Book: Learning the world
Apr. 10th, 2012 05:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livAuthor: Ken MacLeod
Details: (c) Ken MacLeod 2005; Pub Orbit 2007; ISBN 978-1-84149-344-2
Verdict: Learning the world is absolutely delightful.
Reasons for reading it: I very much enjoyed MacLeod's Fall Revolution sequence, and first contact books are one of my favourite sub-genres.
How it came into my hands: One of those financially painful but fun trips to the big Waterstones in Birmingham.
Learning the world reminds me very strongly of Vinge's A deepness in the sky. You've got worlds with such a lot of implied depth that they actually feel like worlds, and beautifully non-human but extremely relatable aliens, and characters that you really care about and the personal events that affect their lives, despite the broad scale of the work. It's also similar in its exploration of a society just on the brink of modernity when the space travellers show up. And in that it is very very good.
There are multiple viewpoint characters, which are used effectively to give different viewpoints on how society is put together. Some of them are incredibly endearing, too; Atomic Discourse Gale, a teenaged blogger, presents a very idealistic take on the post-human society of a generation ship, while Darvin, an alien astronomer, really comes across as a plausible scientist, which is pretty rare in SF books. Not all the characters are completely lovable; that would make for a very bland book! But they're all convincing and it's pleasant to spend to spend a little time in their viewpoints.
There's a bunch of drama and conflict which helps to keep the story moving, but mostly it's just exploring some really interesting and layered societies. The generation ship is really good at being science fictional in the best sense, imagining far future technologies (including biology and social science, not just engineering!) and how they affect society. I love the way that the aliens have actual biology as well as social organization. There are sort of cold war bits and sort of steampunky bits, but it's not just our world reimagined with space bats. It's particularly clever how flight means that the aliens invent things in different orders from our history, and how they have cities and universities and governments and churches but not really agriculture. And they have different countries and different social classes and political factions, and within each culutural group there are individuals who follow the prevailing view to a greater or lesser extent, they're not just a homogeneous mass of Aliens. I kept being repeatedly impressed by the sense of a whole world worth of complexity beyond the awareness of the viewpoint characters.
The actual first contact bit is good too, the different reactions among the human colonizers to finding a planet of civilized people rather than the empty solar system they were expecting, and the turmoil in the aliens' world caused by interstellar spaceships showing up. In some ways the resolution of this feels a bit too simplistic, and perhaps too nice. There's tension and expectations of possible interplanetary war, but in the end they all just agree to behave like civilized chaps after all. Which sort of fits in with the generally sweet tone of the novel, and it's nice to have a book that doesn't give too much emphasis on military stuff, but the last few chapters just felt too pat. Especially the way the issue of the Trudges is dealt with; the whole book had this really interesting buildup where there's a subhuman race the aliens use as slaves, but it's apparent to the human space travellers that they are somewhat sapient, and the expected social and moral upheaval just dissipates into everyone doing the right thing. The ending as a whole just seemed rushed.
Apart from that, though, LtW is just the kind of thing SF is for, and a very enjoyable read!
Details: (c) Ken MacLeod 2005; Pub Orbit 2007; ISBN 978-1-84149-344-2
Verdict: Learning the world is absolutely delightful.
Reasons for reading it: I very much enjoyed MacLeod's Fall Revolution sequence, and first contact books are one of my favourite sub-genres.
How it came into my hands: One of those financially painful but fun trips to the big Waterstones in Birmingham.
Learning the world reminds me very strongly of Vinge's A deepness in the sky. You've got worlds with such a lot of implied depth that they actually feel like worlds, and beautifully non-human but extremely relatable aliens, and characters that you really care about and the personal events that affect their lives, despite the broad scale of the work. It's also similar in its exploration of a society just on the brink of modernity when the space travellers show up. And in that it is very very good.
There are multiple viewpoint characters, which are used effectively to give different viewpoints on how society is put together. Some of them are incredibly endearing, too; Atomic Discourse Gale, a teenaged blogger, presents a very idealistic take on the post-human society of a generation ship, while Darvin, an alien astronomer, really comes across as a plausible scientist, which is pretty rare in SF books. Not all the characters are completely lovable; that would make for a very bland book! But they're all convincing and it's pleasant to spend to spend a little time in their viewpoints.
There's a bunch of drama and conflict which helps to keep the story moving, but mostly it's just exploring some really interesting and layered societies. The generation ship is really good at being science fictional in the best sense, imagining far future technologies (including biology and social science, not just engineering!) and how they affect society. I love the way that the aliens have actual biology as well as social organization. There are sort of cold war bits and sort of steampunky bits, but it's not just our world reimagined with space bats. It's particularly clever how flight means that the aliens invent things in different orders from our history, and how they have cities and universities and governments and churches but not really agriculture. And they have different countries and different social classes and political factions, and within each culutural group there are individuals who follow the prevailing view to a greater or lesser extent, they're not just a homogeneous mass of Aliens. I kept being repeatedly impressed by the sense of a whole world worth of complexity beyond the awareness of the viewpoint characters.
The actual first contact bit is good too, the different reactions among the human colonizers to finding a planet of civilized people rather than the empty solar system they were expecting, and the turmoil in the aliens' world caused by interstellar spaceships showing up. In some ways the resolution of this feels a bit too simplistic, and perhaps too nice. There's tension and expectations of possible interplanetary war, but in the end they all just agree to behave like civilized chaps after all. Which sort of fits in with the generally sweet tone of the novel, and it's nice to have a book that doesn't give too much emphasis on military stuff, but the last few chapters just felt too pat. Especially the way the issue of the Trudges is dealt with; the whole book had this really interesting buildup where there's a subhuman race the aliens use as slaves, but it's apparent to the human space travellers that they are somewhat sapient, and the expected social and moral upheaval just dissipates into everyone doing the right thing. The ending as a whole just seemed rushed.
Apart from that, though, LtW is just the kind of thing SF is for, and a very enjoyable read!
