I first read Aurura in 2016. It was both awe-inspiring and devasting in realism. Yesterday I ordered the audio version from Audible. There is so much life in the story that I feel an instant emotional connection with every major character. A sadness because I know the calamity that is to come: the dashed hope in the failured settling of Aurura, the plaque ravaging those who decide to return to Earth. Robinson's novel leads one to question if we humans are fragile as what it seems in his narrative. Or is our persistance, drive, (even from ignorance), one of the attributes that pushes us to "live"? Robinson's skepticism is a trove of imagination and wisdom, perfect for our age. This is the dawn, when SpaceX, Boeing, and Blue Origin promise to carry man to the brink of imagination and unabashed reality. Are we survivors? Are we noble in our causes to "save humanity"? Are we delusional?
I found Kim Stanley Robinson's latest book, "Aurora", enjoyable, enlightening and, in contrast to the Mars Trilogy, quite approachable (I'm struggling through my third attempt at the trilogy). KSR offers a different perspective on intergalactic migration this time around and it raises some interesting questions. One such question; who's going to pay for it? Unless we are fleeing some cataclysm, or we develop FTL tech, there's no ROI for intergalactic colonization. The book is constructed as a teenage girl's 'coming of age' in a unique, confined and controlled environment. I bought the signed edition from B&N with the intent of giving it to my twelve year old granddaughter (named Aurora) but it does lightly allude to some early sexual experimentation so grandpa will send the book to the parents and let them work it out. _Note to __Orbit Books__, the musical soundtrack on this video is too loud and distracting and detracts from the authors dialogue!_
I thought I was the only one having a hard time getting through the mars trilogy. I really enjoyed Red Mars but I found it a serous slog, I made it through Aurora no problem, and before that I gobbled up 2312. Maybe his newer work is easier to digest.
no, it does take some work.. It is difficult hard science fiction. Worth the effort, though! It is interesting that in Aurora Kim Stanley Robinson has the integrity to critique the Mars Trilogy in Aurora. The discovery of sodium chlorates in the Martian "soil" really does put the brake on Green and Blue Mar's optimism about terrarforming in general. We will have to advance for a longer time span before it is possible. Of course, there are some microbes which use sodium chlorate as an energy source..
My question is, why leave Earth? If there was an environmental disaster, so we go elsewhere and terraform, what's the point? If we had the tech to terraform, why not terraform earth? Seems like an exercise in futility to go anywhere else.
@@ChuckBoris3 Thanks! Your comment hits the nail on the head! That's one of the reasons why The Mars Trilogy is pretty pointless, too. Another is KSR's inability to write interestingly deep characters. When listening to this monologue of his, I don't hear even one word about the people he has 'sent' to Aurora. I think that is saying a lot.
So much good scifi this year: Neal Stephenson, Paolo Bacigalupi and soon Kim Stanley Robinson, to name a few. A generation ship story isn't anything new but I'm excited to read Mr. Robinson's take on one.
Great book! Much more approachable than the Mars Trilogy and brings up some very interesting questions about intergalactic colonization. e.g. _[spoiler alert]_ what's the ROI? _Note to __Orbit Books__, turn down the volume on the video, it is distracting and detracts from the author's comments._
Michael McGuire It's also an anti-generation ship novel. More about the need for eco-friendliness and constructing a post-capitalist Earth rather than going out and colonizing and so avoiding eco-disaster.
“Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence.” -- Star Trek‘s Bones McCoy Aurora brings this point home poignantly and originally. The ship and its voyagers -- their trials, tribulations and adaptation, their need for belief and search for meaning and connectedness, and ultimate inability to achieve their dreams of mastery over the universe - is a microcosm of man's eternally longing and search for meaning. Aurora is about the harsh reality and tragic human consequences of interstellar space travel. And yet human history and prehistory that has accompanied all forms of progress is overlayed with incomprehensible human struggle, tragedy and death.
