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cricket1988's review against another edition
4.0
This book was pretty interesting when it came to the hard science, I'm not going to say the "F" word, t I think that if there is an idea there is a possibility, the characters were short lived but they helped the story move smoothly. This whole book had a subtle feel to it i enjoyed reading it.
dubsington's review against another edition
4.0
This was an excellent, and more the most part, engrossing read. An ode to science fiction everywhere. This book made me think of both the film Interstellar and the novel A Canticle of Leibowitz. Some fine company indeed.
The book starts out with Nathan Arkwright's passing and his granddaughter getting to know more about him. Nathan was a popular science fiction writer who believed in science fiction's power to light up human imagination and propel us forward. As a last request of sorts, he sets up the Arkwright foundation and using the monies from his successful career, he charges his best friends with continuing the mission of going to the stars.
While written in a simple narrative voice, this novel had a good dose of "hard sci-fi" in it as well. Scientific terms, and technologies on the verge of being possible are used and discussed in the book, though not at any length that is likely to bore readers.
The main snag is that Arkwright does a couple time jumps, and no single character in the main protagonist for the entire book. We spend time with multiple generations of the Arkwright family, and so when characters work they work, and when they don't, they don't. When they work you'll be sad you don't get to spend more time with them, and when they don't, you'll be pleased your time with them is short. The best news is that most of the different characters that serve as protagonist work.
I enjoyed this story a lot and would recommend it to anyone, especially as science fiction fan.
The book starts out with Nathan Arkwright's passing and his granddaughter getting to know more about him. Nathan was a popular science fiction writer who believed in science fiction's power to light up human imagination and propel us forward. As a last request of sorts, he sets up the Arkwright foundation and using the monies from his successful career, he charges his best friends with continuing the mission of going to the stars.
While written in a simple narrative voice, this novel had a good dose of "hard sci-fi" in it as well. Scientific terms, and technologies on the verge of being possible are used and discussed in the book, though not at any length that is likely to bore readers.
The main snag is that Arkwright does a couple time jumps, and no single character in the main protagonist for the entire book. We spend time with multiple generations of the Arkwright family, and so when characters work they work, and when they don't, they don't. When they work you'll be sad you don't get to spend more time with them, and when they don't, you'll be pleased your time with them is short. The best news is that most of the different characters that serve as protagonist work.
I enjoyed this story a lot and would recommend it to anyone, especially as science fiction fan.
jmoses's review against another edition
2.0
I had high hopes for this book, but it didn't end up being what I thought it would be. It was...alright, I guess? It was way less "hard scifi" and way more "politics and family" then anything. The ending bit was also kind of disjointed and scattered. I read the whole thing, but I won't ever again.
weltenkreuzer's review against another edition
5.0
Wow. Die ultimative Liebeserklärung an die Science-Fiction und ein menschliches Plädoyer für einen realistischen aber hoffnungsvollen Blick in die Zukunft. Ausführliche Rezension: http://weltenfluestern.de/21
merlandre's review against another edition
4.0
A good story - some history of sci-fi combined with a plan for the future. Good, science based sci-fi.
abibliophagist's review against another edition
2.0
Woof, did I not like this book. Loved the cover, loved the book synopsis, bought at full price in store (rarity) and had it on my to read immediately after books I was required to read.
When I finally cracked it open I was majorly disappointed. This book suffers from too many ideas, with not enough inbetween ideas, which would almost be forgivable if it wasn't for the absolutely terrible pacing. I don't think I've discovered a more terribly paced book. Pages upon pages of the most boring and mundane writing, followed with a paragraph that told a ton of info at once and quickly wrapped everything up each section. The first section (arguably the worst) The actual character was annoyed with the run around she was getting which double because as a reader I was annoyed, literally a quarter of the book could have happened in a few paragraphs. On top of this, he name drops so authors I just rolled my eyes. I get it, this dude is suposed to be a big name (I really hate when books overly reference things, I HATED Ready Player One)
Then an more interesting but way too long second part, and then it literally became the movie Armageddon, and then the most interesting, yet also too long a oddly handled finale.
It was drab, boring, it would have been far better as a short story anthology ( Worthing Chronicles style, a fanastic generational spanning short story antholgy by Orson Scott Card) I literally forced my way through it. The characters were lifeless and I felt nothing for them.
I don't mean to be harsh ( allen steele looks super nice) but it was incredibly disappointing.
It's not a love letter to science fiction, a live letter implies respectful inspiration, this was just name drops and overdone tropes and.plot lines. I literally watched a Star Trek episode today that was similar to the finale. You can argue that nothing is original anymore, but that's not true, and you can still handle things uniquely, and this wasn't handled well at all.
When I finally cracked it open I was majorly disappointed. This book suffers from too many ideas, with not enough inbetween ideas, which would almost be forgivable if it wasn't for the absolutely terrible pacing. I don't think I've discovered a more terribly paced book. Pages upon pages of the most boring and mundane writing, followed with a paragraph that told a ton of info at once and quickly wrapped everything up each section. The first section (arguably the worst) The actual character was annoyed with the run around she was getting which double because as a reader I was annoyed, literally a quarter of the book could have happened in a few paragraphs. On top of this, he name drops so authors I just rolled my eyes. I get it, this dude is suposed to be a big name (I really hate when books overly reference things, I HATED Ready Player One)
Then an more interesting but way too long second part, and then it literally became the movie Armageddon, and then the most interesting, yet also too long a oddly handled finale.
