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A review by paladinjane
Atmosphaera Incognita by Neal Stephenson
3.0
Full disclosure: I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
An eccentric billionaire decides that his legacy will be to build a 20-kilometer-tall steel tower. As nothing like this has ever been attempted before, the project poses massive engineering and supply problems, not to mention the political challenges of convincing local government and the local community at the proposed site to allow the project to move forward. The novella follows the construction of the tower over decades, offering a vision of how engineers might resolve some of the challenges of designing and constructing such an ambitious project.
While the story is told from the perspective of the billionaire’s friend and employee who is involved in the project from the beginning, offering glimpses of her life over time, it is focused on exploring the ways the engineers resolve the unique design problems posed by extremely high winds, extreme temperature fluctuations, etc. that would come with building a structure that high into the atmosphere. It also offers glimpses of the uses to which such a structure could be put, such as an airport in the sky.
I thought it ended in an odd spot, with the story not quite resolved and the tower still incomplete (although nearing completion). It works as a fascinating thought experiment, more than anything else. Indeed, that seems to have been its purpose. This novella was originally published in Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer’s Hieroglyph, an anthology of near-future, optimistic sci-fi stories of how technology and science can change the world.
In short, Atmosphaera Incognita offers a tantalizing tale of what human engineering might be able to accomplish, given the resources to do so.
An eccentric billionaire decides that his legacy will be to build a 20-kilometer-tall steel tower. As nothing like this has ever been attempted before, the project poses massive engineering and supply problems, not to mention the political challenges of convincing local government and the local community at the proposed site to allow the project to move forward. The novella follows the construction of the tower over decades, offering a vision of how engineers might resolve some of the challenges of designing and constructing such an ambitious project.
While the story is told from the perspective of the billionaire’s friend and employee who is involved in the project from the beginning, offering glimpses of her life over time, it is focused on exploring the ways the engineers resolve the unique design problems posed by extremely high winds, extreme temperature fluctuations, etc. that would come with building a structure that high into the atmosphere. It also offers glimpses of the uses to which such a structure could be put, such as an airport in the sky.
I thought it ended in an odd spot, with the story not quite resolved and the tower still incomplete (although nearing completion). It works as a fascinating thought experiment, more than anything else. Indeed, that seems to have been its purpose. This novella was originally published in Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer’s Hieroglyph, an anthology of near-future, optimistic sci-fi stories of how technology and science can change the world.
In short, Atmosphaera Incognita offers a tantalizing tale of what human engineering might be able to accomplish, given the resources to do so.