Ring by Stephen Baxter (1994) This science fiction story is really two separate plots that don’t converge until almost the end of the 500-page novel. One story is of a multi-generation ship and the trials and tribulations of its colorful crew as it makes its way to a distant artifact on the other side of the universe. During the centuries that pass, the population of the ship grows into three factions: the natives in the jungle who have given up their immortality, the immortal captain […]
The Fibonacci Novel
Is there anything we all have in common? What could link an English Pilgrim en route to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Alan Turing, a refugee from Hitler’s Germany, a middle aged computer programmer and a little girl? I suppose if there is one thing humans share that other creatures do not, it is our particular ability to communicate: we can tell stories, remember the past and form plans for the future. Louisa Hall’s 2015 novel Speak addresses that, but through her unique stories, which seem so […]
A sci-fi adventure on the evils of imperialism
After reading and loving the Silo trilogy by Howey, I went back to look for others of his works, and found Half-Way Home to be a fascinating and well-done novel in its own right. It is the story of a group of 15-year-olds who had been raised in artificial wombs aboard a spaceship, one of hundreds of such missions sent out from a future Earth to find and colonize viable planets. Missions landing on nonviable planets were abruptly aborted by the artificial intelligence (AI) controlling […]