It was drab, boring, it would have been far better as a short story anthology ( Worthing Chronicles style, a fanastic generational spanning short story antholgy by Orson Scott Card) I literally forced my way through it. The characters were lifeless and I felt nothing for them.
I don't mean to be harsh ( allen steele looks super nice) but it was incredibly disappointing.
It's not a love letter to science fiction, a live letter implies respectful inspiration, this was just name drops and overdone tropes and.plot lines. I literally watched a Star Trek episode today that was similar to the finale. You can argue that nothing is original anymore, but that's not true, and you can still handle things uniquely, and this wasn't handled well at all.
nh27's review against another edition
3.0
[3.5] Overall a pretty intriguing story spanning generations of people building a starship. However, the first part reads a little bit like a scientific report and does not have enough character depth - people meet, get married and keep working on the starship. A much better character study appears towards the end of the book.
otherashley's review against another edition
4.0
This was definitely a love letter to science fiction, and it was surprising in a good way.
In this novel we follow a family through multiple generations, all with the end goal of building a starship to colonize an earth like planet out in the universe. We get to see their family struggles, aging, dying, births, etc. All the while working towards the common goal.
It's a kind of wonderful flip on the traditional "generation ship" idea where we have generations building and overseeing the travel of the ship which is only carrying genetic material from the original generation and others who have worked on the project along the way. The payoff in the end was quite lovely.
Thanks, NetGalley for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
In this novel we follow a family through multiple generations, all with the end goal of building a starship to colonize an earth like planet out in the universe. We get to see their family struggles, aging, dying, births, etc. All the while working towards the common goal.
It's a kind of wonderful flip on the traditional "generation ship" idea where we have generations building and overseeing the travel of the ship which is only carrying genetic material from the original generation and others who have worked on the project along the way. The payoff in the end was quite lovely.
Thanks, NetGalley for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
justiceofkalr's review against another edition
2.0
Okay. So for the most part this book was about Arkwright and his descendants and the ship being built was kind of just the background that connected them all. Which would be potentially interesting except for the fact that I can't really think of a single character I actually liked. In fact some of the characters I just plain disliked. So focusing on the people was problematic when I didn't care for them. That was probably my biggest problem in this book.
At about halfway through I started looking at reviews to see if the book would pick up at all and found out that the last quarter or so takes place on the new planet that the ship was sent to. So I continued slogging through hoping for things to pick up when I got to that point. And I was pretty disappointed when I got there. Yes it takes place on the new world, but I felt kind of let down when the whole situation turned into the typical human colony has lost touch and become primitive and superstitious. Honestly I'm surprised things didn't turn out more fucked up what with the fact that they were essentially sending babies tutored by a couple of machines to colonize a new planet. That would have at least been more interesting.
But it gets worse, because then the Earth humans come and set them all straight and fix everything and they all become one big happy family. Which, wait, what? The whole first three-quarters of the book was about how impossible sending living humans to other worlds would be and that was the whole point of building the ship with genetic material instead. So basically everything that had previously happened became pointless because in the end humans can just enter cryo-sleep and zip around the galaxy anyways.
And I dunno, I feel like some of the Eos people at least would have been upset about how their ancestors were kind of fucked up by this colonization effort and now these weird looking people who are related to the people who chucked them out into space are coming to colonize their planet too. Especially since they act superior. When Nathan and crew are explaining stuff it seems like every time someone starts to explain something they pause and say something that basically amounts to, oh I forgot you guys are too primitive to understand our superior knowledge let me give you a pitying look. But apparently they all just hug it out I guess.
At about halfway through I started looking at reviews to see if the book would pick up at all and found out that the last quarter or so takes place on the new planet that the ship was sent to. So I continued slogging through hoping for things to pick up when I got to that point. And I was pretty disappointed when I got there. Yes it takes place on the new world, but I felt kind of let down when the whole situation turned into the typical human colony has lost touch and become primitive and superstitious. Honestly I'm surprised things didn't turn out more fucked up what with the fact that they were essentially sending babies tutored by a couple of machines to colonize a new planet. That would have at least been more interesting.
But it gets worse, because then the Earth humans come and set them all straight and fix everything and they all become one big happy family. Which, wait, what? The whole first three-quarters of the book was about how impossible sending living humans to other worlds would be and that was the whole point of building the ship with genetic material instead. So basically everything that had previously happened became pointless because in the end humans can just enter cryo-sleep and zip around the galaxy anyways.
And I dunno, I feel like some of the Eos people at least would have been upset about how their ancestors were kind of fucked up by this colonization effort and now these weird looking people who are related to the people who chucked them out into space are coming to colonize their planet too. Especially since they act superior. When Nathan and crew are explaining stuff it seems like every time someone starts to explain something they pause and say something that basically amounts to, oh I forgot you guys are too primitive to understand our superior knowledge let me give you a pitying look. But apparently they all just hug it out I guess.