Author: Annalee Newitz
Narrator: Emily Lawrence
Publisher: Mac Millan Audio
Playback: 13hrs 43m
Genre: Sci-Fi, Speculative Fiction
First published: January 31, 2023
Book Description: Destry is a top network analyst with the Environmental Rescue Team, an ancient organization devoted to preventing ecosystem collapse. On the planet Sask-E, her mission is to terraform an Earthlike world, with the help of her taciturn moose, Whistle. But then she discovers a city that isn't supposed to exist, hidden inside a massive volcano. Torn between loyalty to the ERT and the truth of the planet's history, Destry makes a decision that echoes down the generations.
Centuries later, Destry's protege, Misha, is building a planetwide transit system when his worldview is turned upside-down by Sulfur, a brilliant engineer from the volcano city. Together, they uncover a dark secret about the real estate company that's buying up huge swaths of the planet―a secret that could destroy the lives of everyone who isn't Homo sapiens. Working with a team of robots, naked mole rats, and a very angry cyborg cow, they quietly sow seeds of subversion. But when they're threatened with violent diaspora, Misha and Sulfur's very unusual child faces a stark choice: deploy a planet-altering weapon, or watch their people lose everything they've built on Sask-E
Thoughts:
This is an enjoyable and easy to get into. It reminds me a bit of Becky Chambers, in the way the characters are very realistic, diverse but at the same time they are not portrayed as perfect exactly. You get invested in Spider city and the politics of the world. A clear social commentary in a way that doesn't feel like it's been shoved down your throat.
Newitz attempts to show that when oppression is embedded in the structure of a society, it becomes a nightmare, commonplace and it's not maintainable. We know that oppression of the lower class, that division into castes, and slavery all of that is wrong morally, and socially. And also it adds a few more things in very unique ways: handling of slavery, of aptitude and intelligence, of what it means to be a person, are intense, bizarre, and interesting.
It opens good questions- if our machines start to be equipped with AI that can take decisions to ensure their tasks, makeup plans for effectiveness, and accomplish their tasks. But then what happens when the machines start to have critical and emotional thinking? What spectrum will need to be crossed over so they can start becoming considered people?
Once this type of technological advancements are accomplished, would we need to worry about creating an entity that has physical or critical abilities- would humanity need to consider it cruelty to make "people" with specifications that are meant to complete specific work?
We have such technological advances that grant humans to play creators. Animals (humans and mammals) can be modified to be smart specific, able to communicate with animals, nature, forests, earth, caves, rivers, etc. It feels very incongruous - in one side we have humanity thousands of years into the future who have a society pretty similar to a corporate big city in North America - the other is having made huge technological advancements to make AI with huge emotional capabilities, giving ailments to animals that will ensure the slaves have such "intelligence" limited so the working class stays always in their place.
The characters are meant to be lovable, and they are likeable enough. The plot feels a bit uneven. The story is divided in 3 parts, we follow different generations- with a few hundred years that took place in between them, therefore it feels like the story tries to portray too much in very little time, yet it feels a bit draggy in some inconsequential details of everyday life on some of the characters. What I mean is that not every character received an even amount of page time, understandably, they just showed up long enough as they were relevant to the plotline.
Overall, this book is worth the time. This is a contemporary, socially-engaged sci-fi that is at the same time serious due to the topics it tries to explore and silly- heavy with social commentary that includes capitalism, personhood, environmental protection, the measure of intelligence, and a sprinkle of sexual liberation including gender and identities popular right now.
I guess I can set this up as a utopian/dystopian world- depending on which side of the social ladder you are. There is no longer discrimination for sexualities and these types of identities, yet the system of oppression is based on wealth, class, assumed intelligence, and species.
This book is meant to start a long conversation on what it means to be human and what we want as a society. It is good, I just don't see many people talking about it yet, hope it starts the conversation it was meant to.
This was added as a last-minute selection and it was not meant for any specific challenge- but it was released in 2023 so let's say that it was picked on purpose for that motive.
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