Hernando
This book hooked me from the very first 20 pages. One of the best generation ship stories I have ever read.
There is such a sense of wonder when the book tries to explore an idea , which is basically impossible to achieve with current technology, while trying to keep the very idea grounded in modern understanding of physics and playing with the speculative tech of the future.
A few thousand people aboard a sentient or semi sentient ship wanting to go far and beyond our solar system to settle and make a new home is the main premise of the book. The plan for them is to terraform one of our neighbor planetary systems (home of the Tau Ceti star) or at least one of the main planet's moon.
All kinds of situation start happening when they find out that things are not going as expected with the biological system of the sentient ship.
I have seen many people disliking the end of the book, but to me it was just excellent. It gave the needed doses of adrenaline and makes you really think about what lies ahead of human exploration and all the risk that comes with it.
This book hooked me from the very first 20 pages. One of the best generation ship stories I have ever read.
There is such a sense of wonder when the book tries to explore an idea , which is basically impossible to achieve with current technology, while trying to keep the very idea grounded in modern understanding of physics and playing with the speculative tech of the future.
A few thousand people aboard a sentient or semi sentient ship wanting to go far and beyond our solar system to settle and make a new home is the main premise of the book. The plan for them is to terraform one of our neighbor planetary systems (home of the Tau Ceti star) or at least one of the main planet's moon.
All kinds of situation start happening when they find out that things are not going as expected with the biological system of the sentient ship.
I have seen many people disliking the end of the book, but to me it was just excellent. It gave the needed doses of adrenaline and makes you really think about what lies ahead of human exploration and all the risk that comes with it.
What a chore.
Finally got around the very first book of this acclaimed novel series.
So unfunny and pointless, even by its own internal standards.
Well, at least I can now understand some of the references from other sources. I guess.
What a chore.
Finally got around the very first book of this acclaimed novel series.
So unfunny and pointless, even by its own internal standards.
Well, at least I can now understand some of the references from other sources. I guess.
Tried this book just for the sake of wanting to dig a bit more into fantasy stuff.
Well, I enjoyed the writing style, and that was most of my takeaway. No idea what's happening until way past the middle of the book. Very cool.
The plot is not very deep. It is basically a tale of a mercenary band full of unusual characters going places. Places not so easy to spot by the reader. You literally don't know where these guys are until you see some hints here and there.
Also, even though the scope is not huge, the world-building (from what you can understand) is good enough.
I am not an avid fantasy reader, but in summary, the puzzle writing and the diverse cast were the best here.
Not sure if I want to continue the series, though.
Tried this book just for the sake of wanting to dig a bit more into fantasy stuff.
Well, I enjoyed the writing style, and that was most of my takeaway. No idea what's happening until way past the middle of the book. Very cool.
The plot is not very deep. It is basically a tale of a mercenary band full of unusual characters going places. Places not so easy to spot by the reader. You literally don't know where these guys are until you see some hints here and there.
Also, even though the scope is not huge, the world-building (from what you can understand) is good enough.
I am not an avid fantasy reader, but in summary, the puzzle writing and the diverse cast were the best here.
Not sure if I want to continue the series, though.
Like its predecessor, this is a very predictable book, but this time without the surprise element.
I am pretty sure this book was written to get some prospect contracts for screen formats or something.
The worst thing is reading it right after Dark Matter, because then its flaws are easier to spot. But that's what most people actually do.
PS: The author does not seem to know what recursion really is. I had to force myself to give it another definition in order to finish the book.
Like its predecessor, this is a very predictable book, but this time without the surprise element.
I am pretty sure this book was written to get some prospect contracts for screen formats or something.
The worst thing is reading it right after Dark Matter, because then its flaws are easier to spot. But that's what most people actually do.
PS: The author does not seem to know what recursion really is. I had to force myself to give it another definition in order to finish the book.
What's a better way of reading about Rome's conquest of Gaul than reading from the man himself? Julius Caesar.
This, of course, is not an exercise in getting the facts of the event. Lots of propaganda from the author. Instead, it is an exercise in getting into the mind of one of the most famous historical figures.
I liked this book for what it was. An inaccurate but personal account of Julius Caesar and his troops during their time fighting, living, and conquering Gaul.
A preambulatory event of the civil war.
What's a better way of reading about Rome's conquest of Gaul than reading from the man himself? Julius Caesar.
This, of course, is not an exercise in getting the facts of the event. Lots of propaganda from the author. Instead, it is an exercise in getting into the mind of one of the most famous historical figures.
I liked this book for what it was. An inaccurate but personal account of Julius Caesar and his troops during their time fighting, living, and conquering Gaul.
A preambulatory event of the civil war.
Superb!. TMoD is a very unique and different book. It’s a neat SF with massive chunks of philosophy. It has also some sort-of-poetic lines, i.e :
“As was my habit, I followed the afternoon to the ocean and ended up lounging on a shore of corroded boulders. The waters golden, the horizon blood. The squawking of mindless seagulls. Alone, leering at passersby, I grinned as Saturn brightened and watched feral waves swallow the fireball, savoring the taste.”
“Come midnight, a turquoise aurora hung over the land. Not as a fragile drape gliding down against the stars, but as a slow whip to bleed the firmament of its mysteries. A though out of those celestial wounds she would divine the whereabouts of the men she hunted.”
