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A review by arbieroo
Learning the World: A Scientific Romance by Ken MacLeod
2.0
I gave up reading [a:Ken MacLeod|108281|Ken MacLeod|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1283522468p2/108281.jpg] after three books in a row banging on in strident fashion about revolutionary left wing politics.
I was given this one after a 5 or so year gap and was a little trepiditious about it. It turns out, however that this book has no such theme. It's a first contact novel, where-in a generation ship arrives in a solar-system that has the first multi-cellular life humans have found outside Earth - but not only that - it has a civilisation just developing radio and powered flight.
Cue the usual political contentions between and within both species. We get points of view from both species. I found the aliens more interesting than the humans, despite an intriguing social order prevailing in order to make a generation ship work. This was mainly because the alien characters were much more likeable than the humans. So far, so good. There are enough interesting ideas to make an SF cliche work for the umpteenth time - just like time-travel stories, it's always possible to find something new in first contact if you apply enough imagination - and imagination is something MacLeod has never been short of.
So why only two stars? Because lots of the ideas are under-explored. Quite how the human generation ships work, both physically and socially is under explored and the lack of sympathetic characters makes things worse. The story quietly builds to a tense and complex situation only for the denouement to be terribly anti-climactic and the aftermath gets rushed through, with explanations for it that seem either unconvincing or hasty.
I've never payed for a MacLeod book and I'm not planning to start, even though this proved a considerable improvement on my previous experiences.
I was given this one after a 5 or so year gap and was a little trepiditious about it. It turns out, however that this book has no such theme. It's a first contact novel, where-in a generation ship arrives in a solar-system that has the first multi-cellular life humans have found outside Earth - but not only that - it has a civilisation just developing radio and powered flight.
Cue the usual political contentions between and within both species. We get points of view from both species. I found the aliens more interesting than the humans, despite an intriguing social order prevailing in order to make a generation ship work. This was mainly because the alien characters were much more likeable than the humans. So far, so good. There are enough interesting ideas to make an SF cliche work for the umpteenth time - just like time-travel stories, it's always possible to find something new in first contact if you apply enough imagination - and imagination is something MacLeod has never been short of.
So why only two stars? Because lots of the ideas are under-explored. Quite how the human generation ships work, both physically and socially is under explored and the lack of sympathetic characters makes things worse. The story quietly builds to a tense and complex situation only for the denouement to be terribly anti-climactic and the aftermath gets rushed through, with explanations for it that seem either unconvincing or hasty.
I've never payed for a MacLeod book and I'm not planning to start, even though this proved a considerable improvement on my previous experiences.