This is one of the most intelligent books I’ve read in a long time. Only at one point did I say to myself, “This would never happen.” That is near the end when the young man spends so much time with Freya on the beach. Trust me, young men ignore old women.
Nice video. Great to see and hear the voice of the author himself. Great graphics! Also nice sound, but unfortunately the voice is only in the left channel, which can cause trouble for those with hearing difficulties
why is there only 372 likes on this vidéo, it's the explication of the best SF novel I've ever read. People must see this vidéo and like it so others people will see it. (and all the world will know this book)
Firstly, the Milky Way is only 100k light years across so there are no planets 500k light years away from us. Secondly, there are so many problems faced with this kind of journey. The technology to do this with such a large ship traveling at such incredible speeds (0.1c as he states) are way beyond us right now. In the time taken to get to this stage of technological advancement we may have also discovered a way to place ourselves in some kind of suspended animation, cryogenically freezing ourselves for indefinite periods. If this is the case then a journey like this becomes completely pointless. The solution instead would be to put all the humans into cryo-stasis and treat them as cargo. The space required for each person is minimal and you'd be able to fit a whole lot more of them on board. Think about the space required for a living human, someone who is on this ship their entire lives - they need living quarters, working space, recreational space, somewhere to get away from the monotony that would surely be their everyday lives. That required space is MUCH greater than it would be for a cryogenically frozen passenger. Also, the requirement to go at great speeds, which also introduces a host of problems, is nullified. A person in suspended animation does not experience the passage of time so therefore time becomes an irrelevant factor. So you can have the ship traveling at much more manageable speeds.
why bother ,why not hollow out and spin up asteroids and have complete control over the environment ? The infatuation with expensive to get to ,to a probably unsuitable environments is crazy. You could still travel the universe ,a bit slower but what's the rush ? think AC Clarke covered it a bit in rama series. Still I love all KSR books ! Just found the mars series on audio books :)
ew why. he sexually assaults her. no one ever says anything about when he slaps her ass. I could not concentrate on the book after that part because why would they act like this is ok to do to people :( I would expect people in the future to understand consent more, not less
Enjoyed it immensely…as a work of fantasy. Top notch story telling. However, as a palaeontologist ( for nearly 5 decades) I see it as the same magic wands just dressed up in ‘science sounding’ gobbledygook. One can’t gloss over the principles of physics.
I love KSR's books but I'm disappointed with his conservatism in regard to technological progress in the coming years: He barely mentions anything to do with augmenting the human body (yes folks I'm talking singularity and transhumanism here) and he evidently has no confidence in the idea of warp drive technology, even though it's been proved to be theoretically possible. Warp drive technology has been mathematically proven to be feasible with high enough quantities of energy and would expand his science fiction horizons so much further. Add on transhumanism and you have a science fiction dream right there. But obviously it's HIS book and he can write about however he thinks humanity will turn out. But that's just my opinion on it.
djunior874 That's why's he's one of the best contemporary SF writers. He focuses on ecological problems and sees transhumanistic tropes and the usual tech porn as being distractions from bigger political and economic and systemic and environmental issues. Dont build machines to fix the earth, change the political and economics systems which necessitate the futile pursuit of techno-soutions in the first place. Remember: Aurora is very much a novel arguing for not wasting times building space ships.
ERRATICCHEESE2 That 'techno porn' is what got humanity to where we are in the first place. I really dislike this negative view of technology; it reeks of neo-ludditism.
