Joan SlonczewskiBesprekingen

This is good sci-fi that makes you think, without being all spaceship and lasers.

I didn't realize this book is one of a loose series until after I read it. It stands alone wonderfully.

What struck me the most is the refreshing change of pace from my usual fare. There is a growing time pressure that ramps up through the book, but it never quite hits that ticking time bomb artificiality so often used to push a book forward.

In fact, even though there are some horrifying moments, and very front and centre debate of big picture ethics and alien life forms, the real alien is the reader. Everything that is everyday normal for the characters is written wonderfully to be exactly that - everyday.

There's a great variety of characters and concepts with someone/someplace for everybody to identify with.

It's a four star book for me, mainly because the ending was a little too realistic perhaps. I think I just like my fairy tale endings.

Well worth reading.

review of
Joan Slonczewski's Brain Plague
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - June 9, 2015

I've only read one previous bk by Slonczewski, A Door into Ocean (1986) ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/121606.A_Door_Into_Ocean?search_version=serv... ). Much to my surprise, I haven't reviewed it - wch means that I read it no later than the middle of 2007: 8 yrs ago! I liked it but I haven't managed to read a single other thing by her in what seems like a rather long ensuing period.

A Door into Ocean was remarkable for its thorough depiction of passive & successful resistance to aggressive imperialism - set in a Science Fiction context. I was impressed by what seemed like the authenticity of the author's engagement w/ such a political position.

Brain Plague (2000) is different. There's a fairly deep non-oversimplifying socio-political sensitivity to it but it's not as much the central content as it is woven into the overall plot fabric. The bk's dedicated "For Elizabeth Anne Hull and Frederik Pohl" Hull is described on Frederik Pohl's "The Way the Future Blogs" as:

"Blond and brainy, Elizabeth Anne Hull (known as Betty to most of her friends and called Betty Anne by her husband, Frederik Pohl), is Professor Emerita of William Rainey Harper College in Palatine, Illinois, where she taught English and science fiction for over 30 years, earning the school’s Distinguished Faculty Award in 1997. The Alumni Association of Northwestern University honored Betty’s contributions to her profession with its Award of Merit in 1995.

Betty has authored essays and short stories, lectured on sf around the world, and led many writing workshops. She edited the anthologies Gateways: Original New Stories Inspired by Frederik Pohl and, with Fred, Tales from the Planet Earth." - http://www.thewaythefutureblogs.com/elizabeth-anne-hull/

Pohl himself, is one of my favorite SF writers & one that I've found to be consistently politically sensitive. Slonczewsk is a biology prof. Brain Plague is about the potentials of microbe communities interfacing w/ human hosts for their mutual benefit or detriment. The hosts become 'Gods' for the microbes insofar as they become the microbe's world upon wch they're dependent. Unintentionally, I followed this novel w/ an intelligent-bacterial-community-vis-à-vis-human-hosts one called Vitals (2002) by Greg Bear so I'm somewhat inundated w/ informed biological prediction at the moment.

Not surprisingly (given conventional novelistic development), the reader is slowly introduced to the "brain plague" & its implications, starting off in a Draconian way:

"The brain-plagued hijackers shipped their captives to the hidden Slave World, where they were building an armed fortress for their mysterious Enlightened Leader," - p 14

Eventually the Slave World is depicted like an opium den: "Within the room full of cots, the air was fetid, and flies settled everywhere. The slaves barely treated their wastes, either, she guessed. The humans, all thin and pale, seemd mostly asleep, although some sat up in chairs, their eyes glazed, rocking. One was being spoon-fed by a slave. "Rose? Is this what you call Endless Light?" (p 285)

In between, we learn that:

""Micros are intelligent," he said.

""Well, sure." Intellient buildings, intelligent medical machines—everything was "intelligent" these days.

""Intelligent people."" - p 30

Yes, but are they DIGITAL?! & do they listen to IDM?!

The artist protagonist becomes known to the micros that she hosts as the "God of Mercy" b/c she doesn't usually take advantage of her ability to kill rebellious micros:

"Chrys started to reply but thought better of it. She spread her hands. "If you kill the minion, that's the way to make the whole population read her stuff. Believe me."

