Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2302802 in Books
• Published on: 2004-06-25
• Binding: Paperback
• 104 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Ten years after its mysterious disappearance, the space shuttleVenture returns to Earth covered in organic material, rewired withalien technology and missing all but one of its crew members. The dustin its wheel tracks indicates it has been on Mars and possibly otherplanets as well. The United States government drafts an ex-astronautbiologist, a brash young propulsion expert and a washed-outpsychiatrist to piece together what happened to the Venture. Ellis hascrafted a scientific mystery similar in structure to an issue of hisacclaimed series Planetary. However, where the protagonists of thatseries are detached observers of the fantastic, here Ellis gives eachcharacter a personal stake in the investigation. Ellis has struckgold: his old talents for mad ideas and nuanced tough talk melds witha new optimism, giving this story an emotional depth far beyond thatof typical sci-fi. Doran's art serves his story well, as she handlescataclysmic disaster scenes, detailed technical exposition and tenderhuman moments with equal deftness.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

This Sucks Totally Slow & Borringgggggggggggggggggggggg
I'm sure I will get "this review didn't help me" comments but this tpb sucks. I usually like Warren Ellis but this book was so slow and boring and had no real punch. No aliens, nada. Thank God I got it cheap here. It was probably sold so cheap because it sucked. Anyway, don't waste your money on this. Totally slow & boring reading.

Graphic SF Reader
Orbiter is beautiful to look at. Apart from that, it is both a homage to the space program, and the brave men and women who become astronauts, and a critiscim of the weakness, lack of vision, and cowardice of those currently running the place. Not to mention a big of anger directed at the same thing as well.

A shuttle mission has gone missing, and returns in a very alien state, with a pilot that is very changed, insane, and perhaps now alien himself.

Warren Ellis's love letter to manned space flight
Writer Warren Ellis is a space program true believer, a kid who grew up when America flew to the moon, and fervently wishes we'd go much, much farther. This is his love letter to manned space flight - a moody, detailed, futuristic fairy tale about the return of America's final space shuttle, the Venture, which vanished off the radar during a regular flight, never to return. This event essentially ended the space program and when the book begins, Kennedy Space Center has (improbably) devolved into an immense, squalid homeless camp -- the incoming prodigal shuttle squishes innumerable shabby inhabitants. Then the military takes over and assembles a Scooby Gang made of misfits left over from the old space program of a decade earlier, and one manic, anarchistic young propulsion expert.

The mood of the story is evocative, but there are problems, largely due, I think, to its being caught in the confines of DC's Vertigo universe, which means there must be gratuitous, gosh-heck messing with our minds and nose-thumbing towards authority, etc, as well as a touch of graphic violence. Indeed, the one out-of-place plot point is that the lone astronaut who returns from the void inexplicably attacks and mutilates a soldier who enters the returned mystery ship, but then becomes entirely docile and sympathetic -- his violent behavior is never explained or addressed. Other than that, though, this is a captivating story, with some interesting dips into theoretical physics. The story rushes to a halt, though -- a little more finesse at the end would have been nice, but all in all this is a good read for those of us who are into the whole "boldly go where no one has gone before" mentality. Worth checking out!