Aurora

I enjoyed this Kim Stanley Robinson take about (the problems of living in) a generation starship. A friend who once saw KSR's WisCon talk about this book recommended it to me.

This is not my first KSR rodeo, so I knew a bit of what to expect from his writing style. It's a bit of a dry, plot-driven story. There's not particularly strong emotional beats. And, it's a vehicle :drum: for KSR's opinions on generation ships, insular biogeography, and the Fermi Paradox.

One thing that I think works very well in this book is that the narrator is the ship itself, having been exhorted to summarize the journey in words by the chief engineer. It can explain away some of why the book focuses on only a few characters and also why it's largely dry and descriptive. (The ship does in time learn to enjoy metaphors and wordplay, like "once in a blue muon".) The ship is probably the best character in the book.

I have mixed feelings about the end of the book, but it's hard to talk about things without being too spoilery. Suffice it to say that I found the penultimate 10% of the book fun and think it would have been stronger to end there before the shift into the more didactic final 10%.

Hard to review this novel and praise all that's great in it without spoiling it! There's at least 4-5 really clever bits I'd love to talk about that would spoil it, so I'll just be coy...

First off, it's a slow burn going in, but worth sticking with. I find Robinson consistently enjoyable as an author, even when I've felt a given novel is weak or underwhelming. But this one is neither. This is one of the most impressive "hard" sci-fi novels I've read in a long while, a highly inventive generational ship story with deep characters and a few surprising twists and reveals.

The emotional heart of this book dances around loss, acceptance, hope, love, discovery, aging and meaning, and "home" -- what it is, how one finds it or makes it. I wish I could say more, but I'd ruin it. Give this one a chance, and if you read it I'd love to talk with you about it...

To my friends who aren't that into sci-fi, I'd still recommend this one. Just be prepared for bouts of extended science exposition -- one of Robinson's strengths, put to skilled use here as it fleshes out several plot points and emotional themes to great effect.