Aurora Mass Market Paperback – April 26, 2016

Ever since reading the Martian Trilogy many years ago, I have been a fan of Kim Stanley Robinson. His cosmos is understandable and is populated with real people, with problems we can all recognise. I believe he also has an agenda — to knock down the fantasies of faster-than-light travel that have been at the basis of science fiction writing (Asimov) and entertainment (Star Trek) almost since the genre was invented.Early in his career Robinson decided that his SF writing would be constrained by the laws of physics (as admirably explained by the great Stephen Hawking is a recent television series). Thus Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars deal exclusively with Earth’s near neighbour and the relationship between the two. In 2312 he moves out a little further — to the asteroid belt, the moons of the gas giants, even Mercury — a busy little Solar System.In his latest novel, Aurora, he takes the leap to the stars, but once again is careful to abide by the dictates of nature. His giant starship travels for hundreds of the years and the thousands on board are born, live and die on the way to the destination — Aurora, the moon of a planet on a distant sun that appears hospitable to life.Robinson uses some interesting devices to develop his story. The somewhat reluctant narrator is the ship’s computer, simply referred to as the ‘Ship’, which is bullied into constructing a narrative of the voyage by Devi, the brilliant engineer and scientist, who dies just as Aurora is reached.The mantle of human heroine, for want of better words, falls onto Devi’s daughter, Freya, and as the novel progresses, the thrusts of Robinson’s message becomes clear. Freya, who of course had no choice in her role as a space explorer, has underlying doubts about the entire mission, which come more to the surface as difficulties begin to multiply.She becomes the aggressive leader of a faction that wants to abort the project and turn the ship back towards Earth, which she says is the only place in the universe where mankind truly belongs. Not wishing to say any more about how the novels develops, it seems that Robinson is stating, as Freya comes to believe, that the limit of our exploration and colonisation will be the planets in our immediate vicinity and anything further will be so fraught with danger as to be pointless.Is he right? Watch this space in 500 years or so.

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.

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.

It starts really well, with the character of Devi - clever, stressed, and perpetually angry. Unfortunately she dies, and we're left with the far less interesting character of Freya, her daughter, who we're constantly told is an inspiring leader, but who actually comes across as a huge pain. She's the kind of person who cries, "No, no, no," when people aren't doing what she wants them to, and who when told a shuttle can't hold everyone who needs to escape says, "We can do this." Well, sometimes you can, but nine times out of ten the engineer wasn't a complete idiot and he or she was confronting you with the real facts. Freya is one of those characters who believes you can talk (or failing that, punch) your way around the facts, and the author makes sure to load the dice so she's always right.More problems: the size and population we're given for the ship don't add up. At first I thought this was deliberate. The story is largely told by the ship's AI, so maybe it was a HAL-like unreliable narrator? No, it was just a mistake that the author and editor didn't catch.More crucially, the book relies on us being able to believe in the author's scientific credibility. His thesis is not only that generation starships are likely to fail, but that they're doomed to fail and it's insanity to send them out in the first place. Well, no argument from me on that score. Pretty much the entire history of generation starships in SF, from Orphans in the Sky to Hull Zero Three, is that something goes wrong with them. I'd just send the AIs. But Robinson's argument is that we can't find habitable worlds, because if they're habitable then they'll have life on them that would kill us. His example here is a kind of prion (well, maybe) but most probably the life that existed on Earth-like worlds would do nothing to us - unless it actually ate us, of course. But infectious agents that work for a completely different biological OS? Nah.And then the ship comes home. That's interesting because it's unexpected. It's a story of failure on a grand scale, and a failure that isn't even celebrated as noble, the author telling us again and again that the attempt was merely foolish. Put like that, though, you might as well forget all human endeavour. I accept the characters who chose to stay at the Tau Ceti system were likely to die, but you'd still rather stick with them than the slackers who give it up and go home, wouldn't you?That's where the dodgy science comes in, by the way. The ship re-enters the solar system at 1% lightspeed and proceeds to use gravitational braking to slow down enough for its crew to get home. That's just not going to work, you'd be in and out again with barely any loss of speed. So the biology and the physics don't convince, and it's the kind of book that lectures us with its assumed authority so it really matters that it gets things wrong. In that sense it's a lot like the main character.

Why do I take any notice of reviews nowadays. This sounds like a really good read, interesting subject and is backed up by glowing reviews in the preamble.It reads like science fiction I used to read when I was in my early teens (I was easily pleased back then)It gushes out dialogue and ideas like a machine gun with no apparent sense of order or logic, one thing tumbles into the next with hardly time to draw breath whilst going into minute irrelevant detailsI am getting used to being disappointed with many science fiction writings these days, there are so many books like this. The ability to be able to write prose competently like a professional seems not to matter any more. Sentence construction? Don't worry, just bang it out!And so it goes on, and on, and on ..........Come back Arthur C Clarke!

Aurora starts with a slightly odd description of a father and daughter sailing a dingy. The descriptions of the water are semi-familiar, but something just does not feel quite right. Then we realise the dingy is above a star-ship! Set in the 26th & 27th centuries, Aurora is the story of mankind’s first attempt to colonise another star system. The ship has been travelling for close to 200 years, and the latest generation are the ones who will finally arrive at the Tau Ceti system, twelve light years from Earth, and (in real life) potentially the location of a habitable planetary system.The first quarter of the book focuses on the final stages of the journey, with Devi (chief engineer), her daughter Freya and father Badim the main protagonists. Devi is something of a techie genius, fixing the ship, but is seemingly rather cold and judging. Freya takes a long (arguably pointless) journey around the vast ship for years as the ship slows. Once they reach Tau Ceti things begin to go wrong – I will not go into details and spoil things unlike one of the reviewers below. The last act is rather laborious as someone mentions in another review where there are extremely long descriptions of the gravity slowdown used on the ship – it does become rather repetitive.This is very much hard sci-fi – this is interstellar travel via generation ship, not hyperdrives or wormholes. The advanced technology used is limited to fusion drive (always 20 years away), a smallish quantum computer, and a laser pusher mechanism (which has been tested on small flying discs on earth). The book is at its best when KSR describes the ship, the locations), and the technology.As with many of KSR’s books, the story is at its best when he does not get into philosophy, and some of the politics is rather drawn out. I keep reading his books because the bits that are good are SO good, they allow me to forgive some of the less interesting bits that meander a little. This is another thoughtful, interesting read on the prospects of humankind eventually visiting another star system, albeit more than five centuries from now. In fact, part of the curiosity in Aurora is how little we appear to have progressed. The motive for the mission is also unclear – the travellers are still in contact with Earth, although any message takes almost twelve years to arrive!Worth a read for hard-sci fans for sure.

Yes we've all read about colony ships before but Robinson's way with the subject is original and compelling. (As it was with Mars colonization) I think his take on this subject is especially compelling in his describing the frustration of some characters of having been born into this dreadfully difficult situation, I.E. they are generations beyond the people who made the decision to start the journey and so when problems (catastrophes) happen their situation is even sadder and more poignant.There are a large number of interesting and fascinating characters, not least the ship itself. Yes, there is a good deal of very technical description of various aspects of the ship and the journey. I'm not a scientist but all this complex detail made the story richer and more plausible to me. I would consider this hard sci-fi at its very best and a thoroughly enjoyable read.