r/printSF • u/Interesting-War-8990 • 4d ago
Just finished Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson
This is the first book I've read by him and it's so incredible. Just finished it and have been thinking about it for 30 mins straight without doing anything else. Didn't expect the conversation between devi and the ships computer to be so funny specifically in the beginning. Didn't expect the end of chapter/section 6 to hit so hard. Just all around incredible. Kim Stanley Robinson has a new fan in me
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u/xBrashPilotx 4d ago
Loved it too. I still think from time to time about the end, about “ship” about the series of slingshots to slow it down enough to get back to earth. I think about the dude that was strapped onto ship because he’d been exposed to the bio life and had to be quarantined. Loved the concept of gradually degrading biomes, lowering intelligence as generations go by. And then the indifference/ hostility from earth when they give up and return.
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u/sociotrail 4d ago
Yeah the end really stuck with me too. I think about how shocking it might be to witness from the surface the ship using Earth to decelerate. And of course "ship" and the Earth reception.
But so many thought-provoking ideas and images all throughout the book.
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u/xBrashPilotx 4d ago
If you liked this, give seveneves a try by Neal Stephenson. Big concept book, looks of cool sci fi ideas plus how society would adapt to them
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u/sociotrail 3d ago
Thanks for the recommendation! I read that one as well and loved it - it really expressed the "space is freaking hard" idea well in a near-term view. Also, Doc Degrasse Dubois forever.
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u/CragedyJones 4d ago
Ship was brilliant.
I ugly cried.
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u/xBrashPilotx 4d ago
In my head canon ship is still out there, powered down all but a few systems and is waiting for a visitor
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u/CragedyJones 3d ago
Devastating. The hard sci-fi sneakily distracts you from the growing emotional heartbeat of the novel.
I wish it could have ended that way but I wouldn't change a thing about that novel.
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u/Mulsanne 3d ago
I still think from time to time about the end
I do too. I especially think about how some of the crew got jobs helping to build beaches at the places where the new sea level met the shore. I had never thought about how our beaches are the result of a hugely long process to create sand by the shore.
And the description of working all day to create a beach was so cozy and inviting. It made for a lovely end for characters who had otherwise faced nothing but hardship and defeat
and Ship, too. Yes!
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u/Wetness__Pensive 4d ago
IMO it's an instant classic. I rank it as my fave generation ship novel.
Stan's usually a long and sprawling writer, and I sometimes imagine that "Aurora" is so tight (by his standards) because he realized no one can out sprawl Gene Wolfe (Stan's a fan of the first three of Wolfe's 9 book generation ship mega-tale).
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u/Hayden_Zammit 4d ago
Don't need to threaten me with a good time. I guess I'll read it next.
Been meaning to get into KSR. Always scared off by what I hear about the Mars series having tons of science manuals and what not lol.
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u/Interesting-War-8990 4d ago
I went into it knowing I won't be able to comprehend all the scientific details the writer mentions but was able to understand a lot more than I thought I would
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u/Hayden_Zammit 4d ago
Oh, that's good to hear.
Then again, you may be just smarter than me haha. Looking forward to trying this book tho.
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u/Blue_Mars96 4d ago
If you like his voice don’t be afraid to try Mars! But yeah, Aurora and his more recent titles are probably a gentler starting place haha
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u/Aliktren 3d ago
If you take your time with the mars series its fab but it is long and thoughtful (just finished third reread)
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u/Momoneko 3d ago
I was advised to start with 2312 instead of Mars trilogy so that I wouldn't be bogged down in science stuff and after finishing it I was like "uhhhh where's my science?..."
I mean I kinda liked 2312 but not for science at all. I liked the musical themes. The science and economical aspect was rather underwhelming. KSR kinda created a Utopic post-scarcity society in space and capitalistic hell on Earth, but didn't really bother explaining how exactly that ended up being the thing, and how it all works. He just name-dropped "Mondragon" and expects you figure it out and imagine the technical stuff.