""Your population," Selenite corrected. "Mine know better. Very well, you may keep her—but if she ever returns to my arachnoid, she's dead."" - p 140

I'm always interested in the way neologisms work their way into common usage in SF & elsewhere: Heinlein's "waldos" being one example. I don't know who coined "nanoplast" (nanotechnology plastic) but I did find multiple industry references for such a product online. Here's an example:

"Nano-Plast coating is a natural, invisible and ultra thin, “breathing” and environmentally friendly coating optimally developed for the plastics industries, for polymer, synthetic surfaces, characterized by various plastic compositions and shades.

"The material excels in massive chemical durability to abrasion, with phenomenal lifespan extending properties for repelling water (hydrophobic) oil (oleophobic)." - http://www.nanoztec.com/Nano-Plast-NP-300-400.html

Slonczewski refers to it: "A breeze from the sea swept her face as it keened across the towers of plast—nanoplast, the intelligent material that grew vast sentient buildings, as easily as it grew the nanotex bodysuits the artists wore. Plast formed the bubble cars that glided over the intelligent pavement". Clearly Slonczewski sees this as a 'material of the (near) future' &, yes, there's a Nanotex company already!: http://www.nano-tex.com/ . Does Slonczewski take money from them to promote their products?

I'm also interested in SF writers cross-referencing each other in other ways: ""Moraeg and Carnelian left for Solaris right after the show, as usual." Solaris, the number one leisure world" (p 141) Solaris, the name of a Stanislav Lem novel & 2 movies based on it: 1 by Tarkovsky, 1 by Soderbergh. Solaris is a thinking ocean planet that finds things in human observer minds that it then somehow materializes for them. It's hard to imagine that Slonczewski isn't making a bit of an inter-textual joke here.

Then there's "wetware". Who originated the term? I don't know. I 1st ran across it in (a) novel(s) by Rudy Rucker.

"Though its exact definition has shifted over time, the term Wetware and its fundamental reference to "the physical mind" has been around from the mid-1950s. Mostly used in relatively obscure articles and papers, it was not until the heyday of cyberpunk, however, that the term found broad adoption. Among these first uses of the term in popular culture were the 1987 novel "Vacuum Flowers" by Michael Swanwick as well as several books from the hand of Rudy Rucker, one of which he titled "Wetware"." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wetware_(brain)

"The chair of the board was the giant black sea urchin, reputedly a top market investor like Garnet. Its twenty-odd limbs stood out straight from its body, each ending in a different mechanism for grasping, screwing, or drawing. The sea urchin methodically reviewed the city's needs: so much residential volume, of a dozen categories, from snake-egg to transit system; so many power connections, service conduits, and seage lines; and something called "wetware."" - Brain Plague, p 276

Health insurance is even more of a hot button topic than it was in 2000 when this was copyrighted:

""What a nuisance," agreed Topaz. "Back to the clinic and wait two hours." Topaz and Pearl had Comprehensive Health Care Plan Three. They could afford Plan Three, thanks to the sale of Topaz's portraits. Lady Moraeg, on Plan Ten, looked twenty years for her two hundred. Chrys got by on Plan One, which provided neuroports but did not service them." - p 16

Ah, yes, health insurance in the US - even under the NOT-Affordable Health Care Act it ultimately boils down s/he-who-has-the-money-gets-the-care - wch means the biggest crooks get to live longest. Crime does pay after all, esp if you're connected to Haliburton or some other warlord manifestation masquerading as peace-keeping & reconstruction. Being on Plan Ten enables one to choose their age: "The plan rep molded to the holostage. "Now, according to our records," she observed, "you have yet to choose your age and appearance."" (p 59)

Slonczewski's main character is an artist. "She blinked to close her window for the night, then set the volcano above her bed to explode at seven in the morning." (p 23) Ha ha! I had an alarm clock that was designed to look like a block of dynamite.

The micros make Chrys rich by funneling their architectural genius thru her: "The roots of the Comb spread gradually wider through each level they penetrated. At the seventeenth level, the roots housed a shopping center frequented by middle-class simians and university students. That was the level Selenite chose to inject the virus containing all the instructions the micros had programmed." (pp 168-169) I suppose that's the "root-down" theory instead of the "trickle-down" one.

In Slonczewski's future, the Theremin has become a portable instrument for minstrels: "By the twelfth course, the golden servers started strolling with harp and theremin". (p 203)

One of the funnier touches is when a microbial artist encourages the human artist who hosts her to start making what's tantamount to microbial porn:

"The next one drew silence, and the next. A very long silence.

""Well?"