Of course, but "techno porn" is also what pro-capitalists always offer as the saviour of problems created by capitalism. Kim knows this. That's the whole point of most of his books: science is useless until political/economic ideology changes. Political/economic ideology negates any real progress. Making machines to solve problems caused by a system hinging on constant expansion and exponentially increasing energy consumption (a roughly 3 percent increase in global energy consumption every year), not to mention constant debt expansion, is silly. All systems of work, labour, money, commodity production, ownership and politcs must change first, otherwise the machines you're inventing are playing catch up to a losing battle. In the book, most species on earth have gone extinct. Machines aren't going to bring them back. In the book, machines are likewise reclaiming land lost by sea-level rise, but Kim makes it clear that humanity shouldn't have gotten to that point in the first place. I don't think he's a neo-luddite, I think he takes a more holisitic view of things. That's why this is - at least philosophically - one of the best generation ship novels. The message is essentially: "sure, science and progress will cure cancer, but stop being a dick and doing stuff that increases the number of people with cancers to be cured in the first place. Slow down and think deeper and further." It's no surprise that "generation ships" and "asteroid mining" and so forth are now not the pipe-dream of science fiction authors, but of free market fundies. That's what this book reacts against. Take the recent Interstellar film for example, where humans ruin the planet - the real topic of a good science fiction author, but one which the filmmakers have no interest in - before being patted on the back for possessing the gung-ho techno-smarts necessary for them finding a new one. This kind of reactionary thinking in the guise of techno-progress is something Kim hates.
ERRATICCHEESE2 I think we have to understand something; capitalism isn't going to go away by itself. We've seen what happens when we try and be communist (USSR), we've seen what happens when we try to be self-sustaining (North Korea): The only way we're going to achieve the next level beyond capitalism is through technology; more specifically automation. (I suggest watching the video by CGP Grey 'Humans Need Not Apply') This is the only way to ensure that we never need to work again, that we never have scarcity and therefore never need capitalism. When I see Elon Musk or Peter Diamandis doing these space projects I know that it's not just for money. Yes these people are entrepreneurs, but what's so bad about them earning a bit of cash when what we *can* achieve from it is so great? I think that Kim Stanley Robinson has seated himself nicely on his high horse and failed to realise that it IS human ingenuity that gets us out of these problems. If we had remained natural we'd still be living in caves and dying at 25.
Automated production = less workers = workers not paid = no purchasing power = less commodities sold = bankrupcy = disused automation. What you need is the opposite; everyone working (capitalism inherently cannot provide full employment) but for radically shorter hours and radically shorter work weeks and possibly even for no currency at all. "The only way we're going to achieve the next level beyond capitalism is through technology; more specifically automation." Yes. I believe this is also the belief of many like Kim Stanley ( his university thesis was on a Marxist philosopher, I think F. Jameson). Humans = stupid = stuck in their ways = revolutions mostly unplannable/fail = all major future progress due to unintended social changes due to radically new future technologies. For example, I work with a group who are basically designing a way for huge networks of houses to share electricity (like nodes in a bittorrent or file-sharing network), which the homes themselves generate. The implications of such networks are staggering, but such a system is essentially anti-profit and so slow to be adopted (and even suppressed). I disagree with your categorisations of the USSR and Korea. These countries were shaped by outside nations and are/were still state capitalist. Still, the USSR at the time was at the cutting edge of cybernetics and computer sciences, and actually had guys like Alexey Lyapunov and Victor Glushkov attempting to create the first cybernetic economies, though they didnt get very far. There was no political support and the technology wasnt there yet (they needed millions of miles of cables). I agree with your overall point though.
My left ear enjoyed this.
turn your head to the left while watching the video for full effect.
Just finished reading AURORA. What a wonderful novel. ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Best sci fi novel I've read in 10 years. Visceral and sobering.
I loved the book, my left ear loved this video :D
Kim Stanley Robinson discusses the science and speculation behind his upcoming novel, Aurora. Out July 7, 2015 from Orbit.
I first read Aurura in 2016. It was both awe-inspiring and devasting in realism. Yesterday I ordered the audio version from Audible. There is so much life in the story that I feel an instant emotional connection with every major character. A sadness because I know the calamity that is to come: the dashed hope in the failured settling of Aurura, the plaque ravaging those who decide to return to Earth.
Robinson's novel leads one to question if we humans are fragile as what it seems in his narrative. Or is our persistance, drive, (even from ignorance), one of the attributes that pushes us to "live"?
Robinson's skepticism is a trove of imagination and wisdom, perfect for our age. This is the dawn, when SpaceX, Boeing, and Blue Origin promise to carry man to the brink of imagination and unabashed reality.