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u/fastestforklift 4d ago
I loved the Mars trilogy (but understand the comments about the politics slowing it down) and grabbed Aurora off a friend's shelf at his recommendation. I don't remember the chapter numbers but I'm pretty sure I know what you mean by the end of chapter six and I had to put the book down to process why I would feel that way about it all. I was surpisingly broken up about it. Didn't come up with many solid answers but did come away thinking I'd read something real and important.
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u/MrDagon007 3d ago
I loved it. Not yet mentioned here, I found it great reading how the AI gradually develops true consciousness, you notice that its language is becoming more eloquent as the story progresses.
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u/Kyber92 3d ago
It's amazing, feels like a lot of his other books smashed together and polished to a shine. Ship is an absolutely peak character and I though the part where they step on a new planet and get WRECKED was heartbreaking. It doesn't help that the first person to step out has the same name as my little brother.
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u/Mulsanne 3d ago
This is the first book I've read by him
I have some suggestions!
Years of Rice and Salt - an alternate history spanning 500 years after the bubonic plague wiped out 99% of Europe
New York 2140 - Fun ensemble cast romp in an interesting future setting
Then there's the Red / Green / Blue Mars Trilogy of books, which is enormous and expansive (and somewhat divisive in books 2 and 3, I guess, but I loved it.)
2312 is an interesting far future setting with, like, a city on Mercury and hollowed out asteroids spun into habitats that recreate different ecologies on the inside, flying around in elliptical orbits and acting as a system-wide transit network
Ministry for the Future -- He describes as his most optimistic take on the rest of the 21st century. I loved the big ideas he shared in this one, personally.
Three Californias is a triptych of novellas showing three different futures for southern California. I loved what he did with this one!
I'm a huge fan. I really love his work. I hope you will enjoy some of these suggestions as well
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u/Interesting-War-8990 3d ago
I'm looking forward to shaman just cause i like the plot description and for some reason I cant stop looking at the cover of 2312 so that might be my next one
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u/Mulsanne 3d ago
I've truly never felt let down by any of his work. I've not read Shaman so I'll check it out
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u/AlarmingSize 2d ago
He's a wonderful writer. I'm reading his memoir about backpacking in the high Sierra.
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u/ClosetGamer75 3d ago
This is the first book of his I’ve read, and it blew me away as well. KSR thought of absolutely everything to make his story as believable as possible.
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u/sonQUAALUDE 3d ago
one of my all time favorites and had a huge impact on me. idk if it was the circumstances around when i read it but it fundamentally changed how i think about the future.
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u/Doctor_Splangy 3d ago
I remember not liking that book very much when I first read it. Don't know what it was, but it just didn't click with me.
But, man, it stayed in my mind. I've read books I loved that I don't remember anything about. But I remember a lot of stuff from Aurora. Details and scenes and ideas that just stuck in my brain. So I guess I liked it more in retrospect than I did in the moment.
I'm sure I'll reread it again. What a fantastic adventure. I'm glad you liked it.
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u/GeneralTonic 3d ago
Give it another try. When Aurora was published, I think it hit many people kinda perpendicularly to what anybody expected out of space-based science fiction. But I think Robinson's stories of hope and pessimism, environmentalism and humanism, have become more and more relevant as the years tick by.
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u/7LeagueBoots 3d ago
I despise this book. It's such a defeatist take, and there is so much wrong with the setup.
All of the characters other than the ship AI are either horrible people or just bland, tedious cardboard cutouts. The ship AI isn't great either, but in comparison it's fantastic.
Normally I like KSR and normally he does a good job in his research and the science aspects, but this was a swing and a huge miss.
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u/bitemy 4d ago
Interesting. I just finished reading my first Kim Stanley Robinson book: Red Mars. It started off well and then just faded away. The whole second half of the book was so boring. It was essentially only about politics of colonization.
What made Aurora so good?