""They're . . . effective," he admitted, his eyes still focused.

""Should I show them in public?"

""I don't know. You might get a reputation."

""I knew it," she exclaimed. "I knew that Jonquil would have me peddling porn."

""The children look okay," he assured her. "They're just doing what micro children naturally do. But elders—or elders with children—that's profoundly disturbing."" - p 213

An 'elder' microbe having sex w/ a 'child' microbe is something a bit hard for a human being to imagine. It's too anthropomorphic - but anthropomorphizing microbes is a large part of what this bk is about:

"Incapable of work, the grayish ring jostled aimlessly among the red cells, begging for vitamins. Fireweed brushed its filaments to pass it a few.

" "Why?" asked Jonquil. "Why prolong its miserable existence?"

" "The One True God decreed, 'Love Me, love My people.'"

" "You call that brainless microbe a person?" Mutant children whose brains failed to reach Eleutherian standards were barred from the nightclubs, never eexposed to the pheremones that ripened for breeding, nor did they mature as elders. Worth no more than a virus.

" "There, but for a twist of DNA, go you or I," flashed Fireweed. "All people are one."" - p 222

Microbe 'charity'. I wonder if organized versions of it has CEOs who make enormous profits off donations while very little actually goes to helping anyone.

I like the rest of this series more. The potential for the concepts explored here is immense but the book really never goes very deep. Maybe it has to do with the slipping of time between when the author came up with the concepts and when she worked on this book? It doesn't help that the main character seems shallow, callow, self-serving and plain old petulant... not the kind of lead character that you want to spend a lot of time with. Too bad for the little critter civ in her brain.

This book was hilariously poorly written, and had decided themes of American superiority, acceptance but degradation of homosexuality, and anti-industrialism. Fantastically bad.

This book in the same universe as Door Into Ocean and Daughter of Elysium is as different from them as they were from each other. Though many SFNal elements are shared with Daughter, where that book began slowly with mostly cultural observations spread over out several chapters, this book begins with an info-dump that in a few pages sets out a pulp novel baseline befitting its title: vampires (we would call them zombies these days) are biting people, spreading the brain plague, and taking their victims to the Slave World. The main character is an artist whose life on a slummy lower level involves avoiding both the vampires and cancerous patches of nanoplast, the material from which the entire city is built. After that blast from the 1930s, things settle down, perhaps a little too much. The main character stays fairly naive for a bit too long, while everyone around her knows more about what is going on than she does.

Still and all, this ends up being more the kind of biological SF that I had hoped for from this author. The core idea is intelligent microbes who colonize the arachnoid matter of the human brain. There are many -- um -- cultures of these microbes. Our hero's culture has grand artistic visions as she does but also subversive revolutionary ambitions. One of the best parts of the book's premise is that it leads to two parallel tales in two very different timeframes. Her story of gradual awakening to social issues and taking a stance takes place over a few months. The microbial timeframe is a several hundred times faster so a multi-generational saga is told of an evolving civilization. Another interesting idea is how each carrier (human with microbes) is like a different continent. There are occasional visits, invasions, and cultural assimilation of microbes from different hosts. The dangers in the relationship between carriers and microbes are several. There is the god-complex relationship between microbes and their hosts, which serves neither side well, but the bigger danger is that only cultural prohibitions -- and eventual host-death -- prevent the microbes from enslaving their hosts through the repeated triggering of the pleasure response via dopamine release. This tension -- that humans can and frequently do wipe out entire microbial civilizations and microbes can and frequently do enslave their hosts -- creates a solid base of tension throughout the book. The microbes are too human-like in my opinion, but I feel that way about the aliens in almost all SF.

The richness of ideas and awkwardness of exposition makes this book feel like a first novel, but the ideas win out. Recommended.

A sequel to A Door into Ocean that's very different in tone. Door was dark and grim and pretty one-sided. The evil Valan militaristic agents of the Patriarchy were despoiling the ocean planet of Shora and attempting to force the matriarchal nonviolent Sharers to their will through imprisonment and torture. Though much is made of Slonczewski scientific credentials, whatever science she used in her world-building was hidden. In one scene, her Sharer life-shapers, who value organic life and abhor inorganic objects seemed surprised to realize that everything is made out of the same elements. The book ended with intimations that any victory the Sharers had would be short-lived.