Are we survivors? Are we noble in our causes to "save humanity"? Are we delusional?
I found Kim Stanley Robinson's latest book, "Aurora", enjoyable, enlightening and, in contrast to the Mars Trilogy, quite approachable (I'm struggling through my third attempt at the trilogy). KSR offers a different perspective on intergalactic migration this time around and it raises some interesting questions. One such question; who's going to pay for it? Unless we are fleeing some cataclysm, or we develop FTL tech, there's no ROI for intergalactic colonization.
The book is constructed as a teenage girl's 'coming of age' in a unique, confined and controlled environment. I bought the signed edition from B&N with the intent of giving it to my twelve year old granddaughter (named Aurora) but it does lightly allude to some early sexual experimentation so grandpa will send the book to the parents and let them work it out.
_Note to __Orbit Books__, the musical soundtrack on this video is too loud and distracting and detracts from the authors dialogue!_
I thought I was the only one having a hard time getting through the mars trilogy. I really enjoyed Red Mars but I found it a serous slog, I made it through Aurora no problem, and before that I gobbled up 2312. Maybe his newer work is easier to digest.
no, it does take some work.. It is difficult hard science fiction. Worth the effort, though!
It is interesting that in Aurora Kim Stanley Robinson has the integrity to critique the Mars Trilogy in Aurora. The discovery of sodium chlorates in the Martian "soil" really does put the brake on Green and Blue Mar's optimism about terrarforming in general. We will have to advance for a longer time span before it is possible.
Of course, there are some microbes which use sodium chlorate as an energy source..
My question is, why leave Earth? If there was an environmental disaster, so we go elsewhere and terraform, what's the point? If we had the tech to terraform, why not terraform earth? Seems like an exercise in futility to go anywhere else.
@@ChuckBoris3 Thanks! Your comment hits the nail on the head! That's one of the reasons why The Mars Trilogy is pretty pointless, too. Another is KSR's inability to write interestingly deep characters. When listening to this monologue of his, I don't hear even one word about the people he has 'sent' to Aurora. I think that is saying a lot.
One day when I become a film maker I will adapt this
Do it! My first thought when I finished the book was that I would want to see this story adapted into a visual medium. Such a beautiful story.
Amazing novel! Loving every second of it.
I finished it almost 10 years ago and it is still the best book that I have ever read!
So much good scifi this year: Neal Stephenson, Paolo Bacigalupi and soon Kim Stanley Robinson, to name a few. A generation ship story isn't anything new but I'm excited to read Mr. Robinson's take on one.
Kim Stanley Robinson discusses the science and speculation behind his latest novel, AURORA. Purchase it today in hardcover, e-book, and audio formats.
Great book! Much more approachable than the Mars Trilogy and brings up some very interesting questions about intergalactic colonization. e.g. _[spoiler alert]_ what's the ROI?
_Note to __Orbit Books__, turn down the volume on the video, it is distracting and detracts from the author's comments._
Michael McGuire It's also an anti-generation ship novel. More about the need for eco-friendliness and constructing a post-capitalist Earth rather than going out and colonizing and so avoiding eco-disaster.
Absolutely loved this novel.
“Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence.”
-- Star Trek‘s Bones McCoy
Aurora brings this point home poignantly and originally. The ship and its voyagers -- their trials, tribulations and adaptation, their need for belief and search for meaning and connectedness, and ultimate inability to achieve their dreams of mastery over the universe - is a microcosm of man's eternally longing and search for meaning.
Aurora is about the harsh reality and tragic human consequences of interstellar space travel. And yet human history and prehistory that has accompanied all forms of progress is overlayed with incomprehensible human struggle, tragedy and death.
This is one of the most intelligent books I’ve read in a long time. Only at one point did I say to myself, “This would never happen.” That is near the end when the young man spends so much time with Freya on the beach. Trust me, young men ignore old women.
So amazing!!
