with nowhere else inside to go whilst terrorists try to kill her – is also well done. Most of all, this novel is a series of problem-solving exercises as experienced through the characters and much of the fun is seeing how they, and especially Kimberley, cope with the challenges.
We have the usual personal drama too – Kimberley’s CapCom just so happens to be her recently divorced husband, who still cares for her whilst dealing with all the complications such an event could cause. This part of the story is less effective, and feels less convincing. But this is a minor aspect of the plot, thankfully.
In short, whilst this is nothing particularly new, Space Station Down is a solidly science-based technothriller that makes the impossible seem plausible and gives the reader a hell of a ride until the end. Might just get you looking at the ISS as it passes over your head in a whole new light…
It’s also a well-written story that shows that Ben’s skills as a writer were there to the end. RIP Ben.
Space Station Down by Ben Bova and Doug Beason
Published by Tor Books, August 2020
350 pages
ISBN: 978-1250307439
Review by Mark Yon
* As well as a physicist and a writer, Beason has a background as once being the Associate Laboratory Director for Threat Reduction at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which I guess may give him credentials here too.
