You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
I decided to check out a novel by Karl Schroeder after reading his Metatropolis novella. I was put off by the cheesy cover of "Ventus" and the cheesy fantasy name of one of the main characters, but I got pulled into the plot quite quickly. It's set on the world Ventus, which was supposed to be terraformed by nanotechnology and ready to welcome settlers. but when the settlers arrive, the nanotech demigods, called "Winds" in the book, don't recognize the settlers as their masters and keep the settlers at a stone age level of development. Outside in the the rest of the universe, humanity has gone to war with a malevolent artificial intelligence and has defeated it, but they're afraid a "resurrection seed" has been planted on Ventus, so they go to find and kill it and also stumble across the secret of what went wrong with the nanotech on Ventus.
A lot of times, I find that the label "hard science fiction" is an excuse to explore technology and science philosophy at the expense of good characterization, but that's not the case here. I really found the characters sympathetic and interesting, and the main characters all go through pretty big changes over the course of the book.
A lot of times, I find that the label "hard science fiction" is an excuse to explore technology and science philosophy at the expense of good characterization, but that's not the case here. I really found the characters sympathetic and interesting, and the main characters all go through pretty big changes over the course of the book.