In Daughter, there is political conflict but nothing so dark and grim. Hundreds of years have passed. The Valans are still villains, but they have gone corporate and are mostly off-stage. Shora has been colonized by the Elysians -- genetically engineered to live thousands of years but unable to breed -- who live in bubbles floating on Shora's ocean. The outside observers to tour Elysium are patterned after Native Americans.

The pace of Daughter is leisurely. The big conflicts are about overpopulation and terrraforming and who counts as human, but these themes, some present in Door, are developed slowly. The mode is debate, with many chapters reading like chapters from Walton's Thessaly cycle. It's not that things are less black and white than they were in Door so much as that the path to seeing what's black and white is more of a challenge for the characters.

The author's biological expertise is more clearly on display here, as one of the main characters works on a genetic engineering project to restore fertility to the Elysians.

Recommended for its world building and intelligence, but if you really love Door, you may be disappointed in the change of style here.

I was fairly blown away by the world-building and detailed societies Slonczewski came up with in this book. Having never read her before, A Door Into Ocean was a pleasant surprise. This is top-notch anthropological SF with the characters driving the plot forward. If you like Le Guin's Hainish books, (especially The Dispossessed), Vinge's Snow Queen books, or Russell's Rakhat duology, (The Sparrow/Children of God), then this book should be right up your street. I'll be looking to add the other volumes in this loosely connected series to my library soon.½

Solid but annoying. The cover blurb reference to Dune is not unreasonable. This is sort of a water world version, with a culture clash between outsiders and those who have adapted to oceanic environment. Though much is made of the author's scientific background, surprisingly few info-dumps occur explaining the ecosystems.

The annoying part is the heavy handed natives good, warrior patriarchy bad. I kept waiting for some nuance or depth to appear in the handling of the two sides, but it never came.

Recommended but it wasn't a breakout book for me.

Well worth reading. Lots to absorb in here.

A solid read that I thought I would like better. The future and the people in it feels disconcertingly strange, the way the future should feel. The science aspects are hard-core and interesting, albeit a bit one-note. All kinds of plot elements are thrown into the stew. But, like an overdone stew, the end result for me was edible but lacking in drama. I had no emotional connection to the characters. After the few two chapters, I was thinking "I hope they get out of rich kid land soon" -- but they never did. While the Earth is suffering as badly or worse than anything by Bacigalupi, we spend all our time completely divorced from it.

Readable, but less impressive than I was hoping for.

What a world Slonczewski has built! Intricate and profound, with cool ideas about biotechnology and how a completely non-violent culture would work. The only problems I found were with 1) the main antagonist - too flat and cartoonish, and 2) the length - this is a very long book.

Not exactly a sequel, Daughter of Elysium is the second book in the Elysium cycle, following Door Into Ocean. Like Door, Daughter takes place on Shora, but many centuries later. Several new "races" of humans are introduced: the beautiful and long-lived but detached Elysians, to the Goddess-worshiping, family-centered, martial arts experts from Bronze Sky -- the Clickers, the impoverished & overcrowded L'liites, the testosterone-dominated Urulites, and the servos -- who aren't actually human, but may or may not be sentient.

This is a very ambitious bit of SF -- there are a lot of balls in the air and I'm not sure I believe that she lands them all soundly. Then again, some may be deliberately left alight for the next book in the series? I don't know. That aside, it was nice to be back in the Sharer world again, though most of the worldview this time was filtered through the eyes of the Clickers. Much of the focus in this book was on reproduction and population management. It was somewhat frustrating that there was a complete absence of the theory that given the empowerment of women and a stable economic environment, women will limit their own reproduction and population growth will tend toward zero. Still, there were interesting ideas here and intriguing characters aplenty. Enough to make me seek out the next book in the series, anyway.

Okay, let's get this out of the way: Slonczewski is my favorite writer currently writing works of science fiction. I am highly disposed to adore anything that she writes. But there were so many things going on in this novel that at times even I wondered if she was going to be able to pull it all together in the end. (Spoiler alert: she did.)

The very basics of the story: It's one hundred years in the future. Jenny Kennedy is now the only daughter of a powerful and very political family. Reeling from the death of her twin brother, she chooses to go to college in an orbiting space habitat, billed as ultra-secure. Of course, things are never what they seem.

