he Stellar Group, a coalition of nonviolent aliens, have quarantined
humanity by closing access to the interstellar link system. The three
species of aliens--Pipe-Rillas, lanky tubular assemblies; Tinker Composites,
composed of hundreds of insect-like components; and Angels, large vegetable
symbiotes--consider humans too unpredictably violent to roam the interstellar
spaceways.
But a new link has opened in the Geyser Swirl, and three ships sent to
investigate--two alien and one human--have failed to return. The Stellar
Group, afraid to send rescue ships, asks Earth to launch a mission, but only
if Chan Dalton is on board. Dalton agrees to go only if he can reassemble
his old crew of colorful misfits, which includes engineer/mechanic Bony
Rombelle, suave con man Danny Casement, magician Chrissie Winger, language
expert Tully O'Toole, weapons master Deb Bisson and strongman Tarbush
Hanson, who can talk to animals. Chan searches the solar system, finding
everyone but Bony, and joins Gen. Dag Korin and his assistant and
brilliant scientist Elke Siry aboard the Hero's Return. They enter the link
to the Geyser Swirl.
They arrive to find themselves under water on a planet they call Limbo.
They join with the crews of the other three disabled ships--a Tinker
Composite, a Pipe-Rilla, an Angel and three humans, including spoiled
rich-kid captain Friday Indigo, and Chan's old crewmate Bony. They have
discovered a race of non-violent aquatic Bubble People, who reveal that
another, highly violent race of aliens occupies the nearby shore. These
aliens, the Malacostracans, have created the link.
The powerful, evil, lobster-like Malacostracans want the humans to lead
them back to Earth. They present a deadly threat to the survival of not
only those on Limbo, but to Earth and the Stellar Group worlds as well, and
must be stopped.
A colorful pastiche of adventure SF
The Spheres of Heaven is a sequel to Sheffield's 1993 novel The
Mind Pool, which in turn was a rewritten and expanded version of his
1986 novel The Nimrod Hunt. They were written as an homage to the
classic 1950s SF adventures of Alfred Bester, particularly The Stars My
Destination. The quick ending of this sequel, which leaves the degree
of success of Chan's solution and the exact fate of those left on Limbo
uncertain, makes one strongly suspect that this might be a middle book in
the series, with more sequels to come.
Colorful, eccentric characters were key to Bester's SF adventures, and
Sheffield has delivered many in this book. Chan Dalton and his motley crew
of misfits have more in common with the con-artist heroes in the movie
The Sting than the heroes of most science fiction adventures. They,
along with the exotic alien species in the Stellar Group, effectively
support the common SF theme that a diverse team of colorful misfits can
always outsmart a more powerful army of cookie-cutter conformists.
Sheffield's characters, however, too often seem more caricatures than
distinct individuals. Even Chan Dalton never achieves the depth of
characterization that made Bester's Gully Foyle, for instance, one of SF's
most memorable heroes. The interestingly diverse Stellar Group aliens often
seem like straw men set up to show the superiority of clever humans who
refuse to limit their options in seeking justifiable goals.
The Spheres of Heaven will never be judged a classic SF novel,
like those of Bester, but it is a well-executed homage to the classic SF
adventure novels of the 1950s that helped SF become a distinctive literary
genre.