Often times the author is more straightforward:
“Even though we have more time, it’s the wrong kind of time. Everything moves so fast, and there’s barely a moment to stop and think and-“ “And people don’t understand each other at all, and we have wider but more superficial knowledge, and good ideas get lost in the noise”.
“We had lived in a present built on tomorrows. Wasted tomorrows.”
And sometimes existentialism fills the void:
“-Do you think we have free will?. -I think about it. I don’t think about thinking about it.”
The philosophical stuff is more dense and harder to grasp in one of the three narratives, specially when the character is deep-thinking.
The thing is, you can still enjoy the book even if you don’t care about the philosophical and the different prose and by just following the plot. But it is certainty a much better experience at least trying to understand the “book-in-itself”. It was so good that I was tempted to reread it right away after finishing it.
Superb!. TMoD is a very unique and different book. It’s a neat SF with massive chunks of philosophy. It has also some sort-of-poetic lines, i.e :
“As was my habit, I followed the afternoon to the ocean and ended up lounging on a shore of corroded boulders. The waters golden, the horizon blood. The squawking of mindless seagulls. Alone, leering at passersby, I grinned as Saturn brightened and watched feral waves swallow the fireball, savoring the taste.”
“Come midnight, a turquoise aurora hung over the land. Not as a fragile drape gliding down against the stars, but as a slow whip to bleed the firmament of its mysteries. A though out of those celestial wounds she would divine the whereabouts of the men she hunted.”
Often times the author is more straightforward:
“Even though we have more time, it’s the wrong kind of time. Everything moves so fast, and there’s barely a moment to stop and think and-“ “And people don’t understand each other at all, and we have wider but more superficial knowledge, and good ideas get lost in the noise”.
“We had lived in a present built on tomorrows. Wasted tomorrows.”
And sometimes existentialism fills the void:
“-Do you think we have free will?. -I think about it. I don’t think about thinking about it.”
The philosophical stuff is more dense and harder to grasp in one of the three narratives, specially when the character is deep-thinking.
The thing is, you can still enjoy the book even if you don’t care about the philosophical and the different prose and by just following the plot. But it is certainty a much better experience at least trying to understand the “book-in-itself”. It was so good that I was tempted to reread it right away after finishing it.
The book rests on an interesting hypothesis that aims to reconcile the traditional creationism account from Christianity with the account of evolutionary science regarding Adam and Eve , common ancestry and human evolution.
Joss tries to focus in three creationist premises:
- We all descend from a pair of ancestors.
- These ancestors (Adam and Eve) were de novo created.
- These ancestors are recent, 10.000 to 6000 years ago.
On the surface, his conclusions seem fully compatible with the mainstream science of evolution and common ancestors, which states that we arise as a population (not a couple) in the distant past and through an evolutionary process.
How so?.
He bases his assumption on the fact that both accounts are talking about different things.
While the creationist account focuses on Adam and Eve, who were a couple created de novo by God in a specific place (the Garden), there were actually other people before them, who were living outside this Garden, and are the ones that evolutionary science is referring to.
As long as you can accept the assumption that the creationist account "could" be true, then I would definitely agree with him that you can in fact make that hypothesis altogether with the one accepted by evolutionary science. There are no conclusions for or against it. So a genealogical ancestry approach instead of genetic ancestry is a good way to make sense of this.
There are more details to it, but everything comes down to a set of established prepositions we have to accept beforehand. For example, what is the actual definition of human? For philosophy, theology, and biology, it could mean different things, and where they draw the line in the evolutionary process in which the first "human" really appeared is also different.
I like the author's willingness to accept the evidence while also trying to find (if any) common ground between his Christian faith and science regarding evolution, especially when he (as a computational biologist) understands the latter is a very solid, widely accepted, and hard-to-disprove theory.
The book rests on an interesting hypothesis that aims to reconcile the traditional creationism account from Christianity with the account of evolutionary science regarding Adam and Eve , common ancestry and human evolution.
Joss tries to focus in three creationist premises:
- We all descend from a pair of ancestors.
- These ancestors (Adam and Eve) were de novo created.
- These ancestors are recent, 10.000 to 6000 years ago.
On the surface, his conclusions seem fully compatible with the mainstream science of evolution and common ancestors, which states that we arise as a population (not a couple) in the distant past and through an evolutionary process.
How so?.
He bases his assumption on the fact that both accounts are talking about different things.
While the creationist account focuses on Adam and Eve, who were a couple created de novo by God in a specific place (the Garden), there were actually other people before them, who were living outside this Garden, and are the ones that evolutionary science is referring to.
As long as you can accept the assumption that the creationist account "could" be true, then I would definitely agree with him that you can in fact make that hypothesis altogether with the one accepted by evolutionary science. There are no conclusions for or against it. So a genealogical ancestry approach instead of genetic ancestry is a good way to make sense of this.
There are more details to it, but everything comes down to a set of established prepositions we have to accept beforehand. For example, what is the actual definition of human? For philosophy, theology, and biology, it could mean different things, and where they draw the line in the evolutionary process in which the first "human" really appeared is also different.
I like the author's willingness to accept the evidence while also trying to find (if any) common ground between his Christian faith and science regarding evolution, especially when he (as a computational biologist) understands the latter is a very solid, widely accepted, and hard-to-disprove theory.
