The Goliath Stone

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"A Tom Doherty Associates book."
With an asteroid on a collision course with Earth, Doctor Toby Glyer and his partner William Connors must find a way to make contact with their wayward children -- the Briareus nanites -- and save the planet.

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A short story in novel pants submitted by eknapp on July 18, 2013, 11:55am I read Niven and Pournelle's Lucifer's Hammer once upon a time and I remember it ever so fondly, the (dated) hard science, the social deconstruction, the mob psychology, the tension and terror and ambition and high-minded goals and the big cast of characters. Loved it.

When I saw that another Big Rock book had been published with Larry Niven's name on it, I may have set my expectations a bit too high. Where Hammer is steak and potatoes and really good IPA, Stone is roadside carnival popcorn. It's decent but not very satisfying and you can tell it's been sitting in that bag under the heat lamps for a while.

Around 2020, a team of scientists launches experimental nanobots into space in hopes of mining the wealth of the solar system. The project apparently fails when communication is lost, but some 30 years later an asteroid piloted by the nanos is on a collision course with Earth and the scientists must reassemble to save the day. In the meantime one of the scientists has secretly infected the world with more nanos that eliminate disease, kill rapists and bullies, advance women's rights, regrow amputated body parts, improve memory, halt the advance of deserts, and reverse the aging process.

The book is packed with two things: science fiction literary references (I got a lot of them but I could tell I was on the outside of the joke a lot of the time) and mildly bawdy sex humor. All the newly nano-youngified scientists just can't keep their hands off each other.

The prose is adequate. The dialogue is occasionally humorous but mostly clunky. The plot structure, which jumps between timelines for a while, is handled clumsily. I did enjoy the descriptions of the evolution of nano "civilization", as institutions such as war and economy are invented.