Science Fiction Aficionados discussion

Welcome to July, and our member pick for the month, Aurora! I have been very curious about this one, and now I have an excuse to read it......


Post your thoughts here

Yay! I've gotten a head start because there are several BOMs I want to participate in. I'm 69% and I can say the first part was a bit An Idiot Abroad, I had never heard of Islanding. Then it was a bit Pandorum and now I really don't know what's going to happen and I guess that's what's kept me going. This is my first Kim Stanley Robinson.

85% in. This has not gone anywhere I thought it would. Can't tell if I'm amused or annoyed by that.

94%. Well, this book has been one of one that's for sure. Like an antihero that needs to be heard. Meanwhile, I'm finishing this book while making myself feel better with Star Trek movies playing in the background.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Finished!

Gosh, you've finished already. As it's my choice I suppose I'd better get a move on and start reading it (I've been engrossed in the Foundation novels and instead of just starting the second, I've finished the 5th oops)

I'll enjoy reading your comments.

I will let you know, definitely

Finished! 3 stars

Very good world-building

Not very convincing plot and characters. Not the best narrator, too distant

Want to read your comments

I LOVE the premise of Ship writing a narrative of the voyage. I had a lot of trouble figuring out why people did what they did...some of the 'mistakes' seemed so overboard!

Has anyone else ever read of Islanding?

Quick question, I have this novel but heard it was related to the Mars Trilogy. Do I need to read these first before this one? I have started Red Mars, and it's going to be a slower read for me. I don't mind that part, but it means I won't get to Aurora this month though.

It's definitely a stand alone. Mars is barely mentioned.

Lena wrote: "It's definitely a stand alone. Mars is barely mentioned."

Thanks Lena.

4+ stars from me. Some of the salieron chapters are 5 stars but as it goes on it lost steam for me and doesn't end well. It was the first KSR book I had finished (couldn't get through the first Mars book) and I was reasonably impressed. I have a copy if 2312 around here TBR soon.

JuniperGreen wrote: "... It's a bit slow going for me, the first part couldn't really capture my interest. I'm doing better with the second part. ..."
Similar for me; a good start then a bit heavy going when I thought it should be more exciting (avoiding spoliers - at the midpoint of the voyage), then picked up again. Still a bit to go but now more hopeful for the rest.

yes! I thought about HAL5000....lol

Life is a planetary expression.
A once sentence NASA slayer. It sent me crawling into a Star Trek marathon on Netflix. I think it has the ring of truth. Think how long it takes us to adapt to new environments on our own planet, how often we are allergic to the fauna and the flora. It really might not be possible to move :(

Just fine only if they visit home often.

I'm still struggling my way through this, which is a shame because it was (one of) my choice(s). Sorry about that folks. I really enjoyed his Martian trilogy, admittedly some years ago, and added this to my list of possibles as I fancied reading it at some point (not that I picked this as my choice ha ha). Oh well gotta persevere 😏

It was worth the read, no worries.

Ok, thanks for your positive comments, I WILL carry on 👍

I liked it in a lot of ways, and it did have a point, just not much of a plot....lol

Ok well, with your encouragement and positive comments I persevered and lo and behold I started enjoying it, at which point I started racing through. So I would have to agree with some of the previous comments that the start is slow going, and I just couldn't get into the book, but now I realise why I liked the Mars trilogy so much, KSR is just so good with characters (radical opinion ?). And ultimately I was hooked
I agree entirely with Maggie "I liked it in a lot of ways, and it did have a point, just not much of a plot....lol"
Anyway thank you all those who chose this from my list.

That's strange isn't it, I really identified or connected with Freya and Pauline (view spoiler)[ aka Ship (hide spoiler)]. And as I said thank you for making my mind up to read it :)

Jumping into the discussion a bit late...

There were some things I really enjoyed. KSR's attempts to give a realistic view of how a generation ship's attempt to settle a distant solar system might realistically turn out were very well thought out and provided probably the most thought-provoking parts in the entire book (along with the ship's AI).

SPOILERS FOLLOW

But the plot did drag. And the ending was very disappointing. To find that the entire book had been written pretty much as an excuse for KSR to say "hey, we're never going to be able to settle other worlds so let's just stay here and focus on global warming" actually undermined (for me anyway) a lot of the enjoyment I had for earlier sections of the book. And his message was so unnecessarily heavy-handed! Had the book ended with the remaining crew splashing down and the ship burning up, I would have liked it more. I thought the last 50 pages or so were pretty unnecessary.

But overall I did enjoy it. I'll read another of KSR's books, probably starting with the Mars series, when I get a chance.

Glad you enjoyed (some of it). Although I have to agree with you that the ending was a little poor / weak.

It’s a message that needs a heavy hand, or haven’t you noticed it’s not getting through? Or do you live outside of the US? It wasn’t the most enjoyable book, but I had no idea where it was going and that’s rare enough to be precious.

Agree entirely Lena ( I live in the UK )

Subtle is an unknown term in American politics. You need to scream in ALL CAPS on a daily basis.

