The Sword and Laser discussion

Did anyone else cry when

(view spoiler)[the ship dies? (hide spoiler)]

or am I the only wuss!? :-P

I didn't actually cry but I was pretty sad about it :(

Antoinette wrote: "Did anyone else cry when

[spoilers removed]

or am I the only wuss!? :-P"

I'm like AndrewP. Sad but no tears. (view spoiler)[The Ship was the only character I cared about. (hide spoiler)]

I thought it was poignant and a mirror of the first half of the mission.

(view spoiler)[Devi solves all the problems and even while dying she pushed herself to help out and enables them to reach their destination only to die once they arrive and doesn't live to see them land on Aurora.
Ship who has become an extension of Devi through Devi's training takes on the full responsibility of getting them to earth. She literally pushes herself to breaking point and once she has completed her mission, she dies without seeing the survivors land on earth.

It was sad but I thought it was a fitting way for ship and Jochi to go out. If they had survived they were doomed to spent the rest of their lives in a lonely orbit around Saturn. Jochi was an old man with heart problems and ship was falling apart. Better to go out in a blaze of glory than to just fade away and/or rust away (hide spoiler)]

Sad. It was a great character. But... seemed unbelievably capable in the latter half of the book (completely rebuilt/remodelled everything on a mega-engineering scale) that seemed inconsistent with the crews inability to do pretty match anything at all earlier on other than patch things. Sure the ship was smarter, but it had the same "stuff" available as before.

The whole second half of the book seemed less detailed/researched/thought out than the first half. Almost like two different books by two different authors.

Yes; for me that was the only point in the book where there was an emotional punch. I do agree however that it did seem a little odd that Ship appeared to progress significantly in technical capability over the course of the novel, although my reading was that this was intentional and the oddness was actually a failing of the writing.

(view spoiler)[It struck me that the book was more about the evolution of Ship rather than the travails of the humans. This is even reflected in the prose, which gets progressively more complex as Ship's narrative abilities improve (something which I believe KSR handled very well). It did seem however that, although the increasing intelligence of Ship's mind was expressed very well, the improvement in its physical capabilities was glossed over. Even amongst the humans in the novel, other than Devi, no-one seemed to think it worth commenting on the progress that the Ship was making. By the end of the Ship's story it had appeared to have reached almost Singularity levels of awareness, which you would have expected to be cause for at least some excitement and/or consternation. The only person who seemed to have any feeling for Ship was Freya, however this appeared to be more as a connection to her mother rather than because of the "humanity" the ship was displaying. (hide spoiler)]

This is symptomatic of my main problem with the book, which, while containing great concepts, didn't seem willing to spend any time on anything not directly related to the immediate narrative.

I cared more about the ship than I did about most of the characters. I found the end of story unsatisfying, simply because it just cut off.

It made sense in the narrative, but still left me unfulfilled. It probably didn't help that I didn't enjoy most of what came after.

Yes, the very last section of the book seemed superfluous; it would have far better to end it at the obvious point. This would have also made sense given that that the narrative seemed to ignore any human actions (view spoiler)[that couldn't be witnessed by the ship (hide spoiler)].

I agree - to me it would have made sense to end the book with

(view spoiler)[ the death of the ship - the story stopping because the narrative the ship was creating had ceased. It would have left us wondering what had happened to the humans - but that would have fit with the narrative as we had already been left wondering about the full details of what happened to cause the other starship to explode and also the fate those who remained behind. (hide spoiler)]

Ship was definitely my favourite character. :-)

Who narrates most books?

Ship didn't start the narrative of the book - so there is a symmetry in (view spoiler)[ the fact that the book started before Ship's birth and continues after its death. (hide spoiler)]

Antoinette wrote: "Ship didn't start the narrative of the book - so there is a symmetry in [spoilers removed]"

I concur on your excellent observation.

Yes, true, however, although the beginning seemed to make a natural transition between narrators, the ending felt (to me at least) tacked on and a bit deflating. It did cross my mind that going back to the human perspective might have been done for symmetry, however, if so, I think it was a literary flourish too far.

I guess it probably depends on who you made the strongest emotional link with. For me it was Ship, but I can see that the ending makes more sense if we are meant to feel more for Freya.

I would have said the Freya was the main character, not Ship, so it made sense to follow her story to the end. And also, as I alluded to in another thread, showing how life on earth has been going since the ship left was necessary for the book's thesis.

I just finished it today. I can see where some people have posted that the novel dragged too long. I agree that Freya's story needed to be fully fleshed out in order to round out the story. I like Aurora but did not love it. It had been years since I read Robinson. Read both the Mars and California trilogies. Glad to have read this despite its flaws in pacing.

Here's my full review of Aurora (for those of you have finished): http://marion-hill.com/book-review-83...

