Aurora

Kim Stanley Robinson is an author who has been on my to-read list for ages, but I've always been a little too intimidated by his reputation to pick up a book on my own. I was pleased that my book club finally chose one of his, and the stand-alone Aurora definitely proved my fears baseless. I'd thought the science would be too overwhelming for me (and it is), but the characters and the very human story shaped by that overwhelming science more than compensates for occasional jargon overload. What's especially fun is that, while I'm used to lengthy explanations of technical and physics babble, this book focuses on the biology angle.

The book deals with a generation ship carrying multiple biomes through space for hundreds of years to populate a new system. During their journey, they experience island syndrome as genetic diversity is hard to come by. There are bacteria that they brought with them (intentionally and unintentionally) that don't act as they should. There are bad harvests and sick animals and tons of crises that happen all the time when you involve living organisms, crises that can be coped with here on Earth for which the organisms were designed, but far more difficult when you remove them.

It also deals with Artificial Intelligence in a unique way The ship is run by a quantum computer which most of its residents fully admit to not totally understanding. Their best theory is that people were so excited about the fact that the ship worked, they volunteered to be sent off to space without really caring why it worked. Over the course of the novel, the computer thinks more and more independently, acts independently. It has the best interests of its residents in mind (it thinks) but is also aware enough to know it might not know the best interests of its residents. I've never read AI fiction quite like this, and I definitely enjoyed it.

Also, powerful, smart, resourceful women in space. Always a plus for me.

I'll admit to being a little disappointed in the ending. It seemed a little bit over the top on the metaphor scale, but I think it was also a decent way to leave these characters I'd spent a generation with. If you like space odysseys where everything that can go wrong does go wrong, this is defnitely a book for you.