"The Earth is the cradle of Humanity, but one cannot stay in the cradle forever."In the year 2545, a starship crafted by human hands began its voyage from the Solar System to nearby star, Tau Ceti, just 14 light years away. Moving at 1/10th the speed of light for most of its journey, the ship’s voyage has lasted nearly 160 years when Aurora‘s narrative begins–just 10 years away from arriving at the eponymous moon that may serve as a new home for humanity.During its long life, Ship has seen fifte...

Thought I'd better add a few comments. I haven't written a formal review, because I didn't love this book. I love the idea of it ... a generational spaceship. It felt like a bit of a slower version of the Arthur C. Clarke Rama series, minus the aliens. However, it just got a little bogged down in the middle and then the end became repetitive, sadly. It's quite a large book to read as well. I don't think I've ever read Kim Stanley Robinson before, even though I'm a big sci-fi geek. Can anyone tel...

Should be titled "Things that Could Go Wrong in A Generation Ship". Lots of interesting speculative stuff on that. However, this is not my favorite KSR novel. It is a bit messy, too many tangents with the author's voice coming through the so-called conscious ship, flat characters and less than satisfactory ending.

Right up to the seventh and final section entitled ‘What Is This’, I was hovering at three stars for this novel. Typical of KSR, it makes for a seemingly non-cohesive read. The language is dense, there is a lot of jargon and science – KSR is never one to talk down to his readers, so you better keep up – and the characters are frustratingly opaque and generic. But KSR has always been a Big Ideas writer more than anything else. And Aurora is probably the purest distillation of his vision and philo...

I was invited to a faculty-staff book club of sorts where we discussed this book. An interesting choice!The book starts with a daughter noticing her mother is angry, and the camera pulls back to show the generation ship they are living on. It is designed with multiple biomes to imitate earth, but there is some movement between them, while being large enough for some children to not know they are on a ship until a coming of age ritual. (But what if earth is also a ship? Cue mind exploding sounds

The first two thirds of this book is a four-star novel. Yes it was kind of covering the same ground as Red Mars - man's biggest obstacle in conquering other planets is men being men - but I love all that science-y stuff, so I was on board. But the last third of the book was just awful. Sadly, I think this part of the book is the story KSR actually wanted to tell.At first i thought it was going to be the 'anti-Martian' - turns out you can't 'science the s#it' out of every problem, and now everyon...

Very hard sci-fi that will dispel any rosy ideas you might have about deep space exploration, inhabiting distant planets and generation spaceships.

4 of 5 stars at The BiblioSanctum http://bibliosanctum.com/2015/11/16/b...It’s interesting how just the other day I was writing about how much I love colonization sci-fi, a fascinating subgenre which celebrates the faith and ambition that comes with setting out into the unknown—with the hopes that a brand new home can be found at the end of that journey. Of course, closely related to the theme of colonization is the idea of the generation starship. The original occupants of an interstellar ark m...

Probably I read it wrong.I don’t know how else to explain my reaction to a book so many enjoy. I was looking forward to some space-faring sci-fi: I recently read Dune, and with plenty of news about The Expanse, the sci-fi series based on Leviathan Wakes, crossing my feed, I’ve been feeling nostalgic about space travel and unfamiliar planets. Unfortunately, this a disappointment and a chore to complete.Aurora begins with Freya and her father sailing on Long Pond. It turns out Long Pond is in the

I can say a lot more than wow, and I will, but wow is still coming out.I had an oh shit moment that reduced me to tears at a certain point, and I'm not going to reveal it for anyone else, but it was powerful and it had everything to do with the fantastic character development for the narrator.The last book of Robinson's that I read was 2312, which I still think about, but I had some issues with it, namely in the two main characters. I didn't quite care for them as much as I felt I should have. U...

'Aurora' is a beautiful book that will break your heart.Kim Stanley is one of my favourite authors. I guess that the reason for this is that his books express ideas and values that I value strongly such as the power of science to mend, to break and to transform; a wonder and worship for nature; an imagination that is expansive yet grounded in reason. His books portray the spark and complexity of life, the life of the non-organic and the workings of the human race. His people are more than the pa...

The generation ship as an environmentalism story.Kim Stanley Robinson has been doing the environmentalism/ecology/politics through a lens of science fiction for a very long time. He did it with the Red Mars books and did it again (some would say overdid) with the Science in the Capitol books that have since been collected as Green Earth. This is his latest effort at it and in my opinion it is a very successful one.The book starts with a small family aboard a generation ship that is nearly at the...

This is, unquestionably, a brilliant and thoroughly enjoyable SF book, containing elements of true originality, compelling and beautifully written.What I particularly loved about this book is the developing consciousness of the Ship's AI, the epic character of the interstellar travel and exploration feats of the human population of the Ship, and the blending of ethical, psychological, sociological and even philosophical aspects, all masterfully personified and reflected by the AI's dawning consc...