So I finished a few days ago and I've been mulling it over since. I think I have come to the conclusion that it is (view spoiler)[anti space colonization, especially at the expense of environmentalism, but not necessarily anti space exploration, especially locally. It is depressing. When I was a kid, I thought I'd live to at least visit space. The older I get the more I realize that we're just not there yet. And I'm starting to learn that we might not viably get out of the solar system until we've had a major model shift with accompanying breakthroughs for several related scientific disciplines. Energy, gravity, medicine, perhaps systems biology. (hide spoiler)]

I'm talking fairly generally in there but I'm being extra cautious with spoiler tags, especially since some of the folks who have my comments show up in their feeds and in their digests haven't finished the book yet.

Joanna wrote: "I'm talking fairly generally in there..."

More explicitly from the last chapter or so of the book: (view spoiler)[It was a real tragedy at the end. They weren't suited to the place they were going. They were suited to the ship, but started dying when the ship's ecology started dying, or at least started lurching out of step with human sustainability. And then when they get home "to the place they knew they could live" it turns out they had adapted away from that, too, to lesser or greater extents. I found it horribly depressing, but there's also a sort of tragic beauty of it to, that they were native to no place. I use "native" in this sense to mean a being adapted to a particular location. (hide spoiler)]

Short, non-spoilery version: I found it depressing but thought-provoking.

Quite frankly, you could replace about half the page count with the words "THERE IS NO PLANET B" in 36pt bold font repeated several thousand times and not drop the subtly of the book's message one iota.

I was actually surprised at the end and thought (view spoiler)[ that Freya should have drown, killed by the planet she was so bent on getting back to. But maybe that is just me... (hide spoiler)]

I was quite taken with the opening of the book, but had some misgivings before half way through and I'm afraid that it didn't really recover, as far as I was concerned.

Too much time spent on the science and medical effects of hibernation. Too much time explaining orbital mechanics and laser-braking. A worthy environmentalist message, but used very heavy handedly.

The deaths during various stages of the return journey had little emotional impact, since it was usually just a list of names of people we had never gotten to know in the first place. In fact, the loss of the ship itself was probably the only substantial 'death' of the return journey.

I also felt that the final scenes of Freya on the beach and in the ocean were somewhat out of place and an odd way to end. Putting her in physical peril could have been exciting while the stakes were higher (a ship to save, crew-mates to rescue!) but didn't seem to achieve much in this context. The book just really seemed to fade out at the end.

I'm with Colin. I found the ending of the book disappointing because it should have been with something exciting and suspenseful. Instead, I found it boring.

I also wonder how quickly they really would have (view spoiler)[ adapted away from being able to live o nEarth. I don't mean psychologically but physically. Humans have spent millions of years evolving to live here. I highly doubt they'd change so drastically in <1000 as to be physically incompatible with Earth's biosphere. I can see psychological issues of course, but those are different. (hide spoiler)]

I think Joanna is pretty close in her conclusion about the ending. Here are my thoughts on it.
(view spoiler)[ The attempt to colonize the stars looks like it will never work for the reasons given. That's a totally different ending from most books of this type. But if that's not depressing enough, after all that time away there were expecting to come back to a nice safe haven but instead discover that Earth is also a dangerous place.
My only gripe about the ending was that on their return I would have expected them to have gone though a grueling and long debriefing, not being tourists around Beijing within a few days. (hide spoiler)]

I disagree Andrew.

KSR has an agenda here. He's said in interviews that he finds a really common trope of SF to be quite offensive: that we'll "use up" the Earth and move onto other planets using this sort of generation ship.

What he's putting forward here is almost polemic in nature against that point-of-view and he's not above stacking the deck to make his point.

(view spoiler)[The island effect doesn't work this quickly. Nor are micro-biomes this unstable. If that was the case every isolated island on Earth would be barren wastes devastated by fungus and disease instead of quite complex ecosystems on their own.

He's exaggerating these things for effect because he's trying to make a point. He's also completely ignoring what you'd expect to be about 500 years of further genetic engineering progress that could be used to offset these issues.

As to the planet, an alien biological environment would be dangerous. Particularly in terms of anaphylaxis. The planet Downbelow of C.J. Cherryh's Downbelow Station and Finity's End is a great example of this.

However, the idea that an otherwise barren alien world would contain a pathogen so well-suited to us that it could infect and multiply to lethal levels within days of contact is fanciful. Useful for KSR's polemic though.

It also beggars belief that such an intricately planned and provisioned mission's plan for colonization is basically "First one on the planet gets a cookie!" (or horrible proto-prion disease as it happens).

And then of course you have the whole concept later in the book of Earthshock. There's absolutely no basis in science for this whatsoever. It's almost psuedo-mystical (return to Earth mother stuff). (hide spoiler)]

The main point: generation ships are hard. Space is not friendly. We may have only the one home in the universe. Ever. Look after it.

