Science Fiction / Space Opera: Aurora, Kim Stanley Robinson

Aurora
Kim Stanley Robinson
ISBN: 9780316098106
Read April 29, 2016

Ugh.  So many mixed feelings.

This one's going to be bullet points, because I'm not coherent enough to offer a spoiler-free review.

• The title and blurbs are all misleading; this tale is actually a (long-winded and pompous) polemic against space travel. The author has an axe to grind, and grind it he does, with tortured metaphors and similes (literally) and scenarios designed to belabor the point. The misdirection and the subsequent lecture vexes. Enormously.
• Despite that, I did enjoy the story (and the three, maybe five if we're being generous, whole characters we get to follow around), but it was not original at all. Chapters and sections and concepts and musings were all lifted wholesale from everywhere: Asimov, Heinlein, Pern, his own old Mars stuff, David Brin's stuff, up to modern movies: I caught bits of 2001, and of Moon, and whole scads of The Martian and whiffs of Interstellar and I'm sure there are more I missed - both books and movies. Anyone even slightly invested in the genre should catch them - they aren't subtle. I got the feeling at those times that he was the authorial equivalent of the student who isn't technically plagiarizing, because he's writing his own content. But he read the wiki article and skimmed the original studies and he isn't actually contributing anything more than a slightly self-important regurgitation of the previously-skimmed material. That also vexes.
• I'm as much on for hard science as anyone, and the sections in The Martian (book and film) where he sciences the shit out of things are enormously satisfying. Likewise I like a good Asimovian philosophical/sociological muse every now and again. The sections here would have been also, if they had not been quiiiiite so long, nor quite so tortured in the specific interests of point-belaboring.  
• World-building. We are roughly 800 years into the future, have permanent settlements of multi-billionaires on Saturn's moons that can fund an interstellar ark for shits and giggles, sea-levels have risen 30some feet, there are the beach-building equivalent of "rewilders" out there as a niche lifestyle (all of which I have serious questions about the implications thereof), but we're still using spray cans of aerosol sunscreen that only last one hour. Seriously? Vexation.
• Dropped plot-points and Checkov's guns lying about like crazy. What do ancient historical genocidal feuding, ship explosions, "secret" passageways through maintenance systems, civil unrest, purposefully-flawed printing instructions, and imperiled colonies all have in common?  Who knows!  Me neither, even after finishing the freaking book!  VEXED.     

Glow, Amy Kathleen Ryan

Not really sure about how I feel on this one.

First off: (I'm going to try and start keeping these for help in tracking down books later)
Glow, Amy Kathleen Ryan
Notes: first of a series "The Sky Chasers"
ISBN: 9780312590567, 2011, St Martins Press

Generation ships Empyrean and New Horizon (roughly agnostic and religiously oriented) are swimming through a messy nebula en route to their new planet.  Empyrean has met and overcome their fertility crisis, but (unbeknownst to the colonists at large on the Empyrean (our narrator-focus-ship) the New Horizon hasn't.  Now they're aiming for desperate measures.

First off, I'm going to explain the TMG tag: It's a new one specifically thought up for this book (and I imagine other ones will be getting it also) Too Much God.  While I'm up for deep philosophical meditations on the use and abuse of religion and religious impulses and the charismatic draw of people who see themselves as prophets, divine leaders, or mouthpieces of the gods, I really really really want a bit of warning before we go there!  It's a touchy subject for me, and I have to be in a specific frame of mind to appreciate it - and I'll note, it's not a frame of mind that I really think extends to "space opera about generation ship colonists."

Maybe that makes me a bad person that I want my sci-fi to be agnostic or atheistic (or religious, just not in my face about it) and focusing on battles or culture shocks due to aspects beyond religious belief and practice.  I don't know, and I don't really care.  All I know is that that topic and the way it was handled in this particular book made me quite uncomfortable, took me completely out of the story, baffled me as to where the author was wanting my sympthy to lie (and don't give me crap about not wanting to lead the reader - I want good guys and bad guys, and I want to know who they are.  If they redeem themselves or move to the dark side, that's peachy, but they have to have an alignment beforehand.  The author's job is to provide that reference to the reader)  AND - most importantly - I don't know if I'll read the sequels because of that discomfort.  And that's a shame, because I really could see myself getting behind the whole political struggles between these two ships, and the conflicts between characters with different strengths and abilities and opinions on how to lead people.  Darnit all. 

Anyway.  Interesting, thought-provoking, just plain provoking, and strange addition to the generation-ship fold.

Previously Published Review: Hull Zero Three, Greg Bear

It's so perfect that it almost hurts - the genetic typing has been done, mankind has evolved, friendships and loves have been established, and everyone is ready to leave Ship and descend into the glorious new world we've been traveling towards and preparing for our arrival since - well, that part's a little hazy, but we're still excited!

Except that now the glorious companionship of that arrival dream shatters, and now, all we have is just one poor befuddled Teacher, birthed either too soon or too late, in a place determined to do him in, either by design or through callous indifference to his mal-adapted self. In an even crueller twist of the knife, even the knowledge of the beautiful dream abandons him when survival depends on him learning and growing up fast. Is Teacher a quick study?

Only movement will save him, as structures irradiate, liquefy, or freeze, bulkheads can cut off at any time or place, gravity comes in crushing waves of inconvenience before vanishing again, and horrifying THINGS appear to crush and rend and destroy and kidnap - or perhaps that's only from his perspective. Just enough information can be teased from conflicting memories and sources (perhaps not all to be trusted) to determine that something is NOT RIGHT. Nothing this horrifying and off-balance could be intended to be right.

Finding out what - that may cost Teacher his life.

In a lovely example of sci-fi thriller, we're shoved into a breakneck ethical quest where love and life, memories (human and computer) your most basic emotions, and even your moral code itself aren't exactly what they should be.

As always, the rag-tag crew which assembles itself into our protagonists are kept busy trying to comprehend their mad surroundings, and to figure out just how to handle that most basic human drive - the will to survive.

My own enjoyment of this basic plotline aside, there are several dangling plot threads and niggles of irritation at premises and complications hinted at and dropped, or ideas left undeveloped, or narrative contrivances which are a touch too contrived... As I said, a bit messy.

These are minor flaws in an otherwise quite satisfying return to the author's roots in hard sci-fi.