Things I really loved about this story: It's hard science fiction -- specifically in the field of molecular biology/microbiology/evolution. She plays with some really fascinating ideas here: bioengineering HIV for gene therapy - "Did you take your HIV, dear?", bioengineering plants to mimic human systems, can we produce signaling molecules for humor, piety, wisdom? It's feminist science fiction -- not just a "strong female protagonist," but a variety of female and male characters, in positions of power and without, who are strong, flawed, and gentle in turns, and sometimes all at once.

One of the most interesting aspects of the book is fed by Slonczewski's experience as a college department chair. Most of the action in this book takes place at Frontera College. It was really interesting to see issues and crises from the viewpoints of students, professors, administrators, parents, funders al at once. Conflicts of interest that had never occurred to me before were suddenly obvious.

The issue that I'm not sure if I loved, hated, or what was race. Which was complicated -- like it is. This is a future where almost all well-off children are genetically engineered. They may or may not share the same genetic race as their parents. A Quaker couple chooses their two favorite indigenous tribes for the racial characteristics of their twins. "Racism" as we currently know it isn't on display here, though it's definitely not post-prejudice. It's just that prejudice has mostly shifted to if you were engineered or not. There are also a lot of stupid assumptions made by characters of a character who was raised Amish. Oh, and while there are definitely prominent gay characters, there is still some orientation weirdness. And don't even get me started on the gender-performance weirdness of the First Lady debates.

Okay, really. I could write and write and write about this. (If you've read this and want to chat, send me a message!) I have some opinions. But I really loved this, and am wondering if Slonczewski is planning any more novels in this universe. (Some signs seemed to indicate yes, some no.)

No, wait! Two more things! I really loved the exchange of religious ideas in this book. And also the Foundation trilogy shout-outs. Okay. Done.

I enjoyed this book tremendously. The concept was delightful and unique, and the science was incorporated well so that it was important to the plot and believable. An ocean planet populated by women leads to many interesting ideas. The conflict with the neighboring planet also believable. The only jarring aspect to this story, for me, was the Spinel character, who seemed rougher than the others. Some of his statements just didn't feel right to me.

Pros: brilliant world-building, fascinating characters, thought-provoking

Cons:

Chrysoberyl of Dolomoth is a pyroscape artist with the Seven Stars. In order to improve her financial and artistic positions she agrees to become a carrier. Carriers play host to sentient microbial symbionts, visible to the host via their optic neuroports. Chrys’ ‘people’, the Eleutherians, call her the God of Mercy, but they don’t always act in her best interests. And there are other strains of micros going around, ones that take over their hosts, turning them into vampires and drug addicts. These hosts eventually travel to the Slave World, a place no one ever returns from.

You’re dropped into this complex world with no explanation, so it takes a few chapters to become familiar with all the terms, characters, and ideas. You do learn about the micros and how being a carrier works along with Chrys, but there’s a lot outside of that to take in: Chrys’ art, elves, sentients, simians, the Underworld, vampires, anti-simian groups, etc. The world is multi-layered and realistically complex.

The characters, both humanoid and micro, are quite fascinating. Chris must learn how to deal with the little people in her head and their demands on her time (for themselves and for the larger micro community as a whole) while also continuing with her own life (her art, lost friends, religious family, learning how to handle money, personal relationships).

The book does… meander a bit. While there are several linear plot threads, there are also a fair number of asides into complementary issues. The author examines different problems associated with being a host, and how different hosts treat their people. It also goes into how the hosts treat each other - both in the carrier community and outside of it. Then there’s the inter-racial problems: simians and physician sentients face discrimination, elves believe their society is perfect and so ignore the real threat one of their members poses everyone, should micros have the same rights as carriers, etc.

I really enjoyed the book. It’s fascinating seeing the different groups interact, and the micros are so much fun.½

A little difficult - not for the reader like me who can only read a few pages a day - but intriguing, original, worthwhile. The mystery of the plot did take priority, and the development of the characters was done less well

Brain Plague by Joan Slonczewski is the forth book in the Elysium Cycle Series (the other three are A Door Into Ocean, Daughter of Elysium, and The Children Star) but it is also a stand-alone science fiction novel. In many ways Brain Plague encompasses a treatise on symbiotic relationships between individuals and societies, nanotechnology (with the microbes), artistic creativity, free will and personal responsibility, and what it means to be a god.

On the planet Valedon a struggling artist, Chrysoberyl (Chrys), agrees to be colonized by Eleutherian Micros, an race of intelligent, sentient microbes. The Micros live just beneath the skull, in the arachnoid, a web of tissue between the outer linings of the brain. They communicate with her neurally and live an accelerated life -something like an hour for us is a year to them.