Lena wrote: "It’s a message that needs a heavy hand, or haven’t you noticed it’s not getting through?"

I disagree. KSR is preaching to the choir. The folks who support his beliefs will all nod along and those who don't won't listen anyway. Politicians will do whatever gets them re-elected and aren't likely to be interested in the ending of this book. No amount of hand-wringing will change that.

And it's the setup that bothers me. The "facts" of the book are all stacked to allow KSR to get up on his soapbox for 50 pages at the ending. We're to assume that no major advances in technology occur over a period of, what, 500 years? Or more? Let's look back 500 years ago and see how different the world was. I can't imagine it won't change at least that much in the next 500, especially when you consider that the rate of technological advances is accelerating, not slowing down. With advances in AI and robotics we will soon likely see technology that invents new technology without human intervention. (hello Skynet!)

I'd like to see a generation ship book where the crew endures their very long and difficult journey and arrives at the planet only to find that it has long ago been settled by humans who subsequently invented FTL drives and reached the planet while the generation ship was still plodding along in space. I'm not mad at KSR for not writing that book, I just don't like him tricking me into reading what I thought was a science fiction novel only to find that it's really An Inconvenient Truth part 2.

It’s true from 1900 to 1969 we went from horses to the moon but since then? I don’t see humans trying to get farther than the moon in my lifetime and even the budget to go to the moon is gone. It’s a very small group of Muskovites who are trying to get out there and that still looks decades away.

For all our advancing technology it feels like we’ve slowed down.

Lena wrote: "For all our advancing technology it feels like we’ve slowed down."

Well, since 1969 let's see...

Color television has become the norm and we're all watching it on large flat screen power-saving LCD screens in high definition that would have been inconceivable in 1969 (as a toddler I watched the moon landing with my parents on their first TV which was a 15" black and white set that weighed more than I did).

Phones are no longer rotary dial, and the connection for long distance and even international calls is crystal clear. We all carry personal communication devices that are so advanced they put to shame the technology available in the original Star Trek series with the exception of teleporters (read below for more on this) and warp drive.

Microwave ovens are common and super cheap. Not to mention personal computers which are available in almost every single household device you can purchase with the possible exception of toasters. And they don't need punch cards to receive instructions - many are voice-controlled and some "think" for themselves.

Cars are a lot safer and are almost able to drive themselves which is great since most drivers are too busy playing with their cell phones to pay attention to the road.

The US Post Office has been rendered almost obsolete by the invention of "electronic mail" and also we are nearing the end of the newspaper era, like it or not. Paper books themselves seem to be nearly obsolete.

Medical technology has become so advanced that doctors in 1969 seem like shamans in comparison. Read Five Patients by Michael Crichton sometime if you'd like to get an idea of what a hospital was like in 1970 (which was "the future" at the time of the moon landing).

Believe it or not, we've made huge strides in pollution control in the USA since 1969. In Los Angeles you can see downtown from 15-20 miles out on most days, not just really clear ones. And it's been a long time since Cleveland had to call the Fire Dept to put out the river. Heck, we've got electric cars, CNG/LNG cars, and even hydrogen fuel cell cars that you as a consumer can purchase today. Can "Mr. Fusion"-powered time-traveling DeLoreans be far behind?

So yeah, we haven't really invented that hyperspace drive which will enable us to fly to a galaxy far far away to help Luke and Rey fight the First Order. But we can almost see it from here thanks to our superpowered telescopes which are orbiting the Earth or traveling the solar system. And space travel itself is being advanced by the private sector such as SpaceX, which should be a relief to everyone since our Government (the folks who brought you the DMV) is not known for fast action and quick thinking.

We don't live on the moon or Mars yet, much to the disappointment of Hugo Gernsback and all those Golden Age SF writers. But we are on the verge of some interesting stuff including possibly:
- teleportation (see: https://www.inc.com/kimberly-weisul/w...) - also read about our battle against cancer, dementia and diabetes
- driverless cars and 3-D printing (https://www.zmescience.com/science/th...) - that same article has some insights on potential upcoming advances in the fields of Genomics, Nanotechnology, self-repairing Graphene, wireless electricity and Nuclear Fusion
- discovering Earth-like planets in distant solar systems, or even alien life itself (http://www.abc.net.au/science/article...) - also contains interesting stuff about advances in the studies of human biology and DNA sequencing, not to mention some stuff about clean energy that would put a dent in KSR's book sales

I'm not going to blame KSR for failing to accurately predict the future, but as a SF writer it's borderline irresponsible for him to pretend that there won't be technological advances that will allow us to potentially combat, if not overcome, many of the situations he describes in the plot of Aurora. He does this not for the sake of the story, which could be forgivable, but for the sake of advancing a political agenda. Complaining about "climate deniers" but then picking and choosing your own facts is hypocrisy.

I tried to link to the article about all the cool things that could happen in 2025 but the GR app would only let me read three of them. I pressed the button to upload the article to safari and that crashed the whole app. 😂 it seemed like a meme for technology progress.