The Artifact as Icon In Science Fiction

Wolfe, Gary K. "The Artifact as Icon in Science Fiction." Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 1.1 (1988): 51-69.

Includes brief discussions of Larry Niven's Ringworld (1970) and The Ringworld Engineers (1980), and M. Crichton's Sphere (novel) — which GKW sees as an instructively derivative work. Note the alien ship in A. C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama (q.v. under Fiction) growing "from a tantalizing mystery into an adventure-filled landscape and finally into a monument to the indifference of the universe" (65-66).

Wolfe also deals with Gregory Benford's Against Infinity (1983), a work of interest for genetic engineering and other themes.