Chrys accepts the Eleutherians Micros originally for better health care and a healthy bank account, as well as protection against the other, plague carrying Micros but soon they are helping her with her art, and serving as collaborators all while living a very accelerated life. Chrys' Micros can be helpful, annoying and rebellious.

While parts of the novel are very intriguing it does become bogged down as Chrys deals with her own rebellious Micros and the ever present and repeated threat of Plague-carrying slaves. Even though I liked the concept of worlds within worlds and enjoyed Brain Plague in many ways, I'm not sure it was entirely successful for me.

The biggest problem I had was the flaw I perceived in communication between humans and their Micros. Chrys and her Micros talked in real time to each other and other carriers but the Micros are supposed to be living a very accelerated life which, logically, makes that communication impossible to accept. Additionally, she would also threaten them with an eclipse (shutting her eyes for a short period of time) but that darkness would already be happening when she slept. I also became very tired of the word "plast." If I were giving numbers, this is a 3.5 -
Highly recommended - as long as you overlook the inconsistencies involving the accelerated time for the Micros. http://shetreadssoftly.blogspot.com/

In [b:A Door into Ocean|121606|A Door Into Ocean|Joan Slonczewski|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1312029708s/121606.jpg|2640708] Slonczewski used the view points of characters from capitalist Valedon to introduce the communal-living, all female pacifists of Shora. The main plot was tension between Valedon's economic coercion and the Sharers' aim to never cause harm, and it culminated in the question of whether aliens (or rather, people with a completely alien view point that would destroy everything one values) were still too human to be harmed. The next book, [b:Daughter of Elysium|121608|Daughter of Elysium|Joan Slonczewski|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1202489024s/121608.jpg|117082], is set thousands of years later, when both the Sharers and Valedon are part of an intergalactic network of treaties and trade. Thousands of years after that comes [b:The Children Star|121607|The Children Star|Joan Slonczewski|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1312055902s/121607.jpg|117081], centered around a small colony of orphans trying to create a life for themselves on an alien planet. Prokaryon is inhospitable to outside life but seems to have no sapient creatures...except that the trees are planted in rows, the mountains crafted in pleasing shapes, and brush fires are immediately extinguished with targeted rain storms. The colonists are convinced that Prokaryon harbors some alien intelligence, but unless they can prove it the entire planet will be terraformed for use by the teaming, starving masses back home.

Slonczewski's characters always have well-drawn interior lives. Their conversations range from philosophy to child care arrangements, with each given as much weight as the other. (And I do love that there are some many different family styles presented in these books, from 1 man& 1 woman with biological children to single parents to adoptive parents to people parenting with friends or same sex lovers to the Elysians, whose children are raised in creches by robots.) The ethics and thought experiments she sets up in her books are even more fascinating. In her first book the reader is asked to consider whether aliens are human; in the next, whether machines are. This book makes the question more difficult still: it introduces us to microbes capable of communicating with or even controlling other living beings, and we must again decide whether these creatures, which live on a time scale in miniature to us but have the power to reshape our minds or very flesh, should have the same rights and respect as given other intelligent beings..

Slonczewski writes incredibly thoughtful, fascinating thought experiments, and powers them with likable characters and enough plot to keep the pages turning. I wish more people read these books!

Generations after the Sharers refused to accept Valen control, there is a new struggle for freedom on Shora. Centuries ago, the Sharers allowed the Elysians to settle on their world and learn lifeshaping from them. The Elysians chose to exchange their own ability to bear children for near-immortality. Over the course of the book, they come into conflict with many different societies. Having more money than they could ever use, they grant huge assistance loans to the L'lii, who could never repay them. The Urulan are a warlike, very sexist people who bred with their simian slaves over the years, and are as against the Elysians' use of simian embryos for lab experiments as the Elysians abhor the Urulans' sexism and agression. And the Elysians' own utopia turns against them, when their own nano-servors achieve sentience and demand rights. Negotiating between and around all of these conflicts is a immigrant family from Bronze Sky, who have their own blind spots and cultural assumptions. And threading through it all is the shared text of The Web, a philosophical treatise written shortly after [b:A Door Into Ocean|121606|A Door Into Ocean|Joan Slonczewski|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1312029708s/121606.jpg|2640708].

