Marina J. Lostetter

‘A striking adventure story that could hold a galaxy in its scope’ KIRKUS REVIEWS

Noumenon

A Publishers Weekly "Best Books of 2017" pick! A Kirkus Reviews "Best Books of 2017" pick! A B&N Sci-Fi and Fantasty Blog "Best SFF of 2017" pick! With nods to Arthur C. Clarke’s Rama series and the real science of Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves, a touch of Hugh Howey’s Wool, and echoes of Octavia Butler’s voice, a powerful tale of space travel, adventure, discovery, and humanity that unfolds through a series of generational vignettes. In 2088, humankind is at last ready to explore beyond Earth’s solar system. But one uncertainty remains: Where do we go? Astrophysicist Reggie Straifer has an idea. He’s discovered an anomalous star that appears to defy the laws of physics, and proposes the creation of a deep-space mission to find out whether the star is a weird natural phenomenon, or something manufactured. The journey will take eons. In order to maintain the genetic talent of the original crew, humankind’s greatest ambition—to explore the furthest reaches of the galaxy— is undertaken by clones. But a clone is not a perfect copy, and each new generation has its own quirks, desires, and neuroses. As the centuries fly by, the society living aboard the nine ships (designated Convoy Seven) changes and evolves, but their mission remains the same: to reach Reggie’s mysterious star and explore its origins—and implications. A mosaic novel of discovery, Noumenon—in a series of vignettes—examines the dedication, adventure, growth, and fear of having your entire world consist of nine ships in the vacuum of space. The men and women, and even the AI, must learn to work and live together in harmony, as their original DNA is continuously replicated and they are born again and again into a thousand new lives. With the stars their home and the unknown their destination, they are on a voyage of many lifetimes—an odyssey to understand what lies beyond the limits of human knowledge and imagination.

Shona Tiger

** spoiler alert **
           A rather wild ride. Really great world-building (4), but ugh, I wasn't crazy about the story or the characters (except maybe for ICC). Last third is a bit bewildering, although I'm willing to accept that because it's the far future. Guess I must read the sequel now.

Oh, but PS, a definite bonus: a character with a Zimbabwean name (:

Janice Hopper

Another entry in the "generations ships are not the all-purpose answer early SF seemed to think they were" genre. 

In this case, a flotilla of ships is sent for the sole purpose of investigating something anomalous around a distant star. Maybe it's a Dyson sphere in the process of being build? Anyway, the ships and crew are supposed to go out, investigate what's out there, and come back with the info. The elapsed time on earth will be a couple thousand years.

One interesting twist is that instead of relying on random human reproduction, the ship will be populated by clones. As one generation of clones approaches "retirement" (i.e., disposal) age, the generation of that clone line is activated and raised. The mission planners felt like they'd selected optimal gene lines, and just decided to keep them available.

The story is told episodically, at intervals of a couple hundred years, more or less. They find the star, learn what they can, and turn around to come back home, to a drastically changed earth. (Duh.) Along the way, there are the problems of big societies, just writ a little smaller due to the smaller number of clones.

It's an interesting perspective. It does seem strange to me to go that far, then turn around and come home to who-knows-what. Especially when the home planet stop responding/communicating after a few hundred years.

Not bad, some interesting ideas.