In science fiction, a mysterious and excessively large object of unknown origin is called a Big Dumb Object or BDO.
A typical BDO has unknown but potentially immense power and often unusual properties, even going against the physical laws. Contrary...
April has come, bringing with it sweltering balls of the sun. While it's still chill in some parts of the northern hemisphere, it's a 44°C summer with reports of touching 50°C in two weeks. And it's only April... with sunnery shimmery May yet to grace us.
This month I'm going to delve into a not-much-talked-about sub-genre. As humans, we are fascinated by things we have no explanations for. Be it Stonehenge, the Nazca Lines in Southern Peru or anything else that reminds us of BDO- Big Dumb Objects. Which is our punk for this month. So ready, Punksters? Bring on the camera(in our case, the keyboard) and start rolling, folks.
The term "Big Dumb Object" was coined by critic Roz Kaveney and later popularised by the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction by Peter Nicholls in 1993.
The Big Dumb Object (BDO) is a main redeeming aspect of the sci-fi genre. The term is a broad – from alien architectures, ranging from the man-sized to the planetary, mile-long spaceships or even the standard scifi fleets. In fact, all BDO's aren't even dumb. Contrary to perceptions, most of them have rather sophisticated infrastructure and technologies tucked away in the shadows. They come across as unfamiliar and can often do dangerous or unexpected things--from lurking on a horizon to creating worlds.
Such is the Big Dumb Object. It's really, really massive and powerful beyond our meaure. It could be a weapon or a habitat. However dangerous it is, it has probably a tiny flaw like logic, antimatter, or a well placed torpedo in the right air shaft. Sometimes it's disguised as a natural phenomenon. But the weakness is always there.
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Admittedly, science fiction loves to go in for quite grand spectacles concerning the BDO's. It gives us a portal through which we can experience the marvels of our universe, and Big Dumb Objects are one of the keys to gaining access to the doors. BDOs are often established into storylines to awe us with their amazingness and intrigue. They enliven great scifi plots by the writers aware of the fact that there are infinite possibilites in speculative fiction.
In terms of utter creativity, I think no writer has come close Douglas Adams's BDO in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Magrathea is one of Hitchhiker's highlights: a world where bespoke planetoids are designed for the galactic 1%, which has left the galaxy littered with half-finished construction projects backed by shadowy investors(reminiscent of our times, isn't it?)
Speaking of which, isn't earth a giant computer commissioned by mice to find the question to the answer that isn't 42. It is quite possible that we are living every day on the biggest, dumbest object of them all...
There were a lot of precursors BDO genre. Larry Niven's 1970 Ringworld largely defined how future writers would approach BDO stories. In the story, Louis Wu and a collection of allies travel to a strange artifact 200 light years from the Solar System2, a solid ring about 2 AU in diameter, clearly artificial and with a habitable surface dwarfing the surface of the Earth. No sooner does the expedition arrive than they are shipwrecked, forced to explore the Ringworld in person.
