Bowl of Heaven

Name: Bowl of Heaven
Brand: Tantor Audio
Availability: InStock
Rating: 3.6 (5 reviews)
Author: Gregory Benford
ISBN: 9798855518320

Author: Gregory Benford, Larry Niven

Series: Bowl of Heaven

Narrator: James R. Cheatham

Unabridged: 13 hr 49 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 07/22/2025

Categories: Fiction, Science Fiction

Synopsis

Bowl of Heaven and Shipstar collects two novels from science fiction masters Larry Niven (Ringworld) and Gregory Benford (Timescape) that weave a thrilling interstellar odyssey in the not-too-distant future.

"If you like hard SF with mind-stretching ideas—both physical and psychological—then you definitely want to read this book." —Analog on the New York Times bestseller Bowl of Heaven

A human expedition to colonize another star system is jeopardized by an encounter with an astonishingly immense artifact in interstellar space: a bowl-shaped structure cupping a star, with a habitable area equivalent to many millions of Earths. And which, tantalizingly, is on a direct path heading toward the same system.

Investigating the Bowl, or Shipstar, the human explorers are separated—one group captured by the gigantic structure's alien inhabitants, the other pursued across its strange and dangerous landscape—while the mystery of the Shipstar's origins and purpose propel the human voyagers toward discoveries that transform their understanding of their place in the universe.

About Gregory Benford

Gregory Benford is a physicist, educator, and author. He received a BS from the University of Oklahoma and a PhD from the University of California, San Diego. Benford is a professor of physics at the University of California, Irvine, where he has been a faculty member since 1971. He is a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and a Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University. He has served as an advisor to the Department of Energy, NASA, and the White House Council on Space Policy. He is the author of over twenty novels, including In the Ocean of the Night, The Heart of the Comet (with David Brin), Foundation’s Fear, Bowl of Heaven (with Larry Niven), Timescape, and The Berlin Project. A two-time winner of the Nebula Award, Benford has also won the John W. Campbell Award, the British Science Fiction Award (BSFA), the Australian Ditmar Award, and the 1990 United Nations Medal in Literature. In 1995 he received the Lord Foundation Award for contributions to science and the public comprehension of it. He has served as scientific consultant to the NHK Network and for Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Rusty on January 30, 2015

What happens when two masters of Science Fiction collaborate on an entirely new novel of mankind’s future among the stars? You get something so bad that it’s worth sitting up and paying attention. Honestly, this book is definitively, and I’m being serious here, the most poorly crafted professionally p......more

Goodreads review by Bradley on March 09, 2020

Just when I was thinking that I had been really missing some Big Dumb Objects in my life... this book comes to save me! Yay! It's a riff on Niven's old theme of Ringworld, true, but with a rather huge twist. This is a stir-fry bowl of unimaginable proportions. No. Actually, it's just a bowl driven by......more

Goodreads review by Tamahome on November 10, 2012

pg 111/412: Very traditional, Ringworld or Rendezvous with Rama-like sf novel. Should take me only 10 hours to read. Has got plenty of science, space, and aliens, but it's not bogged down in it. None of that singularity stuff. pg 215/412: Hey, I'm halfway though. I just might finish this thing. Altho......more

Goodreads review by Gerhard on October 20, 2012

With Old School, Hard SF like this, the characterisation is not that subtle: 57% into the Kindle version, we get this gem: "Ayaan was an Arab woman who dressed in deck uniform like everyone else, but occasionally at dinner wore a stylish veil and glinting emerald earrings." Cannot forget the bling. A......more

Goodreads review by David on October 26, 2012

I had MUCH higher hopes for this book. It is, after all, co-written by two excellent novelists. Unfortunately, this does NOT show through. I found the writing actually bad at times, and confusing at others. Perhaps Mr. Benford and Mr. Niven did not talk to each other much while working on their sect......more