Oolite Bulletins

(Adds title to reading list. )

goran wrote:

well done. What gave me up?

Well, I read it ten years or so ago (and think it is quite recommendable) and it is the only SF book I ever read or heard about that is about people looking what happened to an earlier expedition, finding out that there is an alien intelligence there, and having to retreat badly beaten. So I guessed correctly.

Two points already!

OK, next question: It is a book too, it's theme is the colonisation of interstellar space in a very unusual way - one could even say, inverted to the usually imagined way And it was written in the 1950s. The author was a male US-american.

Let's see if that is enough to be found out.

Tunnel in the Sky, Robert Heinlein.

It's not "Tunnel in the Sky" ...

Asimov's Pebble in the Sky? Or maybe Hamilton's City at World's End but, technically, Middletowners are not colonists.

Although, when I hear "inverted colonization" i remember one asteroid with no end on one side...

Possibly Greg Bear's Eon? That was the one with the Thistledown, yeah?

Selezen wrote:

Possibly Greg Bear's Eon? That was the one with the Thistledown, yeah?

Yep but Eon is from '85.

Yes. Good point...

For some reason this makes me think of this book, where indians (as in american natives) canoo through space.

But I do not remember the books title or author ...

All very creative ideas, but all not yet what I had in mind.

Another tip: The author's initials are JB, and it is, quite contrary to my first question, rather hardcore science fiction.

Hope to counter the considerable obscurity of the book with this info.

Is it 'And All the Stars a Stage'?

El Viejo should get a half-point imo for having correctly guessed the author ... but not the book.

Then it must be 'Cities in Flight'.

Still ... not ... there ...

Rats! I'd have to Google it now, and I won't do that!