Big Dumb Object

A term used in discussing science fiction, "Big Dumb Object" (BDO) refers to any mysterious object (usually of extraterrestrial or otherwise unknown origin and of absolutely immense power) in a story which generates an intense sense of wonder just by being there; to a certain extent, the term deliberately deflates this. Probably coined by reviewer Roz Kaveney [Kaveney, Roz, 1981, "", issue 22.] , the term was not in general use until it was included in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction as a joke by Peter Nicholls [Nicholls, Peter, 2000, "Big Dumb Objects and Cosmic Enigmas: The Love Affair between Space Fiction and the Transcendental", in Westfahl, Gary (ed), "Space and Beyond: The Frontier Theme in Science Fiction", Greenwood Press, p. 13. "... I decided to write an April Fool's entry. I would pretend that a phrase I’d always liked, originated by the critic Roz Kaveney but not in general use, was actually a known critical term. I would write an entry called "Big Dumb Objects" in a poker-faced style, suggesting an even more absurd critical term to be used in its place, "megalotropic sf.""] .

Big Dumb Objects often exhibit extreme or unusual properties, or a total absence of expected properties. For example the object discovered in Quatermass and the Pit was made of a material of extreme hardness, such that diamond tipped drills and acetylene torches would not damage it. At the same time nothing would adhere to it. In the movie of Michael Crichton's novel Sphere, the eponymous object would reflect everything in the room it was in except for the people there. Another example is the Lazy Gun from Iain M. Banks's novel Against a Dark Background. These weapons had a lot of mass and yet little weight, and weighed three times as much upside down as they did the right way up. Such unexpected properties are usually used to rule out conventional origins for the BDO and increase the sense of mystery, and even fear, for the characters interacting with it.

J.G. Ballard's short story, "Report on an Unidentified Space Station" (1982) may be regarded as an exploration of the metaphor of the BDO: in each successive report, the artifact's estimated size increases, people become lost within it.

Appearances

*Arthur C. Clarke's monolith in ""
*Larry Niven's Ringworld and sequels.
*Michael Crichton's Sphere in "Sphere"
*Peter F. Hamilton's Sleeping God in "The Night's Dawn Trilogy"
*John Varley's Gaea from the "Gaea Trilogy"
*The Halo megastructures from the eponymous video game series.
*The "Event Horizon" from the film of the same name.
*The Cuckoo from Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson's Saga of Cuckoo.

ee also

*Megastructure
*MacGuffin
*Xenoarchaeology

References