Oliver

The last few chapters inspecting (and explaining) the ideas of self and intelligent life, pushed it from a 2 to a 3.

The repetitive, yet twisting narrative was interesting but lost its momentum for me, and asked for a quicker resolution in my opinion.

Overall a worthy entry to the Children series though.

After finally reading the source material behind the 2002 movie of the same name, I have to say I really admire what the screenplay adaptation did.

The book mostly consists of dialog between the characters, very little description of anything but the car/saucer repairs. While fun in the beginning, the talk about coffee for breakfast, smoked meat for lunch, some kind of stew for dinner, the 70s and 80 movie references, and the bad puns wore me down quite quickly. There is lots of Gary Stu-ing, every wish is fulfilled, and there is no risk at all for the characters in the thin plot.

The book was definitely not for me.

One of the toughest reads I did in along time. It is well researched and if you have the motivation to look up only half of the technical terms used in the book, it will bring to great little niches of science to delve into. While this actually didn't deter me, I did feel that the detailed descriptions of the surroundings actually were more confusing than helpful of painting a picture. It's great to read once of how big in kilometers the orbit is, but I dare anybody after reading this book to actually explain to me of how the ship interior looks like and how the endeavours to the alien ship worked out. With all that text, I was still lost.

I actually do think it was a brave choice by the author make the narrator incapable of empathy, and therefore very hard to sympathise for. He also removed almost any real interaction between the characters. Except for small exchanges between the protagonist and his girlfriend, there is no real communication between them. Mostly they are just stating scientific facts and offer expositional narrative. That may have been one of the core ideas behind the book, but for me it was tough to have no characters to latch onto. It made it a very draining book just because of the emotional emptiness.

I really did like the far reaching thinking of how much humanity can stretch itself with the help of technology and far it can bring us and remove us from ourselves. But unfortunately this is mostly embodied by technological or genetics gimmicks in of the characters, which are super interesting by itself, but also make the characters feel like archetypes as they offer little beyond their post-human technology, as they are lacking in emotional impact.

Especially the leader of the crew was one of the weaker points for me of the book, which brings me to the somewhat spoilery part of the review. The leader of the crew is a vampire. The year is 2082 and humanity found out through genetic engineering that actually, vampires did exist! They are far more superior in intellect than every other human being and of course they brought them back to live. Jurassic “Ann Rice” Park. Why does it have to be vampires? Not just genetically engineered beings? Nope, vampires. They did exist, and yes, they can't look at crosses, because their superior brain and superior pattern matching powers can't deal with right angles. They were wiped out when people build houses, so literally because of rectangles. So in 2082 they are swallowing “antiEuclidean” pills to make them feel round and whole. Every time that character appears, it is hammered into the readers mind, that he is superior, that he is a hunter and that the other puny humans of the crew are just his prey. I do understand that he is on the edge of what the aliens do represent (I don't want to spoil here) and I actually also think that he was actually the only character that was developed (if only in the last third of the book) but that whole vampire thing and the repetitiveness of the hunter-prey relationship really dragged the book down for me. In combination with the hard to follow descriptions made it out to just three stars despite its stellar ideas.

It started out great, with big ideas and great style for a first novel but after the first half the plot kind of falls apart. The introduction of the main antagonist feels like it has no connection to the first half of the book. It feels so misplaced that I was wondering if I forgo tabout the character. On some level it felt more like a different plot than a continuation. While everything gets tied together at the end, the sheer number of characters, bodies, sleeves and regulations can be confusing.

Mostly because of
“Redaction” by Adam R. Shannon, but also because
“Dreams of the Rocket Man” by C. Stuart Hardwick hit me emotionally.

I thoroughly enjoyed „Fermi‘s last survivor“ by John Taloni, „Catallactics on an Asteroid“ by Steve Wire, and was surpassingly emotionally touched by „The Fare to Ride the Universe“ by Amy Power Jansen (what a name!)

I hope you like welding and melting metal - it comes up a lot. As does a weird machine that recycles condoms - Checkov's Condom Cleaner?

Thoroughly enjoyed Pip Coen‘s „Floater‘s can‘t float“. A fresh angle on time traveling. The emotional core element to the story and it‘s resolution might not have been surprising but still felt impactful.

Was not able to finish it.

Maybe it was the translation but the prose felt very klunky. I had my eyes rolling for the first few pages stumbling upon gems like “The rotting leaves made the water appear crimson, like blood”. Thank you, I have TV if I don't want to make mental leaps from one red liquid to another.

The novel really dragged on until the big reveal. (Spoiler ahead) The idea that an alien civilisation sees humanity as a threat and wants to launch a preemptive strike against us, just because of first contact is great. That they are interest group, or cults for and against making and keeping contact is great. But this we find out at almost at the end, which is then quickly finished by a stupid Ghost Ship style massacre. Ugh. Good ideas wasted.

It could have been three or more stars but I had to demote the book for the exposition dumps. At around 4/5, the plot is basically resolved by a multi page exposition. The earlier exposition dumps were irritating but after that I just was annoyed and lost interest in the characters.

It took me a while to read through this book. But not because it is bad, oh no, it is because it is so densely packed with thought provoking ideas and topics which still feel fresh even after 40 years. And in doing so it doesn't feel preachy about anything. The topics of freedom, of choice, of your position in your personal life and society really felt at home in my heart while I was reading this. Capitalism and communism, the question of ownership, what things do to us, how language forms young minds, gender roles in our society, the role of the family and partnerships inside our society... it's all there. Every chapter, nah, every few pages, I just had to take a step back from the book and reflect on it.

The prose is so well done and the characters feel so real that I was totally absorbed. The subtle dealings with the Sapir Whorf hypothesis, the thesis that language can mold your thought patterns, felt so natural. Quite refreshing after reading Babel 17 or Embassytown, where it felt very forced (which I actually forgive seeing that it was actually a core plot element in both).

For whatever reason, for a long time in a science fiction book, I had a lot of empathy for all the characters and was actually able to understand their relationships and feel with them. Oh Shevek!

After Frankenstein and Hyperion, this is now one of my favorite (sci-fi) books.

(As a sidenote: I think this is the first time I think somebody was able to describe of what it means to be an actual scientist)