I posted this in another thread but this is a good summary of just how hard interstellar travel really will be - http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-...

Lindsay wrote: "I disagree Andrew.

KSR has an agenda here. He's said in interviews that he finds a really common trope of SF to be quite offensive: that we'll "use up" the Earth and move onto other planets using ..."

For the whole book you are correct, but what was being discussed was the final scene.

Fair enough.

This was a first for me in that it was a Science Fiction that suggested that we couldn't leave Earth. That any planet that we would find that managed to find an Earthish planet would already have a form of life that would keep us from settling, I have seen danger before, but not NO. This keeps in the theme of War of the Worlds, only this time we are the Martians. As for the story, I would have liked it more if it had stopped before the last section. I understand the return of colonists needed to be resolved, but the whole last section just happened and nothing new or mind blowing or even mostly relevant happened, which I guess could have been the point as they readapt to life on the Mother planet that they had never seen.

I found the book more education than entertainment. Bromide in the soil? Laser braking? Interesting ... but to squash the romantic idea of interstellar expansion, that's a kick in the worst place, hope.

Dave wrote: "I was actually surprised at the end and thought [spoilers removed]"

My mind went even darker than that and expected the last chapter to discuss
(view spoiler)[the results of the codevolution that occurred amongst the crew as compared to the changes in Earth's humans over the similar time period. Or how some of the bacteria or other microorganisms that had hypermutated as a result of the ship's island isolation and exposure to cosmic radiation were accidentally carried over in the ferry and resulted in a outbreak back on Earth. Thus giving the originators of the mission their just rewards in that the crew of the ship became a source of death instead of hope. (hide spoiler)]

But I also felt that Ship was the real protagonist of the story.

The War of the Worlds comparison had occured to me from the beginning, so the hostile organism the crew encountered didn't come as much of a surprise. Prior to Aurora I hadn't read much KSR material, so I wasn't aware of his reputation as an environmentalist. Had there not been a hostile organism on a planet so much like Earth, that would almost certainly have been enough to kick me out of any science fiction story aspiring to be more than space opera.

I did find the Earthshock explanation a bit contrived, but after thinking about it, I find myself wondering if KSR wasn't using it as a metaphor for something else.

What I mean is this. Assume that the Tau Ceti colonists don't die, and that they succeed in establishing a viable colony. Then, much later, Earth reestablishes contact with them. Given the forces of evolution, combined with the length of time likely to pass during this interval, how 'human' will the Tau Cetis be by the time contact is reestablished, either in their eyes or in our own?

Cliff wrote: "My mind went even darker than that and expected the last chapter to discuss....."

There wouldn't be enough time for there to have been any noticeable differences due to evolution. The people on the ship are at most into their 7th or 8th generation and earth no more than 12.
You would need hundreds, if not thousands, of generations to have noticeable population evolution.

You might see genetic mutations, good or bad, in a family line but not through an entire population.

Agreed, Tassie. But I was talking about over the long haul, that all of these colonization attempts will - eventually - result in groups very different from the base humans from which they sprang. Sooner if the colonists alter their own DNA in order to shortcut the natural selection process and force their bodies to adapt to their new environments.

As I see it, we're just now getting to the point, as a species, where we need to start pondering how much change we want to make in ourselves at the genetic level in response to the continued advancing of the relevant sciences. Cure inherited diseases? Certainly. But past that? Do we start selecting certain traits as preferable to others, perhaps creating designer babies? Lots to consider.

We will have to alter our biology if we are ever to live on another planet.
I have heard several scientist suggesting this. The chances of us ever finding a planet suitable to human life and close enough to get to (even in 1000 years) is highly unlikely. Even if there were a billion such planets.
We may have to settle for close enough and design humans for that scenario. Even then, I wouldn't want to be in the first settlers and find out (like Aurora) that we missed something.

Even in the more likely scenario of a long-term colonization of space that sort of genetic modification is almost certainly going to be required. Just for radiation hardening and bone and muscle density issues at a minimum.

Ric wrote: "I found the book more education than entertainment. Bromide in the soil? Laser braking? Interesting ... but to squash the romantic idea of interstellar expansion, that's a kick in the worst place, ..."

This is how I felt after reading the book. The book seemed to just pile on problem after problem after problem. I got kinda depressed reading it. I need a palette cleanser. *looks around for Old Man's War*

Antoinette wrote: "Did anyone else cry when

[spoilers removed]

or am I the only wuss!? :-P"

*raises hand*

I agree with most comments here. I think the last part of the last chapter was boring

(view spoiler)[I would have liked to know what happened to the stayers and settlements on other planets. And I think the symmetry of ending with Freya's POV makes sense. And I think it can also make sense that Ship could do so much with the same (less!) materials because it is a. gaining in intelligence but more importantly b. It's doing it all itself. It seemed clear that for the most part, it was pretty much letting the humans run the show. Once they were all asleep, or handing over the decisions, it could go all out. (hide spoiler)]

Aurora wrote: "Antoinette wrote: "Did anyone else cry when

[spoilers removed]

or am I the only wuss!? :-P"

*raises hand*"

I was more upset about this then some of the other deaths.

