'Aurora' by Kim Stanley Robinson
'Aurora' by Kim Stanley Robinson

The good

  • A fascinating look at what it might be like to try to send out a “generation ship” to colonize far away planets. It made me realize that most other SciFi of this sort totally glosses over the implications of trying travel through space for hundreds of years (including trying to keep everything working and all the biomes alive that whole time), how the children or grandchildren of the original volunteers would feel about it, what it would be like to grow up on a space ship your how life, how cooperative people would really be, and what it would be really like to try to settle down on another planet.

  • Great writing, that even becomes beautiful at parts.

  • Mostly sticks the landing. I found the ending to be fairly satisfying and realistic.

  • Fun to hear the ship’s almost-fully-intelligent onboard quantum computer reminisce about what’s happening and share it’s thoughts on humans, consciousness, the meaning of life, the meaning of love, etc.

The not so good

  • A few parts of the book, especially in the beginning, feel a bit slow or dragged out.

  • The characters mostly feel like real, fully-fleshed out people, but occasionally become a bit flat and act more like plot devices. Also, in some strange sense, the humans in the story sometimes feel secondary to the plot (and the ship computer).

Rating: 4 stars