Everything in this story is a little too large (or long) to fully imagine. By the end, though, I had a fairer grasp of its scope. I suppose that by the time humanity has developed the expertise to explore other regions of the galaxy (without the aid of space/time warping devices), it will also have evolved the ability to extend its lifespan - I guess it would need to - for traveling around the galaxy at a not insignificant fraction of the speed of light would, nevertheless, take hundreds of thousands of years. Against this backdrop place a spaceship the size of Jupiter with rockets larger than moons, fuel tanks the size of small planets and a hidden world deep within its core the size of Mars. The masters (not the builders) of the ship are humans who can live nearly forever. The most interesting part of this story is what happens as a society evolves and the role of religion/belief systems in shaping it. The wonder of the story is in the size of everything and, to a degree, how the ship is maintained. What's missing, for me, is how humans evolve in terms of their thinking, what distracts them from the tedium of life (if it is, indeed, tedious), their moral grounding and philosophy when one lives for hundreds of thousands of years. What continues to provide them pleasure? Intellectual stimulation? In the end, a reason to keep living? These ideas are noticeably absent. Short of this, it was a really cool read.
By the way, I've been reading Asimov's Foundation series (more than halfway through). Hence my absence in the blogosphere.
