Everything is going as well as can be expected, but over two hundred years little problems have been building into large problems, complicated by the fact that some parts of the ship are not–or are no longer–redundant enough to be shut down for maintenance without endangering the people on board. I read Aurora because I heard several early reviews to the effect that “I wasn’t a huge fan of his earlier books, but this is great!” I am often comically off-the-mark in my impressions of a novel before I read it, but in this case I finished the novel thinking: I wasn’t a huge fan of his earlier books, this was great!Īurora is the story of a generation starship that, as the novel begins, is seven generations into its voyage and decelerating toward its planned colony site at Tau Ceti. I liked 2312 a great deal more, but it was paced strangely and largely centered on a character I found annoying. I did manage to finish his Mars Trilogy, but only on my second attempt. I say “might be” only because I haven’t read enough of his novels to be certain. It feels unusual to say this so far into a writer’s career, but Aurora might be his best novel as well as the best place for a reader new to his work to start. He’s quite unusual in that he writes hard science fiction in the old mode, not only unafraid of exposition but embracing it, yet he also has a strong literary interest in the interior life of his characters and the style with which he tells a story. I’ve known people for whom reading his Mars Trilogy was literally a life-changing experience, but I’ve known just as many who bounced off it.

Kim Stanley Robinson is one of the great authors of the modern era of science fiction, but he’s also a polarizing one.

Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson Octoat 11:48 am | Posted in 4 stars, Science Fiction | 2 Comments

Aurora kim stanley robinson review