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A review by ruxandra_grr
Another Life by Sarena Ulibarri
3.0
I love the idea of solarpunk as a genre and I always read it in order to gain some hope for the future and also take a look at the possible practical solutions we are working on to like... save the world! I was very excited for this, and on this specific thing - the closer-to-us-than-we-think scifi elements -, it really did not disappoint. We're dealing with a sustainable community with a non-hierarchical structure, cool communal living, satisfyingly explored re: what do we do about labor and the jobs that people are supposedly not willing to do?
The worldbuilding is in that sweet spot of: not too much, not too little. There are tantalizing elements outside of Otra Vida: a civil war in the past, the splitting off of states, California has a Basic Income program (that's apparently not enough), while the cops are a bit scifi and are called Protectors, and the media is very firmly Verified and connected to the state apparatus. All of this is pretty great.
When entering into this, I was wary about the idea of reincarnation in a realistic scifi setting, but I was very pleasantly surprised of the scifi explanation for this - I successfully suspended my disbelief. But I wasn't super happy with how this storyline was followed through the end.
Galacia, our main character, and the moderator of conflicts in Otra Vida, turns out to be the reincarnation of an Elon Musk-like billionaire, who ended up killing a bunch of people when trying to get to Planet B (a fun play on those climate protest signs 'There is no planet B!') with his spaceship. Galacia takes most of the book to process this information and 1. we don't get to see her in action as a fully involved & competent moderator, 2. she gets very distracted by this and ignores a bunch of things happening at the margins and 3.
I think what has left me unsatisfied about most solarpunk writing so far is the overwhelming focus on technology and pragmatic matters and not so much on the people and their relationships. So, are these the people that would live in that community? Because they feel sort of like current day anarchists, maybe even a bit recent past anarchists. I think that people who would live in that community in the future would be a bit different. Around a third of the way through, Galacia is called to moderate a conflict, and it is very summarily described (we don't even know what the conflict is, actually) and waved away and that felt disappointing. I wanted to actually see her in action.
There's also a generational conflict subplot that I thought was well handled, because it turns out that separating the people who live in that community as Founders, Petitioners and Inheritors could create a class structure? Could create biases in moderating conflict!
I wasn't super happy though with the procedure for kicking out someone in the community - it's just a petition, that feels cold. In general, when it came to the people, I got the vibes that they were all doing their own thing and not actively trying to keep creating the best community they could have. But I guess that's very much my own thing and this was a work-in-progress sort of thing. Bottom line: I personally wanted more of the people of Otra Vida and maybe less of the explosive plotline.
Thank you to the publisher for providing me an ARC.
The worldbuilding is in that sweet spot of: not too much, not too little. There are tantalizing elements outside of Otra Vida: a civil war in the past, the splitting off of states, California has a Basic Income program (that's apparently not enough), while the cops are a bit scifi and are called Protectors, and the media is very firmly Verified and connected to the state apparatus. All of this is pretty great.
When entering into this, I was wary about the idea of reincarnation in a realistic scifi setting, but I was very pleasantly surprised of the scifi explanation for this - I successfully suspended my disbelief. But I wasn't super happy with how this storyline was followed through the end.
Galacia, our main character, and the moderator of conflicts in Otra Vida, turns out to be the reincarnation of an Elon Musk-like billionaire, who ended up killing a bunch of people when trying to get to Planet B (a fun play on those climate protest signs 'There is no planet B!') with his spaceship. Galacia takes most of the book to process this information and 1. we don't get to see her in action as a fully involved & competent moderator, 2. she gets very distracted by this and ignores a bunch of things happening at the margins and 3.
Spoiler
in the end I felt very frustrated, because the idea that Thomas Ramsey wanted to do some good by doing a lot of bad really undermines the exploration of genius-entrepreneur-billionaires of today and it becomes a bit toothlessI think what has left me unsatisfied about most solarpunk writing so far is the overwhelming focus on technology and pragmatic matters and not so much on the people and their relationships. So, are these the people that would live in that community? Because they feel sort of like current day anarchists, maybe even a bit recent past anarchists. I think that people who would live in that community in the future would be a bit different. Around a third of the way through, Galacia is called to moderate a conflict, and it is very summarily described (we don't even know what the conflict is, actually) and waved away and that felt disappointing. I wanted to actually see her in action.
There's also a generational conflict subplot that I thought was well handled, because it turns out that separating the people who live in that community as Founders, Petitioners and Inheritors could create a class structure? Could create biases in moderating conflict!
I wasn't super happy though with the procedure for kicking out someone in the community - it's just a petition, that feels cold. In general, when it came to the people, I got the vibes that they were all doing their own thing and not actively trying to keep creating the best community they could have. But I guess that's very much my own thing and this was a work-in-progress sort of thing. Bottom line: I personally wanted more of the people of Otra Vida and maybe less of the explosive plotline.
Thank you to the publisher for providing me an ARC.