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Title: The Sky So Big and Black by John Barnes ISBN: 0-7653-4222-7 Publisher: Tor Books Pub. Date: 19 October, 2003 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.83 (6 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Intriguing and Surprising
Comment: This story is set on a future Mars. Earth is under the control of a group mind known as One True and Mars is slowly being terraformed by geoprospectors who are searching for and releasing water, CO2, methane, etc.
Our story centers around a young girl just as she becomes an adult. She and her father are geoprospectors and are very good at it. The story is told as memories she relates to a police shrink. This gives the reader plenty of foreshadowing for some of the later events but really leaves the ending as a surprise (although the hints are there, you don't realize it until after the fact).
The story moves quickly and you can really care about the characters. While most of the science is believable (no faster-than-light travel for example), much of the setting relies heavily upon synthesis and replication that may never be possible at those power levels (but it doesn't really detract from the book).
A fine book of hard science fiction with excellent character development. If you like that sort of thing, this one won't disappoint.
Rating: 5
Summary: Good stuff in the Heinlein tradition
Comment: I've enjoyed John Barnes's novels for a while now. This novel takes place in the future laid out in the previous novels Kaleidoscope Century and Candle. In this future, the concept of Memes that can control the human mind are central to the story. They aren't memes like an idea that spreads across the internet and becomes part of the culture. We are talking about the concept of a method by which a Meme can take over and control a human mind.
In Barnes's future, the Earth is completely taken over by the Meme called One True. The rest of humanity, spread out in space on the Moon and on Mars try to make do without the Earth.
This story takes place on Mars with a group of ecospectors, ecological prospectors. Rather than hunting for valuable minerals, they hunt for ways to terraform Mars by releasing water or identifying other organic resources.
Mars is cast in the light of the seminal Heinlein Libertarian society. Few laws, much personable responsibility, and a huge focus on trust and reputation. It very much harks back to ideas from Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
Without giving out any spoilers, the Martians face a tragedy are must make choices between their lifestyle and dealing with One True for help. Barnes looks at how the libertarian world (Mars) and the socialist world (Earth) can interact and what price are the libertarians willing to pay to keep their way of life.
I recommend the book. It's a fast read and has plenty of neat technical ideas interspersed with the storyline.
Rating: 5
Summary: First rate novel of terraforming Mars and disaster
Comment: The Sky So Big and Black is a first-rate novel, clearly a Hugo contender in my view. It's scary at times, sweet at times, it presents a fascinating social structure, and some excellent SFnal speculation about terraforming Mars. And it features one of the scariest SFnal ideas since Vernor Vinge's "Focus" (in A Deepness in the Sky).
It is very well structured, presented as a psychologist listening to a series of interviews he did with Teri-Mel Murray, a young woman on Mars who was working with her father as an "ecospector". It's clear from the start that something terrible happened, and indeed that the psychologist was forced to erase Teri-Mel's memory. It's also clear that he likes her a lot, and is really torn up by what has happened, and worried that he may have to treat her again, for some mysterious reason that takes a long time to become clear. The interviews tell of Teri and her father travelling across the lightly terraformed planet to a "Gather" of the "rounditachis", people who live more or less in the open on Mars, working to help advance the terraforming. Teri is hoping that she will be certified a "Full Adult" at the Gather, and be free to marry her boyfriend. Her father wants her to go back to school for one more year, because he's not convinced that ecospecting will remain a good living. As they travel, they plan to make one more attempt at a big "scorehole". And Teri is starting to worry about her boyfriend.
All the above is cute stuff, and interleaved with neat SFnal details about the terraforming of Mars. In the background lurk details about the future history up to this point, especially the takeover of ecologically ravaged Earth by a "meme" called "One True", or "Resuna", which more or less has turned Earth's population into a hive mind. Also we learn bits and pieces about the psychologist's feelings, which give us hints about the disaster which has clearly occurred. So it's a scary book, as we learn to like Teri more and more, while we just know that she's going to get hurt real real bad. And when the crisis comes, it's exciting, and terribly sad, and even scarier than I had first expected. The resolution is moving, real, and and open-ended.
Barnes' future is on the one hand full of hope, and of cool SFnal stuff, and on the other had it is very very scary, and much of it dominated by something purely evil, yet not sneeringly evil. I should note that this is a sequel to three earlier novels: Orbital Resonance, Kaleidoscope Century, and Candle. But it reads just fine alone.
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Title: In the Hall of the Martian King by John Barnes ISBN: 0446610836 Publisher: Aspect Pub. Date: 01 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: The Duke of Uranium by John Barnes ISBN: 044661081X Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Princess of the Aerie, A - Book 2 by John Barnes ISBN: 0446610828 Publisher: Aspect Pub. Date: 01 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Orbital Resonance by John Barnes ISBN: 0812532384 Publisher: Tor Books Pub. Date: 15 December, 1992 List Price(USD): $4.99 |
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Title: The Golden Age by John C. Wright ISBN: 0812579844 Publisher: Tor Science Fiction Pub. Date: 14 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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