Nice video. Great to see and hear the voice of the author himself. Great graphics! Also nice sound, but unfortunately the voice is only in the left channel, which can cause trouble for those with hearing difficulties
Excellent book. Finally...a book where they don't just land on the planet and everything's humpty-doo.
Outstanding book. Left me in an existential crisis for a week or two
Thanks again
The left side of my head was very interested in this....
Awesome book.
I'm thinking of buying this book.
Is it as good as they say it is?
I love the interstellar kinda setting so any opinions would be appreciated.
A shame its only sound on left side. But love this author... Regards from Tom in Denmark.
why is there only 372 likes on this vidéo, it's the explication of the best SF novel I've ever read. People must see this vidéo and like it so others people will see it. (and all the world will know this book)
A ship in harbour is safe from the sea, however a ship is designed to survive the ocean.
Background music should be in the background.
I was looking for my next scfi book, this one is fantastic :D
Firstly, the Milky Way is only 100k light years across so there are no planets 500k light years away from us.
Secondly, there are so many problems faced with this kind of journey. The technology to do this with such a large ship traveling at such incredible speeds (0.1c as he states) are way beyond us right now. In the time taken to get to this stage of technological advancement we may have also discovered a way to place ourselves in some kind of suspended animation, cryogenically freezing ourselves for indefinite periods. If this is the case then a journey like this becomes completely pointless. The solution instead would be to put all the humans into cryo-stasis and treat them as cargo. The space required for each person is minimal and you'd be able to fit a whole lot more of them on board. Think about the space required for a living human, someone who is on this ship their entire lives - they need living quarters, working space, recreational space, somewhere to get away from the monotony that would surely be their everyday lives. That required space is MUCH greater than it would be for a cryogenically frozen passenger.
Also, the requirement to go at great speeds, which also introduces a host of problems, is nullified. A person in suspended animation does not experience the passage of time so therefore time becomes an irrelevant factor. So you can have the ship traveling at much more manageable speeds.
why bother ,why not hollow out and spin up asteroids and have complete control over the environment ? The infatuation with expensive to get to ,to a probably unsuitable environments is crazy.
You could still travel the universe ,a bit slower but what's the rush ? think AC Clarke covered it a bit in rama series.
Still I love all KSR books !
Just found the mars series on audio books :)
I'm just sad that you killed off Euan. I was hoping for a happy ending with Euan and Freya :(
ew why. he sexually assaults her. no one ever says anything about when he slaps her ass. I could not concentrate on the book after that part because why would they act like this is ok to do to people :( I would expect people in the future to understand consent more, not less
Why is the music so loud? It's too hard to hear what the author is saying because he's being drowned out.
ROCKET PLANETS!
alpha Centauri though?
Lose the music
Where are the subtitles? He is hard to Unterstand. Put them in.
as in all Robinson books, great hard sci fi for the first half, then all mystic Shamalayan style BS with magic tech
A.I is a better bet. don't send people to check this stuff out. clearly not worth it.
Enjoyed it immensely…as a work of fantasy. Top notch story telling.
However, as a palaeontologist ( for nearly 5 decades) I see it as the same magic wands just dressed up in ‘science sounding’ gobbledygook. One can’t gloss over the principles of physics.
I love KSR's books but I'm disappointed with his conservatism in regard to technological progress in the coming years: He barely mentions anything to do with augmenting the human body (yes folks I'm talking singularity and transhumanism here) and he evidently has no confidence in the idea of warp drive technology, even though it's been proved to be theoretically possible. Warp drive technology has been mathematically proven to be feasible with high enough quantities of energy and would expand his science fiction horizons so much further. Add on transhumanism and you have a science fiction dream right there. But obviously it's HIS book and he can write about however he thinks humanity will turn out. But that's just my opinion on it.
djunior874 That's why's he's one of the best contemporary SF writers. He focuses on ecological problems and sees transhumanistic tropes and the usual tech porn as being distractions from bigger political and economic and systemic and environmental issues. Dont build machines to fix the earth, change the political and economics systems which necessitate the futile pursuit of techno-soutions in the first place. Remember: Aurora is very much a novel arguing for not wasting times building space ships.
