Roger MacBride Allen
The Ring of Charon
Tor 1994
ISBN 0812530144
Monika says:
On Pluto a team of scientists prepare the last round of experiments
with the Ring of Charon, a gigantic particle accelerator installed on
Pluto’s moon. The research center is about to be closed because of its
immense costs and low profit. Young physicist Larry Chao believes that a
groundbreaking revelation is just within reach and wants to prevent that.
Without the knowledge or approval of his superiors he conducts an
experiment to prove that the Ring of Charon actually is very important for
gravity research. At first everything goes as planned, but then something
incredible happens: when the Ring sends a gravity beam to Earth, the
planet vanishes and in her place is a Black Hole that matches her in mass.
And there’s another thing the colonists throughout the Solar System have
to worry about: the experiment apparently woke a strange creature from its
sleep. Asteroid swarms appear and aim for the planets and their moons.
Soon it becomes clear that they aren’t asteroids at all and that the
remaining Solar System is not a very pleasant place to be.
THE RING OF CHARON is the first part of a series continued with THE
SHATTERED SPHERE. Roger MacBride Allen announced part three on his
website. Although he assures the reader in the prologue of Part 1 that
every book can stand on its own THE RING OF CHARON has no real conclusion.
Who wants to find out what happened to the vanished Earth and whether it
will be possible to restore it to its place in the solar system will have
to read Part 2.
In spite of the quite original premise the book has a few slow
stretches perhaps because none of the characters were properly fleshed
out. The reader doesn’t get to care about the protagonists, not even
about Larry Chao. The science part is interesting and I am often willing
to forgive weak characters if that is the case, but THE RING OF CHARON
didn’t manage to capture my attention and I read it alongside several
other books. The Charonians are too strange and not very believable and
the "Naked Purpure" are too freaky, although clubs like that may
well correspond with human nature. Nutcases have always existed, so why
not in a far future. If you like bizarre ideas you will probably enjoy
them, but I found them too artificial and they didn’t add much to the
plot either.
THE RING OF CHARON didn’t quite live up to my expectations, but I’ll
still read THE SHATTERED SPHERE. |
