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“Damn. That’s just wrong.��

This was a pleasant surprise. Grand Central Arena made it to my current “must read�� list by virtue of being one of those books I have owned for ages but never got around to (I try and force them into my reading diet every so often). Turns out, it is just about the best book I have read this year so far.

“Step outside on your homeworld and look up. See, my friends, the thousands of stars that must blaze in your skies as they do in mine. See the dots of light that are galaxies, so far away that the racing rays of light they emit are old, old by the time they reach the eye. Try, if you can, to grasp these things, hold them all in your mind.
Then imagine . . . imagine that you could hold it all in your mind, that you could see all things, all places, at the same time, that to you the riddle of time and space was as trivial a puzzle as opening a box in your hand, that you could open that box and see every star, every planet, as a master artisan might look upon it. An artisan who wished to create a replica, the greatest work of art praising Creation that ever has been . . .��

Grand Central Arena carries its influences on its sleeve, and comes out smelling like roses. Doc Smith, updated for the modern era of Science Fiction? Hell, yes!

The premise, in a nutshell: the invention of superluminal travel, by any species, using the old “hyperspace�� convention, is a flytrap, and humans are about to find that out the hard way.
An experimental ship, performing the first ever FTL jump for humankind, deposits the hapless crew in a brobdingnagian artificial space known as Grand Central Arena.
What follows is a tale of exploration, first contact, wonder, and speculative problem solving (not to mention a good old violent scrape or two). In other words, all the reasons why we read Science Fiction.

“The Arena is a single construct, a volume many light-years across, which itself contains a duplicate of every galaxy, a Sphere for every star, in all the cosmos from which we come.��

Interestingly, even though the golden age of Science Fiction is clearly referenced here, I was reminded in no small part of the Uplift series (by David Brin). The new emergents are parallels of the uplifted, and the way that they are treated by the Factions of the Arena are not so different as the approach of the Galactics in Brin’s novels.

Let’s start a little interstellar war!

Of course, with names like Voidbuilders, Shadeweavers and The Vengeance, you just know it’s going to be buckets of fun. The book cleverly also does leave a few questions unanswered and introduces some elements of philosophy and theology and, dare I say it, magic (as postulated by Arthur C. Clarke and his third law, i.e. is it magic or is it science?).
What I mean to say is, Grand Central Arena does leave some things open for interpretation, which of course also leaves room for a sequel.

In addition to all of the above, the writing is actually really seamless. It’s a longish book (almost 700 pages) but I flew through it. It is just a really good example of how entertaining this kind of thing can be when done right.