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By Greg Bear
Original publication date: 2010
A starship hurtles through the emptiness of space. Its destination-unknown. Its purpose-a mystery. Now, one man wakes up. Ripped from a dream of a new home-a new planet and the woman he was meant to love in his arms-he finds himself wet, naked, and freezing to death. The dark halls are full of monsters but trusting other survivors he meets might be the greater danger.
All he has are questions-- Who is he? Where are they going? What happened to the dream of a new life? What happened to Hull 03?
All will be answered, if he can survive the ship.
HULL ZERO THREE is an edge-of-your-seat thrill ride through the darkest reaches of space.
Barnes & Noble: Beyond the Horizon: 21st-Century SF by Paul di Filippo
Booklist: Never one to play it safe in his consistently inventive fiction, Bear takes the reader for a harrowing ride on a labyrinthine starship in his latest hard-SF-oriented novel. Bear’s protagonist is an amnesiac starship crew member just released from a deep hibernation state called Dreamtime. Naked, disoriented, and forced by extreme temperature and gravity fluctuations to find safety somewhere among a confusing network of passageways, the man eventually receives help from an odd assortment of fellow Dreamtime refugees. Taking stock of their surroundings, while avoiding onboard killing machines, the gang quickly realizes the starship has given them each a unique role to play, including discovering collectively why the ship has been seriously damaged and cast aside from its mission to seek out habitable worlds. Bear’s pithy, occasionally cryptic writing style perfectly captures the chaotic experiences and unsettling revelations the team endures, while putting an intriguing spin on the timeworn SF theme of interstellar planet hunting. One of Bear’s most thought-provoking and well-crafted novels to date. --Carl Hays
Dan Simmons: "Greg Bear's voice is a resonant, clear chord of quality binding some of the best SF of the 20th Century to the short list of science-savvy, sophisticated, top-notch speculative fiction of the 21st. More than a grace note, Hull Zero Three is a compelling allegro in the growing symphony of Greg Bear's finest work."
E-Reads: Cold, Wet and Naked on a Strange World.
iTunes/iBooks: Selected as one of the best Science Fiction/Fantasy books of 2010
NPR: Otherworldly: The Year's Most Transporting Books by Glen Weldon
OrbitBooks.net: Triple Honors for HULL ZERO THREE
Publishers Weekly: Starred Review. Multiple Hugo and Nebula winner Bear (City at the End of Time) sets this difficult but rewarding short novel on an interstellar colony ship gone astray. Teacher was supposed to be awakened just before landfall. What he finds when he gains some semblance of consciousness, however, is a dangerous and chaotic environment, with monsters roaming the ship's corridors and no one in charge. As he and a small band of equally ignorant crew members attempt to reach the gigantic ship's control center, they travel through a series of labyrinthine spaces, uncovering a variety of clues to the disaster that has destroyed large parts of the starship and damaged the controlling AIs. Not for those who prefer their space opera simpleminded, this beautifully written tale where nothing is as it seems will please readers with a well-developed sense of wonder.
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