I just finished my third book by Ben Bova. I have yet to start reading a biography on Bova, however many of his books have been written while I was alive. In his writing I have noticed that a lot of the issues he brings up are issues that we face on the planet Earth. For example in Bova's novel "Venus", the protagonist's brother was killed on a mission to Venus, where he was hoping to find evidence that would support the argument that if we did not change our behaviors that Earth would turn into a run-away greenhouse effect. Today scientist are arguing about global warming and try to find evidence to prove or disprove it.

In "Jupiter" there are slightly different issues at hand. The novel slates science versus religion. This has been and is a hot topic on our planet. The New Morality is a religious group that has also gained much political power. They are against any scientific study that could reveal that there might be other intelligent life forms. The protagonist in this novel is a scientist and also is religious. He believes that discover new life forms is not a sin because God created the Universe and therefor they are just studying Gods work.

So you can see that in both these books Ben Bova is focusing on issues that we face today. He is taking hot controversial issues and using his ability as a writer to turn these into interesting novels. What makes Bova's work powerful is that the characters and issues that he presents in his novel seam real. I felt that these things could happen and therefor we must think about these issues and how we want to world to be in the future. I think that part of the reason why Ben Bova's novels take place in the future is because he wants to show us that issues that we face now, we will also face in the future.

Another theme I have noticed in Bova's work is exploration. In his novels characters are traveling to places that are unknown. I think that human nature is to explore our environment and figure new things out so we can better understand our situation. Although Ben Bova's novels are fictional he is able to pain an image of these new worlds. For example in "Venues" he explains that beneath the clouds lies a gigantic oceans thousands of times bigger than any ocean on earth. He also describes the intelligent animals by comparing them to things we can relate to. For example: the creatures were like giant wales there bodies were as big as cities.

I have already finished Jupiter and Venues and I am now on my third book "Return to Moon Base". Lately I haven't been doing a lot of reading so I have only advanced about 30 pages since my last update. My goal is to continue to read "Return to Moon Base" for at least 30 minutes every night, or finish the book by ski week, which ever comes first. During ski week I will begin on the biography.

Since Ben Bova is a contemporary writer there are not many books that are a dedicated biography just about him. However, I did find a book, "The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction", edited by Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn, with a 134 page entry just on Ben Bova. I also found "Edging into the Future: Science Fiction and Contemporary Cultural Transformation" by Veronica Hollinger, with a 22 page article. Finally there is "Understanding Contemporary American Science Fiction: Age of Maturity, 1970-2000", by Darren Harris-Fain, with a short 14 page chapter on Ben Bova.

I will ramp up on the reading during sky week and finish at least two-thirds of the biography. This will give me enough time to finish all the reading by the March 10th deadline.