I had somewhat of a love/hate relationship with this book. (view spoiler)[ The narrative being written by the AI was very creative, I thought. I really liked how the narrative started very history text book like and eventually ended up more elaborative and colorful as the AI gained more self awareness. The AI was my favorite character in the book. I didn't really care about any of the other characters in the story. Nobody was all that developed, even Freya, who seemed to be somewhat one dimensional. Admittedly, on purpose as the population was de-evolving. Perhaps SKR needed the humans to be secondary to make the AI more central to the story.

I was most bothered by the group that wanted to return to Earth. They travel for generations, find a planet, a few people die, and they are ready to pack it all up and go back home. (hide spoiler)]

Gregory wrote: "I had somewhat of a love/hate relationship with this book. "

It was very much a book of two halves. The whole tone of the first part is more optimistic - Freya is young and learning about life and the ship, the colonists are nearing their goal and excited about inhabiting the new planet. Everything is new.

In the second half, it's much more downbeat. (view spoiler)[Everything has gone wrong and it's a battle of attrition to see who can survive and whether anyone will make it all the way "home" to Earth in one piece. (hide spoiler)]

I could handle the somewhat info-dumpy style of writing while it was offset by the more upbeat events, but not so much later on.

Agreed. Best character of the book, I didn't really connect with the others.

A few thoughts:

(view spoiler)[I think part of the point of the book was an environmental statement. There's only one world that is truly (practically) habitable (because we are so highly evolved specifically to our habitat) so we need to take care of the one we have even as we expand. The restoration efforts did show some efforts toward that and so made some sense to me.

That being said, I still found ship to be the most interesting character and I really had had expected ship to end up being adrift and a closing narrative from ship (maybe that's too cliche). Ship's fate seemed so anti-climactic.

Also, I expected Earth to be far more fearful of them returning and allowing them back on the planet...I mean they just came back from a planet with some not fully understood prion/infection/whatever that appeared to kill everyone (except for one) and they had to take the word of everyone on the ship that it was all ok and they took the appropriate precautions. They could have put the entirety of mankind at risk.

I did also enjoy the technical/hard science aspects and felt like I learned a little bit (bromide, island effect, hibernation, etc.) and it gave it a thicker veneer of reality, although at times reality can become mundane.

Was anyone annoyed at all during the first few gravity braking loops that they were each a one in a million chance, but of course they were all executed perfectly despite the odds? It's more likely that a stormtrooper shoots a main protagonist by accident, but even that never happens. (hide spoiler)]

Donato wrote: "
(view spoiler)[Was anyone annoyed at all during the first few gravity braking loops that they were each a one in a million chance, but of course they were all executed perfectly despite the odds? It's more likely that a stormtrooper shoots a main protagonist by accident, but even that never happens. (hide spoiler)] "

(view spoiler)[The last quarter of the book was really sloppy and full of plot holes and plot breaking-my-suspension issues. This was one of them "Ship can do N-body simulations where N is large but not basic statistics?" (hide spoiler)]

Did anyone else notice that:
(view spoiler)[ the colonists who eventually made it back to Earth were gripped with intense agoraphobia, but the ones who went down to the surface of Aurora never had that problem?? (hide spoiler)]

AndrewP wrote: "Did anyone else notice that:
[spoilers removed]"

Yeah, I wondered about that as well. I wonder if it was because of (view spoiler)[ the environment suits the colonists wore on Aurora. (hide spoiler)]

AndrewP wrote: "Did anyone else notice that:
[spoilers removed]"

(view spoiler)[I didn't think it was all of the settlers who had issues with agoraphobia. I thought it was mainly just Freya. Also, none of these settlers went to Aurora, so hard to say if they'd have had the same issues, but I think that Phil might be on to something with the suits. (hide spoiler)]

Antoinette wrote: "Did anyone else cry when

[spoilers removed]

or am I the only wuss!? :-P"

didn't cry, but was quite sad, and surprised, to see that happen to my favorite character....

fezfox wrote: "Sad. It was a great character. But... seemed unbelievably capable in the latter half of the book (completely rebuilt/remodelled everything on a mega-engineering scale) that seemed inconsistent with..."

my take on this was that the ship was considerably smarter than the crew (the island problem + quantum +magic AI) and could focus all the resources on the return problem with 1/2 the crew, diminished life support, and long time windows, making tons of resources available and many things possible