ERRATICCHEESE2 That 'techno porn' is what got humanity to where we are in the first place. I really dislike this negative view of technology; it reeks of neo-ludditism.
Of course, but "techno porn" is also what pro-capitalists always offer as the saviour of problems created by capitalism. Kim knows this. That's the whole point of most of his books: science is useless until political/economic ideology changes. Political/economic ideology negates any real progress.
Making machines to solve problems caused by a system hinging on constant expansion and exponentially increasing energy consumption (a roughly 3 percent increase in global energy consumption every year), not to mention constant debt expansion, is silly. All systems of work, labour, money, commodity production, ownership and politcs must change first, otherwise the machines you're inventing are playing catch up to a losing battle.
In the book, most species on earth have gone extinct. Machines aren't going to bring them back. In the book, machines are likewise reclaiming land lost by sea-level rise, but Kim makes it clear that humanity shouldn't have gotten to that point in the first place.
I don't think he's a neo-luddite, I think he takes a more holisitic view of things. That's why this is - at least philosophically - one of the best generation ship novels. The message is essentially: "sure, science and progress will cure cancer, but stop being a dick and doing stuff that increases the number of people with cancers to be cured in the first place. Slow down and think deeper and further."
It's no surprise that "generation ships" and "asteroid mining" and so forth are now not the pipe-dream of science fiction authors, but of free market fundies. That's what this book reacts against. Take the recent Interstellar film for example, where humans ruin the planet - the real topic of a good science fiction author, but one which the filmmakers have no interest in - before being patted on the back for possessing the gung-ho techno-smarts necessary for them finding a new one. This kind of reactionary thinking in the guise of techno-progress is something Kim hates.
ERRATICCHEESE2 I think we have to understand something; capitalism isn't going to go away by itself. We've seen what happens when we try and be communist (USSR), we've seen what happens when we try to be self-sustaining (North Korea): The only way we're going to achieve the next level beyond capitalism is through technology; more specifically automation. (I suggest watching the video by CGP Grey 'Humans Need Not Apply') This is the only way to ensure that we never need to work again, that we never have scarcity and therefore never need capitalism. When I see Elon Musk or Peter Diamandis doing these space projects I know that it's not just for money. Yes these people are entrepreneurs, but what's so bad about them earning a bit of cash when what we *can* achieve from it is so great? I think that Kim Stanley Robinson has seated himself nicely on his high horse and failed to realise that it IS human ingenuity that gets us out of these problems. If we had remained natural we'd still be living in caves and dying at 25.
Automated production = less workers = workers not paid = no purchasing power = less commodities sold = bankrupcy = disused automation.
What you need is the opposite; everyone working (capitalism inherently cannot provide full employment) but for radically shorter hours and radically shorter work weeks and possibly even for no currency at all.
"The only way we're going to achieve the next level beyond capitalism is through technology; more specifically automation."
Yes. I believe this is also the belief of many like Kim Stanley ( his university thesis was on a Marxist philosopher, I think F. Jameson).
Humans = stupid = stuck in their ways = revolutions mostly unplannable/fail = all major future progress due to unintended social changes due to radically new future technologies.
For example, I work with a group who are basically designing a way for huge networks of houses to share electricity (like nodes in a bittorrent or file-sharing network), which the homes themselves generate. The implications of such networks are staggering, but such a system is essentially anti-profit and so slow to be adopted (and even suppressed).
I disagree with your categorisations of the USSR and Korea. These countries were shaped by outside nations and are/were still state capitalist. Still, the USSR at the time was at the cutting edge of cybernetics and computer sciences, and actually had guys like Alexey Lyapunov and Victor Glushkov attempting to create the first cybernetic economies, though they didnt get very far. There was no political support and the technology wasnt there yet (they needed millions of miles of cables). I agree with your overall point though.