Take a photo of a barcode or cover
dandelionnetwork 's review for:
The Terraformers
by Annalee Newitz
DID NOT FINISH: 40%
I nominated this book as my jobs environmentalism book discussion group. So when I found myself becoming bored with it, I felt a level of guilt of having the group read this. I really did try to give this book a change. I even skipped the middle section to see if the last section would provide more entertainment. But listening to it at 1.75 speed didn't help and I couldn't motive myself to keep listening leading up to the book discussion.
Big "What I Ordered vs. What I Got" energy.
Someone in another review said this book could've been made into 3 novellas since get section is divided by about 600 years with new protagonists. I can see that and even agree maybe that would've been for the best. Personally, I thought the first section was going to go into a different direction it did. with the way Destry murked that guy piloting his remote vessel. For a story about an "indigenous" population demanding sovereignty, the conflict between the city and the corporation leading up to the treaty felt too easy, but since I didn't finish the book, I imagine the real conflict takes place in the remaining two sections. Maybe if I had read the book in its entirety, the conclusion of that treaty between Spider City and the corporation would have felt different. In the third section of the portion I did listen to, there were clearly more policies in place within that treaty that had larger and broader effects on the planet's populations.
Another worldbuilding concept that felt hollow was the hierarchical nature on the planet, how everyone was essentially grown in tubes and/or made of mechanical parts, specifically with creatures we would describe as animals. The corporation has the capacity to create life forms and assign them a role in society, from high class to indentured (or enslaved let's be real) individuals with lower intelligence to animals with the intelligence of what we would assume in our world. There's some decision on how messed up it is to assign these levels to individuals and it is clearly commentary on how the concept of IQ is used in our world, but no real conversations about it being eugenics in the first section. [Side note: this reminded me of Tender is the Flesh where a subhuman species was created with significantly lower intelligence as humans in order to be chattel for the meat industry.]
Unlike some other readers, I have no issue with animals and non-animals (like rivers) being considered people because that's a concept that exists in some indigenous communities in our world. But the overall situation of them being designed and not actually of that planet just didn't quite work for me considering all that life was brought to that planet by the corporation itself.
But if a creature was made to have a certain level of intelligence, then it doesn't make sure that that creature actually has the compatibility to inherently have complex upon the removal of a limiter. Why would the corporation even have that feature in its creations? Better yet, isn't it weird that corporations have that ability at all? I don't know. Maybe my questions would have been answered later in the book but I don't care enough to finish it.
Big "What I Ordered vs. What I Got" energy.
Someone in another review said this book could've been made into 3 novellas since get section is divided by about 600 years with new protagonists. I can see that and even agree maybe that would've been for the best. Personally, I thought the first section was going to go into a different direction it did. with the way Destry murked that guy piloting his remote vessel. For a story about an "indigenous" population demanding sovereignty, the conflict between the city and the corporation leading up to the treaty felt too easy, but since I didn't finish the book, I imagine the real conflict takes place in the remaining two sections. Maybe if I had read the book in its entirety, the conclusion of that treaty between Spider City and the corporation would have felt different. In the third section of the portion I did listen to, there were clearly more policies in place within that treaty that had larger and broader effects on the planet's populations.
Another worldbuilding concept that felt hollow was the hierarchical nature on the planet, how everyone was essentially grown in tubes and/or made of mechanical parts, specifically with creatures we would describe as animals. The corporation has the capacity to create life forms and assign them a role in society, from high class to indentured (or enslaved let's be real) individuals with lower intelligence to animals with the intelligence of what we would assume in our world. There's some decision on how messed up it is to assign these levels to individuals and it is clearly commentary on how the concept of IQ is used in our world, but no real conversations about it being eugenics in the first section. [Side note: this reminded me of Tender is the Flesh where a subhuman species was created with significantly lower intelligence as humans in order to be chattel for the meat industry.]
Unlike some other readers, I have no issue with animals and non-animals (like rivers) being considered people because that's a concept that exists in some indigenous communities in our world. But the overall situation of them being designed and not actually of that planet just didn't quite work for me considering all that life was brought to that planet by the corporation itself.
But if a creature was made to have a certain level of intelligence, then it doesn't make sure that that creature actually has the compatibility to inherently have complex upon the removal of a limiter. Why would the corporation even have that feature in its creations? Better yet, isn't it weird that corporations have that ability at all? I don't know. Maybe my questions would have been answered later in the book but I don't care enough to finish it.