A bit about Bob

Bob Shaw (picture Copyright unknown)

One of the good things about Bob Shaw and his writing, I feel, was that he sought out the obscure and unknown and presented it to the reader in a new and exciting form. Every writer should endeavour to do this of course, but some are more successful than others.

There are a few examples of this in his novels. The Ceres Solution (1983) has a grumpy handicapped young man as the protagonist. A very unsympathetic character with whom the reader gradually gets to like during his journey as he discovers secret methods of transport and alien do-gooders out to help mankind. In Dagger of the Mind (1979) the main character suffers from epilepsy, not something open for discussion in the late seventies, let alone the main subject of an SF novel. Reading A Wreath of Stars (1976) I was introduced to neutrinos and their strange properties then introduced to a universe of neutrinos and their even stranger inhabitants. Neutrinos are some of the smallest particles in existence, (all that quantum stuff aside) and yet another example of how Shaw digs deep into the obscure to show the reader unique and exciting aspects of the world we live in.

Shaw is most famous in SF circles for a couple of things. Slow Glass and Dyson spheres. Obviously he didn’t invent Dyson spheres but produced three novels which dealt with them in detail. Orbitsville (1975), Orbitsville Departure(1983) and Orbitsville Judgement (1990). A Dyson sphere is an artificial construct of immense magnitude that completely envelopes a star to produce a habitable environment of almost unlimited area. Even today most people couldn’t conceive of the size of such an object.

Slow glass is a brilliant yet simple concept, and indeed Shaw discusses it further in his non fiction book how to write science fiction (1993). Slow glass is just glass which captures light coming into it on one side and releases it out on the other side: much like normal glass. The only difference slow glass has is the length of time the light takes to go through it. For normal glass it is instantaneous, slow glass can take days, months, even years.

Fire pattern looks into the phenomenon of spontaneous human combustion. An obscure – and sometimes denied by science – happening which has been reported over the centuries but never really had its’ fifteen minutes of fame.

Vertigo (1978) updated as Terminal Velocity (1991) looked into the actualities and repercussions of personal flight. These things have been around since early James Bond films and again haven’t come directly into the public consciousness but they are persistent and they are growing. In fact recently at a race circuit near me, Knockhill in Dunfermline, and a man using a jet pack attempted the world speed record.

The Shadow of Heaven (1969, updated 1991) deals with a floating city. How many of those have we seen in fantasy and sf? Yet Shaw makes it believable, workable and liveable.