Product Description

Fleeing Elizabeth Lindstrom's anger at the death of her son, Vance Garamond, a flickerwing commander, leaves the solar system far behind. Pursued by Earth's space fleet, Garamond finds a vast, alien-built spherical structure which might just change the destiny of the human race.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1632548 in Books
• Published on: 2000
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 187 pages

About the Author
Bob Shaw was born in Northern Ireland in 1931. He worked as a structural engineer, in industrial public relations and journalism before becoming a full-time writer in 1975. His other memorable novels include Other Days, Other Eyes, The Ragged Astronauts and The Wooden Spaceships. He died in 1996.

Customer Reviews

Pretty good book
I read this book after reading Shaw's Wooden Spaceships series. Both are fairly good, and I have always wondered why more people don't know about Bob Shaw. Someone above said this book is worse then Ringworld which is totally false. Whatever you do don't read the sequal, Orbitsville Departure, as it was pretty awful.

A typical, competent and interesting Bob Shaw effort
I'm yet to read a bad Bob Shaw book, but neither have I read an absolute masterwork by him. He tends to find an idea and sets out to examine it within the plot of a story, 'Orbitsville' is no exception.

The captain of an exploration starship, on the run from a corrupt regime, discovers an enormous hollow sphere. This metallic sphere completely surrounds a sun, with a radius akin to the distance of the earth to the sun. The inside surface of this sphere is billons of times larger than the surface of the earth and is covered with soil, seas, grass, mountains etc and is just ripe for settling on and the perfect escape for the denizens of an overcrowded earth. This is the background of the short novel that Shaw has whipped up.

‘Orbitsville’ will unfortunately draw unfavourable comparisons with Larry Niven’s ‘Ringworld’ and although they are outwardly similar, they principally concern different subjects. Where ‘Ringworld’ is about the exploration of the Ring, Orbitsville is more about size of the object being explored. Regardless, 'Orbitsville’ is still a fine read and Shaw skilfully holds the attention of the reader. 3.5-4/5

Lost in a Billion Miles of Cliches
Shaw is an ideas man, always good with a gimmick. His early novels, like NIGHTWALK, turned high concepts into rattling good yarns. With ORBITSVILLE, the gimmick is a Dyson's sphere: a planet built around a sun. The landmass is huge, billions of square miles. Imagine getting lost on it. Well, you don't have to. Half of Shaw's novel is about that. There's lots of empty space(as you'd imagine). Shaw does the "how-the-hell-are-we-going-to-find-our-way-home" subplot adequately, but on the occasions when his heroes stumble upon the planet's inhabitants Shaw's ingenuity dims. His aliens are a decidedly uninteresting lot. This wouldn't be so bad if the novel's main characters had any kind of depth, but the wooden hero doesn't develop beyond steadfast, and the spidery villainess is strictly saturday morning cartoon. A chase across a galactic empire gives a liveliness to the first quarter of the book, but it comes to an abrupt halt once the Dyson sphere looms into view. All rather disappointing, considering this book's reputation: Hugo award, in some top 100 lists. Larry Niven plays with the same idea more colourfully in RINGWORLD. In comparison, ORBITSVILLE is dullsville (sorry, I just had to).