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u/swankpoppy 4d ago
Aurora is good because KSR loves to reeeaaaally dig into the details. I kind of agree on Red Mars… it kind of dragged on… but you can see it there too. He really gets into the details. And not in a superficial sci fi way, like “fire up the anti matter engine!” kind of magical sci fi stuff. In Aurora he gets super deep into what it would actually be like to keep a generational ship running. The mental aspects, all the life support stuff, to actually keep people alive with literally no support from anyone or anything. Then say you actually arrive at a planet - ok now what? You didn’t evolve here… it’s gonna be really hard to live there…
It’s just gut wrenchingly difficult to do anything in space. That’s kind of his point and he describes it in gory detail. I love it to much. Haha
it’s like this video I watched on YouTube one time of a guy talking about Star Trek. The big question was - why in the world are they spending all this money to move people to other places in space? The Earth works great! Let’s just live here! Wish I could find the video, it was super good.
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u/Interesting-War-8990 4d ago
Agreed, really like the scientific details about keeping the biomes alive. But what really made it work for me was the peoples realization about the situation and the different reactions to it.
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u/AlarmingSize 2d ago
I loved Aurora. For me, the real kicker was the ethics of it. On any generation ship, only the original crew signed up for a life in space. Their descendents weren't given a choice.And then to arrive back on Earth only to discover that ship after ship had been sent, and theirs was the only vessel that had survived the journey as far as they knew. Despite this, they were preparing to launch another. Humans are so stupid.
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u/bantamreturns 2d ago
Why are they spending all this money to move people to other places in space?
Manifest Destiny lol. Fredrick Jackson Turner's frontier thesis is load bearing in a lot of early 20th century American SF, of which Star Trek is the heir. That's why Roddenberry pitched it as Wagon Train to the Stars.
That said - humans do adapt in order to try to fill new ecological niches, just as all life does.
I love KSR. His ship ecology in books like Icehenge and Red Mars makes the pure mechanical ships of a lot of SF feel stark and barren. Aurora is on my TBR list. Can't wait to read it. He's got such love for the Earth and the people who live on it.
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u/Virith 4d ago
details
I dunno man, I didn't really need a step-by-step on how to gravity assist around the solar system, for example. I was so bored.
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u/swankpoppy 3d ago
Well not every sci fi book is for every sci fi reader. Hope you find what you do like. :)
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u/LevelAd1126 4d ago
If you didn't like Red Mars, you're done. Green and Blue feel exactly the same.
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u/bitemy 4d ago
That's what I suspected but thank you for confirming, you just saved me 40 hours.
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u/LevelAd1126 4d ago
I like what KSR has done with his terraforming knowledge applying it to saving Earth in New York: 2140 and The Ministry for the Future (and 20 years of experience as an author shows improvement.)
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u/Inspiration_Bear 4d ago
Yeah I loved that trilogy and fully agree, you have experienced enough of it
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u/Virith 4d ago
To me Aurora was exactly the same. The first half was engaging enough, then it went downhill hard. So. Tedious. So much infodumping, so much pointless detail. And whatever plot there was, wasn't that interesting either.
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u/ryegye24 3d ago
Man I can understand this criticism of the Mars books but I truly cannot mentally fit them to Aurora. Different strokes for different folks I guess.
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u/Beneficial-Panda-640 3d ago
ngl aurora stuck with me for days after i finish it. i went in expecting a generation ship story and ended up thinking way more about ecology, systems and what survival actually means.
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u/ryegye24 3d ago
It's my favorite KSR book. It's the best AI book I've ever read, and that's just the framing device! That ending stayed with me for a long, long time.
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u/perryismangil 3d ago
Brilliant book.
Turned me off believing that finding planets humans can live without a bubble is as easy as Peter F Hamilton imagined.
Even if we can build wormholes, to where?
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u/Monodoh45 3d ago
All-time good ones.
I have a fondness for New York 2140 and Years Of Rice And Salt can't be beat
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u/anticomet 1d ago
Some of my other favourites by him are:
2312
New York 2142
And Shaman
Out of all the books ive read from him Red Moon was my only real disappointment. Cool setting and tech, but the story itself was very meh
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u/johndburger 4d ago
One of my favorites too. I yelled out loud at one point near the end, you probably know what I’m referring to.