The book is slightly over-ambitious: many of the plot threads are dropped for the climactic show-down between nanon-servors and the Elysians, and there are a few too many characters to keep track of. But I love the philosophical discussions and problems posed by this book, and the wide array of mind sets, societies, and lifestyles that make it up. It's all so fascinating! I love how non-traditional this book is; it never does what I think it will.

Shora is a world without land. The humans who colonized it chose to reshape themselves, instead of terraforming the planet. Sharers, as the descendents of the colonists call themselves, strive to live in balance with each other and their world. Although they have incredibly advanced biological science, they try to change as little as possible about the natural ecology of Shora, even though it means losing friends and loved ones to vast monsters that roam the ocean. Their highest goal is to strengthen the ecological and social web that ties each creature to another. But they share their solar system with Valedon, a feudal, warlike world. And Valedon wants to expand its hold. Can the pacifists of Shora find a way to understand, and be understood by, their invaders?

I've seen other reviews that decry this book as gender-essentialist lesbian separatism, and I have to disagree. The Sharers are all female, and they are, as a group, very wise. But the book doesn't seem to present being wise as the natural extention of being an all-female society. The original colonists created a society that prizes consensus and pacifism, and those are the priorities they passed on to their descendents. There are many Sharers who are not wise in the least, who are hot-headed, blood-thirsty, or narrow-minded. The Valedon soldiers are male and female, and their chief torturer is a woman. And it's not like men are left out of the book--a male Valedon first learns from a wise (male) seer, then becomes a Sharer. We spend a large portion of the book inside his head, and much of the latter half inside another man's.

I really enjoyed reading the Sharers' struggles. They're incredibly inspirational, and I loved their society (even though I'd hate to live on their world). They refuse to do anything that might harm the Valedons (prefering civil disobedience), but the Valedons only value strength. It's fascinating conflict, but the resolution felt like a cop-out: the Valedons accidentally become convinced that the Sharers have created a time-bomb plague, that could wipe out the Valedons if ever the Sharers are wiped out themselves, and so they decide to leave the Sharers in peace. That aside, the societies Slonczewski create are engrossingly unique, and the conflict between them made me very tense and anxious.

Jenny Ramos Kennedy is the heir to two presidential families and a great deal of wealth. After her charming and extroverted twin dies, Jenny feels overwhelmed by the expectations of the world. Seeking to escape them, and to flee her fears of the increasingly frequent natural disasters on Earth, Jenny decides to go to college on a spacehub. There, her botany experiments, social life, and the upcoming elections all create a situation in which Jenny may either take the easy path of non-resistance, or agitate to change the world around her.

I liked the characters, but I thought there were too many view-point characters, with too little attention paid to each. I had the same problem with the plots and the future tech; there were just too many, all jostling for space. Slonczewski is fantastic at creating plausible but currently-fictitious creatures and technology, but I wish there had been better explanations of some of the tech (after numerous arguments between characters about what to do with the solarplates, someone finally explained what they were 200 pages in! Without knowing what they were, all those instances of discussion were meaningless to me.) and fewer biology lessons (I already know the differences between RNA and DNA, but even if I hadn't, that knowledge wasn't pertinent to the story). This felt a bit like a Connie Willis story, actually; I wish it had been a little more focused. My one other concern is that there are whole lines of dialog exclusively in Spanish, with no translation or guide in the back of the book.

All in all, though, this book features fascinating concepts with a likable but unique main character.

Trigger warning: a character is probably raped but doesn't remember it; no details are provided, one character talks about it in a victim-blaming way but the narrative does not support him, and it is not a major part of the book.

Chrysoberl is an artist just barely making her rent when she receives word: the medical experiment she volunteered for is ready for her. To her surprise, instead of a new drug she gets an entire race of microbial people who live inside her brain, patrol her body for ill-health, and worship her as a god. She and the microbial people enter into a tentative detente--she will feed them arsenic and give them light, and they won't turn her into a slave using their ability to manipulate her sensations of pain and pleasure.

This is the fourth and possibly last book in Slonczewski's acclaimed Elysium cycle, a series that spans a number of worlds and hundreds of years, yet never lost its personal touch. Like all of the books, the main character has personal problems and concerns, yet is still involved in a much larger social change or revolution taking place. And like the others, this book features a unique mix of hard sf (Slonczewski is fantastic at using biochem to create realistic aliens and future tech without ever infodumping) with a thoughtful exploration of morality.

