Recent reading
Jun. 17th, 2017 12:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luzulaGood Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton (audiobook)
SF about two isolated groups of people who survived the apocalypse: two people in an Arctic research station and a bunch of astronauts on a space mission. It isn't a bad book, but neither am I enthusiastic about it.
Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
Reread. This was a formative series for me, but it's actually been a long time since I read it. But yeah, still really good: characters I care about and interesting SF ideas that takes both the natural and social side of things seriously. The opening of the book doesn't actually work that well for me--I'm sure it's supposed to pique interest by having in-media-res conflict, but since Frank is very unsympathetic in that section I'm more put off than intrigued. But then it jumps back to start at the beginning of the colonization, and that really works for me. I'm sure there are people who think there's too much infodump, but these people are scientists, they care about this and so do I. I loooove Nadia's section where she's working to build Underhill. She's just so happy doing construction work and solving problems, and it inspires me with respect for engineers. And I really like how we get different people's perspective in different sections, it adds a lot to making it feel like this isn't a homogenous society; it has conflicts. And also that it's a large world, there are many people in it!
One thing that doesn't ring entirely true for me is that access to oxygen isn't as limiting as it should be. Like, when they're out on long trips they don't talk about how much space oxygen tanks take up, when they're delayed people worry more often about lack of food than lack of oxygen, nobody ever dies because they didn't bring enough oxygen and it ran out (although they do die when the dome of a tent town is sabotaged and they didn't have helmets on). I dunno, I think it should feel like more of a limiting factor. Overall KSR is much more of a techno-optimist than I am, although it's not like technology is handwaved away or treated as magic--this is much more of a near-future scenario than some of his later books.
SF about two isolated groups of people who survived the apocalypse: two people in an Arctic research station and a bunch of astronauts on a space mission. It isn't a bad book, but neither am I enthusiastic about it.
Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
Reread. This was a formative series for me, but it's actually been a long time since I read it. But yeah, still really good: characters I care about and interesting SF ideas that takes both the natural and social side of things seriously. The opening of the book doesn't actually work that well for me--I'm sure it's supposed to pique interest by having in-media-res conflict, but since Frank is very unsympathetic in that section I'm more put off than intrigued. But then it jumps back to start at the beginning of the colonization, and that really works for me. I'm sure there are people who think there's too much infodump, but these people are scientists, they care about this and so do I. I loooove Nadia's section where she's working to build Underhill. She's just so happy doing construction work and solving problems, and it inspires me with respect for engineers. And I really like how we get different people's perspective in different sections, it adds a lot to making it feel like this isn't a homogenous society; it has conflicts. And also that it's a large world, there are many people in it!
One thing that doesn't ring entirely true for me is that access to oxygen isn't as limiting as it should be. Like, when they're out on long trips they don't talk about how much space oxygen tanks take up, when they're delayed people worry more often about lack of food than lack of oxygen, nobody ever dies because they didn't bring enough oxygen and it ran out (although they do die when the dome of a tent town is sabotaged and they didn't have helmets on). I dunno, I think it should feel like more of a limiting factor. Overall KSR is much more of a techno-optimist than I am, although it's not like technology is handwaved away or treated as magic--this is much more of a near-future scenario than some of his later books.
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Date: 2017-06-18 03:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-06-19 09:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-06-19 12:25 pm (UTC)