I read this novel in paperback sometime in the last ten years. It’s about a group of astronauts who are sent out to investigate an alien ship. The ship turns out to be a living creature and destroys their spaceship and “eats” them. After passing through the creature’s digestive system they emerge naked inside the creature’s body. They’re separated from each other and have different adventures. Eventually it’s revealed that
the creature has multiple brains and one of them has gone insane.
I liked Titan (except for the definite 70s vibe) and got about half-way through Wizard before I gave up.
My favorite image: one of the members of the centaur race is talking to a human. She suddenly lets go of her bowels (as horses are wont to do) and is immediately embarrassed. The way that’s described is so sweet, you feel for the poor centaur.
After I finished it, I couldn’t stop writing science fiction. I had toyed with the idea, but it put me into a writing frenzy and I began to write and send off stories. Eventually, I started to sell. But I don’t know if I would have ever started if I hadn’t read the book.
Why? I don’t have any idea. The book was OK, but I’ve read much better books. All I know was that once I finished it, I knew I had to write stories.
Hey RealityChuck (and BrainGlutton, if memory serves)… I know you’re a published SciFi author. Are you fairly mainstream? Is it possible I’ve read you before? If not… well, I’d like to.
If you’d rather not out yourself publicly, my e-mail is in my profile, and I can keep a secret.
Tristan- the Hard SciFi fan who is looking for something beyond the next Niven to keep him happy…
I liked the book, but didn’t want to emulate it. I suppose the closest thing was that I realized you didn’t have to have brand new original elements and that you could do very well by taking established SF elements and putting a new twist.
For instance, my first published story took the idea of shape-changing aliens (well-used even before then) and postulated that they would become the perfect sex partners (with a touch of Clifford Simak thrown in as well).
Another story of mine was a situation so cliched that an editor once described it as a concept she would never be interested in publishing (it was, elsewhere).
My latest (see sig) owes a lot to the Heinlein story “Them.” Another – which got me an honorable mention in Dozois’ Best of the Year anthology – was a twisted version of a very well-known story/Twilight Zone episode.
I think that Varley was throwing together a lot of well-used elements in Titan, and I realized that I could do that, too. You didn’t need original ideas if the story made good use of them.
Plus the realization that we were the same age . . .