Joan Slonczewski's Frontera 3d

[james_davis_nicoll]

Why do so many space colonies look like a pocket universe version of Ohio?

Comments

[connactic.livejournal.com]

Space habitats are round on both ends and high in the middle. Therefore, they will all look like Ohio.

[kithrup.livejournal.com]

groan

[jamesenge.livejournal.com]

SCIENCE!!!!!

[kithrup.livejournal.com]

That seems awfully small, doesn't it?

(I made a note to get the book tonight. Should I not do so?)

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I'd really like a second opinion on it.

[kithrup.livejournal.com]

Well, I bought it. Not sure when I'll get to it -- I'm reading The Dragon's Path right now, but it's having bouts of not holding my attention. (But, I'm pretty sure that's more due to me being anxious more than it is due to the book.)

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I meant to mention this. (http://www.tor.com/blogs/2011/09/well-worth-the-wait-the-highest-frontier-by-joan-slonczewski#more)

[kithrup.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's why I put the book on my to-buy list.

The advantage of ebooks is that I can carry all my unread books with me. The disadvantage is that, having them all with me, I switch around a lot more often than I did when I only carried one or two books with me at a time.

[helivoy.livejournal.com]

I sent you a private message. -- Athena

[helivoy.livejournal.com]

Lest my previous note be misconstrued: both MJ Locke (Laura Mixon) and Joan Slonczewski sent me the semi-final drafts of their recent novels to look at (respectively: Up Against It and The Highest Frontier).

Both books brim with ideas and characters. They're demanding but rewarding, outstanding hard SF (even more so for being by women), infinitely more interesting and worthwhile than the least-denominator SF dreck (particularly of the cyberpunk variety) and fascinating to read side by side.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Who is writing cyberpunk these days?

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

Elizabeth Bear?

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

In the book, does Frontera College have more than two buildings?

[helivoy.livejournal.com]

Frontera College has dorms, classrooms, labs, coffeehouses etc. like all colleges. The little 3-D animation is not representative of either the size or the appearance of the space station -- or of its social/political/religious hues, for that matter.

The Tor review, linked upthread, is very accurate. I'd add that Slonczewski has done something fairly unique: a near-future quasi-dystopia that extrapolates well from today's trends (which include the imminence of a US neo-feudal theocracy) with some elements of space opera that are inevitable from the orbiting station setting. It's rare in two more ways: an SF story that knows its science and a standalone, in this age of rampant sequelitis.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Because the midwest (which, however, Ohio only just barely squeaks into one end of) is the true America. Didn't you get the memo?

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

... that's some low population colony. Looks like they took five miles of a rural county highway and put it into a hoop.

[kithrup.livejournal.com]

As I said, it looked even smaller than that to me. Depending on the size of the buildings, I guess, I thought it was only a mile or so around.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Yes; looking up, the end caps look to be only about a kilometer apart. The sign says 'Mount Giliad 3km' and there's a popup that says Mount Giliad directly overhead (if you click, you can see from the antipodal point). So the interior is 6000m around, or about 1900m diameter. Pretty tiny as these things go.

And at either end of the half-circle road, there's the same little white church...

[happyinmotion.livejournal.com]

And this pays for itself how?

[kithrup.livejournal.com]

He3 mining.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

That, and also passing the collection basket at the little church.

[happyinmotion.livejournal.com]

Don't you mean He3 farming? They use special space-wheat.

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

Maybe a space farmer's market?

[dbdatvic.livejournal.com]

VOLUME!!1!

--Dave, can't beat the classics

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

What are the orange things? The colony is forever trapped between the twin infernos of a double-star system?

[kithrup.livejournal.com]

Two eyes of Sauron!

[(Anonymous)]

Perhaps those are the Stargates by which people get in and out?

(As people said, it seems rather empty...perhaps it's part of a much larger complex, linked by said Stargates?)

Bruce

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

As I recall, not having a copy of the book at hand, it is at the top of an orbital elevator in geosynchronous orbit above, hrm, Ohio I think.

[rwpikul.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't be that surprised at a colony cylinder where the 'surface' is rural or parkland.

All the homes and whatnot are on the floors below, the 'surface' is where you go to relax, recharge and grow the things that don't take well to hydroponics.


(What, you want a window to look out of? Just put "A year in [wherever]" on the display screen or call up one of the live feeds.)

[jwgh]

The sloping roofs puzzle me.

[avram]

I'm guessing it's cobbled together from found 3D models, and the person doing the cobbling just grabbed anything that looked frontier-ish.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Sounds like somebody never heard of Space Snow.

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

Low G Chicken Shit can take ages to settle.

[neowolf2.livejournal.com]

Like The Pretenders' Ohio, space colonies are gone.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

It's a geographic compromise between the whitebread nature of Idaho, and someplace reasonably civilized, like Philadelphia. Also, it's more attractive than mashing together a capsule hotel and an offshore oil drilling platform, which is far more likely what a space colony would look like.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

I wondered about those doo-hickeys at the end, the rings under the Eye-of-Sauron lighting system. They vaguely resemble apartment buildings, if you don't look at them closely. But there should be a lot more stuff around the borders if they were spaces for humans.

Sadly, you're right. The high end cabins might have the ambiance of an aging cruise ship. Experience suggests that any spacecraft is going to have the combined smell of an electronics shop, some unwashed laundry, and too many armpits.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

I was sent an ARC for cover blurb. Got nearly one chapter in before the book met the wall opposite at high speed. I might be doing it a disservice, but I pegged it as good old-fashioned revival-tent motivational space colony yarn about the High Frontier/the unwisdom of solitary egg containment devices. AmIRite?

[connactic.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the book, but given that you would like to see more women SF authors published/promoted, you might want to stick it out and see if the rest of the book take a more nuanced view.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Better yet, send in some miners' canaries first. If the test readers live, then you can try again.

[helivoy.livejournal.com]

You're wrong. The novel is unique and groundbreaking in several ways and far better than most of today's SF fare. It's extrapolative hard SF with real science. I supplied more specifics in another thread of this entry.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Opinions appear to differ. Since I know Autopope has many demands on his time, I suggest he try passing it along, say to Fred from Accounting.

[helivoy.livejournal.com]

Opinions differ, yes. That's why they're called opinions. But Mr. Stross ended his comment with a question: "AmiRite?" which invited an answer -- unless he was being rhetorical. Also, you seem to be implying he's the only person with demands on his time. I don't know about you, but I do scientific research full time, not counting the writing.

Highest Frontier

[ultraphyte.livejournal.com]

Charlie, I'd like to challenge you to a debate in public about space exploration. As you know, I like you personally, and I left a nice comment about Rule 34 on your blog. But I disagree intellectually about exploring space. As a biologist, I argue that space exploration is essential to the survival of humanity. I would welcome a spirited debate on this topic--preferably in person, or in on-line real-time video. :)
Cheers, Joan