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The generation ship as an environmentalism story.
Kim Stanley Robinson has been doing the environmentalism/ecology/politics through a lens of science fiction for a very long time. He did it with the Red Mars books and did it again (some would say overdid) with the Science in the Capitol books that have since been collected as Green Earth. This is his latest effort at it and in my opinion it is a very successful one.
The book starts with a small family aboard a generation ship that is nearly at the destination of its 170 year journey. Devi, the mother, is the ship's unofficial Chief Engineer. Her husband Badim and young daughter Freya make up the rest of the family, three of two thousand or so inhabitants of the ship. The story mostly follows Freya, but Devi's initial presence and point-of-view dominate the book. Also present is the ship's AI which takes over the narrative for a large part of the book.
The story is fascinating and satisfying. You get to see the Tau Ceti destination and the activity there makes sense as does the eventual fate of the ship and its inhabitants. If I were to point out a particular flaw, it would be with the crafting of the situation and story towards a very didactic point that the author is trying to make. Miraculously all the science yet to be discovered and verified favors the points that the author is drawing about the current state of the science. This is particularly highlighted in several key points which I'll stick under spoiler tags:
(on the ecology of closed environments)
(on earthshock/sabbaticals)
(on the planet Aurora)
Despite all that, and for the most part I agree with KSRs points, this is an excellent hard SF story that doesn't ignore sociology, biology, ecology or any of the so-called "soft" sciences. In fact it makes it very clear that these things are going to put hard limits on the hard sciences going forward.
Kim Stanley Robinson has been doing the environmentalism/ecology/politics through a lens of science fiction for a very long time. He did it with the Red Mars books and did it again (some would say overdid) with the Science in the Capitol books that have since been collected as Green Earth. This is his latest effort at it and in my opinion it is a very successful one.
The book starts with a small family aboard a generation ship that is nearly at the destination of its 170 year journey. Devi, the mother, is the ship's unofficial Chief Engineer. Her husband Badim and young daughter Freya make up the rest of the family, three of two thousand or so inhabitants of the ship. The story mostly follows Freya, but Devi's initial presence and point-of-view dominate the book. Also present is the ship's AI which takes over the narrative for a large part of the book.
The story is fascinating and satisfying. You get to see the Tau Ceti destination and the activity there makes sense as does the eventual fate of the ship and its inhabitants. If I were to point out a particular flaw, it would be with the crafting of the situation and story towards a very didactic point that the author is trying to make. Miraculously all the science yet to be discovered and verified favors the points that the author is drawing about the current state of the science. This is particularly highlighted in several key points which I'll stick under spoiler tags:
(on the ecology of closed environments)
Spoiler
KSR is extrapolating hugely from the current science here, which is all based on studies like the Biosphere experiments. Literally orders of magnitude smaller than the ship's biome habitats. If there's one thing that we're absolutely sure of about the science of ecology it's that scale matters. His points about differing rates of evolution in island biomes is taken, but there's also no mention of human bioengineering to offset that. This is 500 years after the discover of CRISPR techniques ...(on earthshock/sabbaticals)
Spoiler
This is just put out there. You almost get a sense of the Gaian hypothesis from the way it's used in the book, as if a return to Mother Earth for validation is a required part of humanity. Needed more explanation - the way it was left here was psuedo-mythological.(on the planet Aurora)
Spoiler
An alien biological environment would be dangerous. Particularly in terms of anaphylaxis. However, the idea that an otherwise barren alien world would contain a pathogen so well-suited to us that it could infect and multiply to lethal levels within days of contact is fanciful. Useful for KSR's didactic point that there is no Planet B though.Despite all that, and for the most part I agree with KSRs points, this is an excellent hard SF story that doesn't ignore sociology, biology, ecology or any of the so-called "soft" sciences. In fact it makes it very clear that these things are going to put hard limits on the hard sciences going forward.