The world Slonczewski has created here is fascinating. A really well done believable near future I wouldn't want to live in.

The story is about Jenny, who has gone away to college. Her college is in orbit. Jenny meets her roommate. Jenny meets a boy. Jenny dates a boy. Jenny has conversations with her parents and relatives. Jenny votes in elections. Jenny plays ball games. Really, that's about all that happens. A year in the life of Jenny. There is no real story, no plot. It's dull, and such a disappointment. Considering how well Slonczewski built her world, it is such a shame she couldn't find a decent story to put into it.

The Highest Frontier by Joan Slonczewski

Pros: interesting protagonist; fascinating world-building; thought provoking concepts

Cons: fair amount of repetition, especially at the beginning; several unexplained concepts and items, including one important to the plot

Jennifer Ramos Kennedy’s culture source was her great-grandmother, President Rosa Schwartz. A few months after a family tragedy she’s setting out for Frontera, a university on an orbiting space station. She chose it both because a family friend runs the school but also because it’s free of many of the things plaguing Earth: mosquitos carrying disease, risk of flood and methane quakes, the expanding Death Belt, and the need for DIRG bodyguards. But university life isn’t quite what she expected: her teachers are all a little crazy, her roommate is weird and has an unhealthy affiliation for ultraphytes, the alien plants that crave salt and spread from their landing site in Utah to be a scourge on the world, her slanball coach wants her well rested, a hard thing when she’s volunteering for the understaffed EMS, and there’s so much reading and work to do for classes.

Meanwhile, she’s knee deep in helping the Unity party win the next Presidential election. Jenny doesn’t understand how the Centrist Firmament belief is so strong when people live in space! But things on Earth have reached the point that if change doesn’t come soon, it’ll be too late for the planet. And yet the Centrists want to expand the solar array that’s expanding the Death Belt, intending for people to leave earth in the coming Rapture, relocating to other space stations. Stations that couldn’t possibly hold even a portion of the people on Earth.

And it turns out that Frontera isn’t as free of Earthly disasters as she was led to believe.

There’s very little exposition. You’re thrown into the novel with limited explanations of what things are and how the world has changed from what we currently know. While it’s an entirely character driven novel, something I’m not generally keen on, my interest never waned. There are plot points that pull the story into a thought provoking conclusion, but for the most part the book follows Jenny through her days, questioning the world and the politics that run it.

As a scion of a political family, Jenny knows politics, making her an excellent character to follow. Through her mother and conjoined twin aunts, she’s connected to the upcoming Presidential election; she helps when one of her professor’s runs for mayor; sees the struggle with personnel and supplies as she volunteers for EMS, and more. She also takes two politics courses, one on Teddy Roosevelt and the other on Aristotle and democracy, the lectures for which come up often in the text. The book’s ending questions how politics is done, and if it’s possible to fix a broken system.

The second point of view character, Dylan Chase, is President of the university, and through him we see the difficulties of managing his staff and securing sufficient financing. We also see him dealing with student problems: alcoholism, printer disease hacks, assault, and addiction.

The world-building is top notch: Spanish colloquialisms, tax playing at casinos, unique fashion trends, amyloid (sewage processed by hab shell microbes that’s used to ‘print’ everything from food to clothing to the shelters everyone lives in), the anthrax cables that transport ships between Frontera and Earth, Toynet, Kessler debris, I could go on. The sport of slanball is pretty cool too.

The supporting cast is wide and varied, though it focuses on Jenny’s family, a few professors, close students (including the players of her slanball team) and some of Dylan’s contacts (for his POV scenes). Jenny’s experiences at the school are also varied, from class work to parties to helping build houses for colonists.

The first few chapters contain a fair amount of repetition, especially with regards to Jenny’s family. Which makes it all the more strange that other concepts and terms are left unexplained. You figure out what DIRGs are pretty quick, but I don’t remember the acronym being explained. Similarly, Jenny notices an object on one of her teacher’s desks that affects the plot. She brings it up to another character, implying she knows the relevance of the object, but it’s not until the end of the book that as a reader I figured out what the object was and what it meant.

If you like a lot of character development and world-building in your science fiction, this is a highly entertaining, and sometimes thought provoking, read.

Sloncaewski gives some feminist critique of Willis' women characters. I didn't find it very interesting.