Permanent Review

Hi,

So today I finished Permanence by Karl Schroeder. It was pretty good.

In the far future, humanity has spread out and colonized "halo" worlds that circle the various brown dwarfs and other not-quite-stars that are scattered between the "lit" stars (like our own world). They were serviced by cycler ships that use ram scoops and energy sails to move at near lights speed and slow-boat between all the different worlds But in the past couple of decades FTL drives have been perfected that only work in the high gravity wells of lit worlds which all joined the Rights Economy and have pretty much left the halo worlds to fend for themselves.

Rue Cassels lives in a mining station located in one of the halo worlds. Fleeing her brother she happens upon a cycler built by alien beings. This is a bit of a shock since all other alien life has been discovered to be either a.) non-sentient or b.) so completely alien that they can't really be interacted with. This makes her extremely popular with the people of the lit worlds and brings her into contact with Mike Bequith who's an alien researcher and a member of the Neo-Shinto order who captures the kami of alien worlds to make them accessible to humans.

So they go back and investigate the alien cycler and try to figure out how its mysteries before the various other factions interested in the ship beat them to it.

The book picked up and moved quickly. It had lots of interesting ideas (as Schroeder often does) and tackled a lot of big ideas. It was one of the books that inspired Blindsight and like that book it talks a lot about how the human and the alien intersect and interact. Obviously, there's a bit of a romance plot between Rue and Mike and I guess that went ok, but I'm probably not the best judge of it's romantic qualities. I'm also not sure that the final conclusions the book reaches about the limits of human expansion are correct considering the evidence laid out, but that's something we can hash over when you read it.

Still, the book was an interesting read with a lot of Big Ideas to play around with. It's certainly worth checking out.

later
Tom

Permanent Review

Hi,

So today I finished Permanence by Karl Schroeder. It was pretty good.

In the far future, humanity has spread out and colonized "halo" worlds that circle the various brown dwarfs and other not-quite-stars that are scattered between the "lit" stars (like our own world). They were serviced by cycler ships that use ram scoops and energy sails to move at near lights speed and slow-boat between all the different worlds But in the past couple of decades FTL drives have been perfected that only work in the high gravity wells of lit worlds which all joined the Rights Economy and have pretty much left the halo worlds to fend for themselves.

Rue Cassels lives in a mining station located in one of the halo worlds. Fleeing her brother she happens upon a cycler built by alien beings. This is a bit of a shock since all other alien life has been discovered to be either a.) non-sentient or b.) so completely alien that they can't really be interacted with. This makes her extremely popular with the people of the lit worlds and brings her into contact with Mike Bequith who's an alien researcher and a member of the Neo-Shinto order who captures the kami of alien worlds to make them accessible to humans.

So they go back and investigate the alien cycler and try to figure out how its mysteries before the various other factions interested in the ship beat them to it.

The book picked up and moved quickly. It had lots of interesting ideas (as Schroeder often does) and tackled a lot of big ideas. It was one of the books that inspired Blindsight and like that book it talks a lot about how the human and the alien intersect and interact. Obviously, there's a bit of a romance plot between Rue and Mike and I guess that went ok, but I'm probably not the best judge of it's romantic qualities. I'm also not sure that the final conclusions the book reaches about the limits of human expansion are correct considering the evidence laid out, but that's something we can hash over when you read it.

Still, the book was an interesting read with a lot of Big Ideas to play around with. It's certainly worth checking out.

later
Tom