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mamthew42's review against another edition
4.0
I picked up Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel because it was listed on Libby as Science Fiction and I figured that would make it fairly different from the previous book I read, The Sentence. But it turns out Sea of Tranquility is also pandemic fiction because of course it is, we're in a post-2020 world, which means everything we do is in some way informed by the events of 2020. I'm not upset about it, though. I enjoyed the book!
Sea of Tranquility is a time travel novel that's sorta about three pandemics at once: one story is set in 1912, shortly before the breakout of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic; one is in January 2020, right before the Covid outbreak; and one is in 2203, just as a new SARS outbreak is beginning to spread. The central story is in 2401, but it takes some time before we reach that story. The protagonist of each time period is given a fully fleshed-out introduction, with conflicts and minor characters, before they each meet the same person who interrogates them about a similar past experience they each share. Their introductions are so fully-formed that I can't help but wonder if Mandel began several novels about pandemics but ultimately gave up on each of them individually and finally just combined them.
The shared character across stories is Gaspery-Jacques, a security worker living on an underfunded moon colony in 2401. He's sent back in time by a government organization to interview people about a similar hallucination they each had, as this glitch implies that the universe may be a simulation. The connections between these characters, ultimately, have nothing to do with their pandemic experiences or any similarities in life experiences in attitudes. Those similarities, instead, serve to remind the reader that no matter how much technology, culture, and society advance, people are still recognizably people. Some experiences are universal, the book says, using pandemic stories to demonstrate this.
the character in 2203 is an author going on a book tour for a book about pandemics right as a pandemic begins to sweep across the world, and Mandel uses this character's many lectures and interview answers to present the reader with some of the facts Mandel had learned about historical pandemics while researching for this project. This gives the reader a chance to see that yes, many of our own pandemic experiences really are universal.
One of my favorite elements of the novel is Night City, the first of three moon colonies. Over the years, this moon colony's lighting fell into disrepair and as the more affluent residents moved out, colony leadership decided the poorer population left wasn't worth the money it would take to fix the lights. While the other two colonies have regular day/night cycles, Night City's lighting is entirely reliant on the sun, so it goes for long periods with no light, hence the name. The name Night City is often used for settings in the cyberpunk genre, to a point that the name itself is a signal that the story is meant to be cyberpunk. With that in mind, many elements of Sea of Tranquility become newly recognizable as cyberpunk genre elements, from the protagonist's job in security to the bureaucracy of the government and the poverty of the people, but this is a gentler take on the genre.
At one point, the author is asked about the new popularity of post-apocalyptic fiction (in 2203) and answers that she thinks maybe "the end of the world" is a centuries-long, ongoing process, that we're always grappling with the events and shifts that change everything as we know it, and so to everyone living in their own time, it feels like an end of the world. This moment we're in isn't necessarily unique, but that doesn't make it not The End Of The World. Time Travel and Cyberpunk and Pandemic genre conventions are useful because they talk about what's deadly important to us in the here and now, even if they may not seem deadly important in a century or two. Time travel stories have a tendency to make us feel small, but Mandel fights against that tendency by constantly reminding us that what matters to us now also mattered to people in the past and will continue to matter to people in the future. In some way, that helps to transform the trivial things into something consequential, and there's something very kind in that.
Sea of Tranquility is a time travel novel that's sorta about three pandemics at once: one story is set in 1912, shortly before the breakout of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic; one is in January 2020, right before the Covid outbreak; and one is in 2203, just as a new SARS outbreak is beginning to spread. The central story is in 2401, but it takes some time before we reach that story. The protagonist of each time period is given a fully fleshed-out introduction, with conflicts and minor characters, before they each meet the same person who interrogates them about a similar past experience they each share. Their introductions are so fully-formed that I can't help but wonder if Mandel began several novels about pandemics but ultimately gave up on each of them individually and finally just combined them.
The shared character across stories is Gaspery-Jacques, a security worker living on an underfunded moon colony in 2401. He's sent back in time by a government organization to interview people about a similar hallucination they each had, as this glitch implies that the universe may be a simulation. The connections between these characters, ultimately, have nothing to do with their pandemic experiences or any similarities in life experiences in attitudes. Those similarities, instead, serve to remind the reader that no matter how much technology, culture, and society advance, people are still recognizably people. Some experiences are universal, the book says, using pandemic stories to demonstrate this.
the character in 2203 is an author going on a book tour for a book about pandemics right as a pandemic begins to sweep across the world, and Mandel uses this character's many lectures and interview answers to present the reader with some of the facts Mandel had learned about historical pandemics while researching for this project. This gives the reader a chance to see that yes, many of our own pandemic experiences really are universal.
One of my favorite elements of the novel is Night City, the first of three moon colonies. Over the years, this moon colony's lighting fell into disrepair and as the more affluent residents moved out, colony leadership decided the poorer population left wasn't worth the money it would take to fix the lights. While the other two colonies have regular day/night cycles, Night City's lighting is entirely reliant on the sun, so it goes for long periods with no light, hence the name. The name Night City is often used for settings in the cyberpunk genre, to a point that the name itself is a signal that the story is meant to be cyberpunk. With that in mind, many elements of Sea of Tranquility become newly recognizable as cyberpunk genre elements, from the protagonist's job in security to the bureaucracy of the government and the poverty of the people, but this is a gentler take on the genre.
At one point, the author is asked about the new popularity of post-apocalyptic fiction (in 2203) and answers that she thinks maybe "the end of the world" is a centuries-long, ongoing process, that we're always grappling with the events and shifts that change everything as we know it, and so to everyone living in their own time, it feels like an end of the world. This moment we're in isn't necessarily unique, but that doesn't make it not The End Of The World. Time Travel and Cyberpunk and Pandemic genre conventions are useful because they talk about what's deadly important to us in the here and now, even if they may not seem deadly important in a century or two. Time travel stories have a tendency to make us feel small, but Mandel fights against that tendency by constantly reminding us that what matters to us now also mattered to people in the past and will continue to matter to people in the future. In some way, that helps to transform the trivial things into something consequential, and there's something very kind in that.
bookishbriony's review against another edition
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
claire100's review against another edition
adventurous
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
ktjnsn's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
informative
mysterious
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
worldofbookcraft's review against another edition
4.0
take everything that scares u- devastating pandemics, the inevitability of our planets destruction, time-space paradoxes, the never 0% chance that maybe we *are* living in a simulation, and make it into a short literary fic novel. + the god tier backdrop of Canadian PNW and the moon
4/5 wish it was longer!!
4/5 wish it was longer!!
subspacetachyon's review against another edition
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
escapingintofiction's review against another edition
emotional
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
kinnykiran's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
informative
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.25
stlake's review against another edition
Trying to get into audiobooks— but this is not good for that. I’ll probably read it though!