| Author: | Colin Kapp |
| Copyright: | 1982 |
| Date Reviewed: | 6/21/85 |
| Rating: | 7.5 |
Synopsis: Thousands of years from now, human civilization has become a Type II civilization, harnessing the total power of the sun. This was mandated by a fantastic population explosion. The Mars shell has a surface area 15 million times greater than the old Earth. Within the Mars shell there are three other shell and many more shells surrounding it. When the population in a shell grows to too many, people are selected at random and forced to emigrate to an outer shell. It is impossible to travel back to an inner shell. The selection process, maintenance of the shells and security are provided by Zeus, a tremendously powerful computer designed to take over when the task became to large for humans to handle.
Prince Land-a doesn't believe that it's really impossible to go back and he hires a master assassin named Mag Ancor, a master illusionist named Cherry and a mistress of exotic arts named Sine Anura to go back down. Anura has a built in electric system which she can use to stun or kill. None of these people would normally volunteer to go on such a suicide mission so Land-a gets all of them in trouble with the law. Their choices are to go on the mission or go to jail. Also accompanying are Cherry's assistants Tez and Carli.
The five explorers are put on a ship and given a destination. At the destination they find a huge volcano, 2,000 miles wide and 1,000 miles high. Inside the volcano is a Cageworld. Before the shells were built, men molded planets in the same orbits as the original nine planets. The shells were then built around these. The ship takes a lot of buffeting going through the volcano and makes it to the Cageworld. This world has almost no life. Mostly there are huge machines terraforming the planet for future use. The crew does come upon a small town and lands there for exploration. Coincidentally, the machines pick that time to bury the area in fresh soil and the townspeople accuses the crew of bringing on the wrath of the Gods. They barely escape.
Out the other end the little ship makes its way to the next inner shell, Earth shell. At a selected Cageworld they find a planet whose luminaries are about to go out. Glaciers cover the whole planet and only one small dying community is found. It's sad but this may have been the world where it all started.
At Venus shell they land on a Cageworld with every conceivable environment (Genesis world). Each environment is populated by vicious, well adapted people and animals. As they are about to explore, Anura is captured by a winged man. The rest try to pursue but can't. Continuing their exploration, Mag discovers a huge human manufacturing plant. Zeus is manufacturing people who can populate any part of the solar system no matter how inhospitable, according to its own poorly written prime directive. Most of the test tube creatures are not capable of survival and most of those are destroyed. Anura's ancestors were probably programmed here. Back at the original landing site, Anura is found saying good bye to her new lover.
The next step is Zeus itself which turns out to be its own fiercely guarded Cageworld. Maq tricks Zeus into allowing the ship to orbit itself and then bluffs Zeus into believing that he is capable of destroying it. The purpose is to set the groundwork for reprogramming Zeus's prime directive - to provide land for humans, not adapt humans to the lands available. During the negotiations all the crew get a chance to visit Mercury shell and see the original sun first hand.
Review: "Search for the Sun" is not an outstanding novel and there are some glaring technical holes but it did keep my interest through out. The main characters are generally aggressive and capable but for each a more human, delicate side is shown. The novel has a shade too much violence but there is much more to it than violence (which is a big problem that recent science fictions have had). While the shell concept is not new (Freemen Dyson proposed the Type I, II, and III civilizations in 1960), I did not get the comfortable feeling that the author had done all his homework. It just didn't seem like it would work. I was also somewhat uncomfortable with the way Maq defeated Zeus - too little to Kirk like. Also, the problem with the prime directive was too simply stated (the word "shall" instead of "should") and if it was so simply stated why would it be so difficult to change!