Summary

Bowl of Heaven and Shipstar collects two novels from science fiction masters Larry Niven ( Ringworld ) and Gregory Benford ( Timescape ) that weave a thrilling intersteller odyssey in the not-too-distant future.

"If you like hard SF with mind-stretching ideas--both physical and psychological--then you definitely want to read this book." -- Analog on the New York Times bestseller Bowl of Heaven

A human expedition to colonize another star system is jeopardized by an encounter with an astonishingly immense artifact in interstellar space: a bowl-shaped structure cupping a star, with a habitable area equivalent to many millions of Earths. And which, tantalizingly, is on a direct path heading toward the same system.

Investigating the Bowl, or Shipstar, the human explorers are separated--one group captured by the gigantic structure's alien inhabitants, the other pursued across its strange and dangerous landscape--while the mystery of the Shipstar's origins and purpose propel the human voyagers toward discoveries that transform their understanding of their place in the universe.