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Recent reading
May. 2nd, 2016 02:03 pmAurora by Kim Stanley Robinson
For my fannish book club; my choice. Wow, this book could've had "tailor-written for Luz" on the back--I could hardly put it down. The others in book club liked it fine, but did not match my level of enthusiasm. This book is in conversation with several of the author's previous works, and it especially adresses things I've been having issues with. So I was kind of "Ha, I see you've come around to my way of thinking!" KSR often is very positive about the potential of technology, but this book isn't, or not as much.
Basically, it's about a generation starship that turns around and comes back home. It digs deep down into the things that in SF books are often just the backdrop for the action--what happens to an ecosystem when it's shut into a small space? what if bacteria evolve that eat the guts of your spaceship? etc. There is so much tasty, tasty science in this book, yum. And it doesn't neglect the social side, either--what would happen to society on a spaceship like that? what if some people want to go back and others don't? Also, the narrator of the book is the spaceship computer, which is also really neat, so it gets to explore questions of artificial intelligence. I like how it practices and gets better at narrative. Also I like how much nature/landscape writing there is even if most of the story is set within a spaceship (ha ha, tailored for me indeed). Recommended!
The Ropemaker by Peter Dickinson
YA fantasy. I loved The Blue Hawk as a kid, and that is pretty much all my exposure to Dickinson. But I am delighted and charmed by this book! It was exactly what I needed right now. The characters and plot (if not the writing style) reminds me of DWJ a bit, in that they are creative and unexpected. Like, there's an empire where you need a permit to die (if you die without one, your relatives will be fined and/or enslaved). At first I thought that was just an inventive way to wring more taxes out of the people, but no, it turns out there's a reason for it that has to do with how the magic system works. The main characters are a girl and her grandmother, which is also pretty cool. Recommended!
For my fannish book club; my choice. Wow, this book could've had "tailor-written for Luz" on the back--I could hardly put it down. The others in book club liked it fine, but did not match my level of enthusiasm. This book is in conversation with several of the author's previous works, and it especially adresses things I've been having issues with. So I was kind of "Ha, I see you've come around to my way of thinking!" KSR often is very positive about the potential of technology, but this book isn't, or not as much.
Basically, it's about a generation starship that turns around and comes back home. It digs deep down into the things that in SF books are often just the backdrop for the action--what happens to an ecosystem when it's shut into a small space? what if bacteria evolve that eat the guts of your spaceship? etc. There is so much tasty, tasty science in this book, yum. And it doesn't neglect the social side, either--what would happen to society on a spaceship like that? what if some people want to go back and others don't? Also, the narrator of the book is the spaceship computer, which is also really neat, so it gets to explore questions of artificial intelligence. I like how it practices and gets better at narrative. Also I like how much nature/landscape writing there is even if most of the story is set within a spaceship (ha ha, tailored for me indeed). Recommended!
The Ropemaker by Peter Dickinson
YA fantasy. I loved The Blue Hawk as a kid, and that is pretty much all my exposure to Dickinson. But I am delighted and charmed by this book! It was exactly what I needed right now. The characters and plot (if not the writing style) reminds me of DWJ a bit, in that they are creative and unexpected. Like, there's an empire where you need a permit to die (if you die without one, your relatives will be fined and/or enslaved). At first I thought that was just an inventive way to wring more taxes out of the people, but no, it turns out there's a reason for it that has to do with how the magic system works. The main characters are a girl and her grandmother, which is also pretty cool. Recommended!
