Aurora

Mankind has a fascination with travelling to the stars and settling other planets. The desire to do this is a natural extension of historical explorers and settlers: the "discovery" and exploration of America, the settling of the old west, the manned expeditions to the moon and the unmanned exploration of Mars and the outer solar system. But we seem to have reached out limit. The laws of physics tell us we can't travel faster than light, so exploration of other solar systems is out of reach.Of course, science fiction writers have found ways of travelling to other stars and distant galaxies for decades now. Most of those methods are either impossible (faster than light travel) or beyond our knowledge (wormholes, for example). One way that writers have gotten humanity to the stars is via the generational starship; put a bunch of travelers on a starship designed to last a very long time, let them have families and live their lives as normally as they can until they get to their destination, then settle the planet and voila, humanity has expanded into the galaxy. There are any number of novels that have variations on this story, but in the end, humanity gets there and survives.Kim Stanley Robinson's latest novel AURORA is a generational starship novel, but it's different from any other I've read. AURORA starts out with the ship just a few years away from its destination, Tau Ceti. The ship is showing signs of wear, and it will have some trouble making it there according to the ship's chief engineer Devi. As planetfall gets near, we follow the life of Devi's daughter Freya as she grows up and discovers what it means to live on a generational starship. We learn, through Devi's eyes, as well as the eyes of Ship, the story's narrator, that failures are occurring all over the ship, happening faster than they can be repaired. And they are not just mechanical problems; there are biological, sociological, and environmental issues. Eventually the ship reaches the Tau Ceti system, and a moon is selected for settlement. Not long after, things go wrong - very wrong. How the travelers deal with the problems that arose as a result of landing on that particular moon is really the meat of the bookAURORA certainly is a generational starship story, but it's like none I've read before. Robinson is sending a message with this book, and it's not a pleasant one, especially for a race of people that want to leave the womb and go to the stars. The message is that it's very hard to do, probably impossible. The traditional generational starship story usually is one that has a positive ending - humanity travels great distances, gets where it wants to go, lands on a planet, and settles the planet. Then of course you have the endless sequels that tells what happens to those settlers. But hold that thought for a moment.Robinson has made it very clear in interviews, articles, and other books he's written that infodumps are essential to a science fiction story, even at the expense of characterization which has become so important, especially in modern day science fiction. The first half or so of the book develops Freya's character so that we understand her actions later on. The second half of the book is almost devoid of the same kinds of characterization. Character interactions, when there are any, are used to allow Robinson to go into high infodump mode. And the message of all that infodumping is that travel to the stars is extremely difficult, if not impossible. Robinson is not afraid to tell us, in something excruciating detail, how the universe works and how it really is working against you.Robinson is telling us that no matter how much planning is done for a long range interstellar mission, it's not all going to go the way the plan says it's going to go. There will be mechanical failures: Things will break, unexpectedly wear out, or just not work the way they are expected to. Some bacteria will creep in somehow, somewhere, and kill the crops and animals that the settlers are depending on for food. People will become unhappy with their situation. Those volunteers that left the solar system six generations prior to the start of the story were okay with being thrown into the unknown. Those that were born into it on the trip didn't ask for their situation - it was thrust upon them. They don't like mandated population control, or the biome in which they live. When pressed for a decision after the incident on the moon they landed on arose, there was dissension and disagreement as to how to handle it, and violence resulted - just like back on Earth. It's not clear that makeshift solutions to unforeseen problems will work as there is no precedent.There is more, much more, but I could be venturing into spoiler territory if I go too much further. It seems that what Robinson is telling us is that maybe, just maybe, we ought to take care of the planet we have, because it's going to be difficult to leave and go elsewhere. The unknown may be exhilarating and exciting, but it can also be terrifying (there, I've managed to say something about the latter part of the book without actually spoiling anything). We don't know it all, we can't know it all, and we can't plan for it all.With regard to sequels, I think Robinson has been somewhat sneaky with AURORA. Unless you blink and therefore miss it, AURORA takes place in the same universe as 2312 (which may be in the same universe as his award winning Mars trilogy). There are a few references to things that we know about from 2312 that put this story in that setting. If you squint a bit I suppose, then, that you could call this a sequel to 2312. However, it also seems clear that if he wants to, Robinson can write a sequel to AURORA based on the events surrounding the events that occurred at Tau Ceti. It would be interesting to read that book if it ever comes about.AURORA is a fine novel, one of the best, along with NEMESIS GAMES, that I read from 2015, and in my opinion is superior to 2312. You may not like what it is telling you, but it certainly is a fascinating and different look at the generational starship story.Ali Ahn is an adequate narrator for the book, and she fits because AURORA is narrated by Ship, who has a female persona. An awful generalization, but one that I'm going to make because it suits the situation, is that there is one type of bad narrator, one type of good narrator, and then there's the adequate type of narrator. The bad one is the one that jars you out of the story for any number of reasons. A narrator should allow you to immerse yourself into the story without kicking you out of it. It's hard to describe the best kind of narrator (but I'll try anyway), which would be one that gets the characters right, the voices right, and brings emotion to the work. Ali Ahn is the adequate kind of narrator - the one you don't notice one way or another, who does not kick you out of the story but doesn't knock it out of the park, either. Whether that is actually good or not is up to the listener, but that works for me, and that's what Ali Ahn brought to AURORA.

Well, I blasted through this book in about a week, which definitely says something. I am a huge Kim Stanley Robinson fan and this new novel, Aurora, does not disappoint. It is a great entry book for those who haven't read any of his work before, and it is a must have for those who are familiar with him. The main plot follows a multi-generational starship through interstellar space to one of the closest G-class stars with planets in the habitable zone of the star system, Tau Ceti, with the hopes of colonizing a moon that orbits one of these planets. The concept itself is rather thrilling, and the physical descriptions of the space travel are very well done. There is also an underlying theme and message to the book that is to be learned from, although I won't spoil that here. Let's get into some pros and cons to make this easier.Pros:- Very interesting page turner.- The characters are much stronger than in 2312 (This might be a pro for others, but I felt 2312 was more about concepts, and that isn't as bad as people say)- KSR Executes such a tremendous concept very well, tackling interstellar space travel with grace.- Like all of his books, the underlying theme is very sobering, and I have gained much from reading this novel.Cons:- Plot slowed down significantly towards the end. (But could it really have been different?)- One of the things I liked about KSR's Mars trilogy and Galileo's Dream were his extrapolations of ideas regarding the themes in the book. This was almost entirely absent in Aurora, and is the main reason I am giving it 4/5 rather than 5/5.- The elaborate and beautiful descriptions of Mars in the Mars trilogy are not present for Aurora and the Tau Ceti system. Although there are possibly reasons for this, which I will not elaborate on or else I would spoil a major part of the plot, it wouldhave been nice to get a more grandiose introduction to the Tau Ceti system.Overall:BUY THIS BOOK. The pros heavily outweigh the cons, and Aurora is one of Kim Stanley Robinson's best. Not that there are many duds to find anyway.

Un auteur qui ne me convient absolument pas. Nous y trouvons de très longues descriptions et dialogues sans grand intérêt. Pour la première fois, j'ai déclaré forfait à la moitié de l'ouvrage. Je confirme l'avis de certains lecteurs... Ce chef-d'œuvre est barbant.

Excellent livre de la série de science-fiction Mars écrit par un auteur de talents.

I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in Interstellar travel, the possibility of living outside the solar system or even of colonizing other planets in our backyard. Instead of getting swept up in grand, heroic visions the book really gets into the nitty gritty of actually making that happen when you have to work and live with only a few hundred humans in some of the most challenging conditions imaginable.Sometimes you have to imagine oneself as an outsider would, to get a good sense of perspective.

I did not know Kim Stanley Robinson before reading about the “Aurora Effect” in an article by Caleb Scharf in the March 2020 issue of the magazine Le Scienze (Italian edition of Scientific American). I grew up reading Jules Verne, Isaac Asimov and Arthur Clarke. The Aurora effect stimulated my curiosity and I bought the book from Kim Stanley Robinson it on Amazon. Aurora is indeed a page turner and I really enjoyed it. I will for sure read more from him.

This is not the usual sort of science fiction novel, but is more of a philosophical treatise on the likelihood of successful interstellar space travel. In addition, it gives an interesting, but quite deep, analysis of how artificial intelligence might work. It presents a number of interesting questions along the way, some of which the reader has to answer for themselves, while for other questions the novel presents some answers, but you may not agree with all of them.I agree with other reviewers, who have indicated that this is NOT a ‘light read’, but that shouldn’t put you off as long as you’re willing to put some effort into understanding subjects ranging from AI, through ecology to time dilation during space flight. If this book doesn’t make you think, then you must already be an expert in at least two of the area involved in astrobiology! One of the unusual aspects of the writing is that the story is told by the AI that controls the spaceship, which leads to some odd descriptions of how to use English – the AI is learning the ‘art’ of communicating through the written word - so, you can learn some use of English as well!Then there is the whole question of simple life forms, on an alien world, and how they might find the sudden introduction of another biological lifeform nothing but an incubator for their own biochemistry – that’s a really deep, but significant aspect of the questions this book asks.Finally, there are insights into human behaviour and society’s reaction to the unusual, the unexpected and the contentious issues facing them.Not too bad a coverage of modern life, all wrapped up in an adventure through space….well worth a read, give yourself time to digest the information though.