Hardcover, 352 pages
English language
Published Jan. 22, 2023 by Tor Books.
From science fiction visionary Annalee Newitz comes The Terraformers, a sweeping, uplifting, and illuminating exploration of the future.
Destry's life is dedicated to terraforming Sask-E. As part of the Environmental Rescue Team, she cares for the planet and its burgeoning eco-systems as her parents and their parents did before her.
But the bright, clean future they're building comes under threat when Destry discovers a city full of people that shouldn’t exist, hidden inside a massive volcano.
As she uncovers more about their past, Destry begins to question the mission she's devoted her life to, and must make a choice that will reverberate through Sask-E's future for generations to come.
A science fiction epic for our times and a love letter to our future, The Terraformers will take you on a journey spanning thousands of years and exploring the triumphs, strife, and hope that find us wherever we make our home. …
From science fiction visionary Annalee Newitz comes The Terraformers, a sweeping, uplifting, and illuminating exploration of the future.
Destry's life is dedicated to terraforming Sask-E. As part of the Environmental Rescue Team, she cares for the planet and its burgeoning eco-systems as her parents and their parents did before her.
But the bright, clean future they're building comes under threat when Destry discovers a city full of people that shouldn’t exist, hidden inside a massive volcano.
As she uncovers more about their past, Destry begins to question the mission she's devoted her life to, and must make a choice that will reverberate through Sask-E's future for generations to come.
A science fiction epic for our times and a love letter to our future, The Terraformers will take you on a journey spanning thousands of years and exploring the triumphs, strife, and hope that find us wherever we make our home.
"Brilliantly thoughtful, prescient, and gripping.”—Martha Wells, author of The Murderbot Diaries
Content warning Strong Opinion
I have to admit, I like Newitz but this novel confused me all to heck and gone. I'm sure there was some overarching message. It eluded me. I can't recommend it to anyone.
Plenty to like here in environmental, more-than-human kin, queer and anti-capitalist themes in a fairly comic presentation. And yet it's really off as a paced story, as characters jut in or out or beep past, or as a deeply considered world or future confronting injustice, and the incoherence just built for me as emotions rose towards the end.
This is a novel about a corporate-run terraformed world and the struggle of the people building that world to push back on their awful corporate owners and ultimately become self-governing.
Chapter one of this book really gripped me: a park ranger on a terraforming planet (who can connect to sensors in nearby trees and grasses) and her texting/flying moose buddy stop a rich camping tourist hurting the local ecosystem. Here's a small handful of other delightful worldbuilding details that I enjoyed, just for flavor: new people are built/decanted rather than born; sentient worms solve NP completeness; there's an endearing cat/train relationship. I think there's something fun about a novel that sets itself extremely far in the future and stuffs itself with neat ideas.
It's hard not to feel the echoes of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy in this whole book. Aside from the obvious bit that it's about the terraforming …
This is a novel about a corporate-run terraformed world and the struggle of the people building that world to push back on their awful corporate owners and ultimately become self-governing.
Chapter one of this book really gripped me: a park ranger on a terraforming planet (who can connect to sensors in nearby trees and grasses) and her texting/flying moose buddy stop a rich camping tourist hurting the local ecosystem. Here's a small handful of other delightful worldbuilding details that I enjoyed, just for flavor: new people are built/decanted rather than born; sentient worms solve NP completeness; there's an endearing cat/train relationship. I think there's something fun about a novel that sets itself extremely far in the future and stuffs itself with neat ideas.
It's hard not to feel the echoes of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy in this whole book. Aside from the obvious bit that it's about the terraforming of a planet, it's also (a more direct) struggle against capitalist ownership. It's also structured into three section, each of which are many years apart and some long-lived characters who exist across all three parts. Each both have their own underground organization (spoilery pun :drum:) consisting of similar (spoilers elided) people. The afterword mentions that KSR asked for a character named Kim if Newitz wrote a book about terraforming.
The "big bad" here is capitalism (when is it not) and its desire to control and use people as things for profit. If there's one thematic "big good", it's probably cooperatism, and giving folks who are involved in the work a voice. At times, this came off as didactic and the side of "good" felt far too unambiguous and unmessy. The way the book hews closely to so many current-day issues (gentrification, homelessness, water rights, mass transit) felt almost a little too on the nose. However, I think it all ~mostly worked for me in the end, because a novel trying to be so hopeful about the future is the kind of refreshing book I want more of in my life.
One thing I had hoped early on to see more about was some discussion about terraforming itself being somewhat a suspect activity (especially in this larger context of capitalism / colonialism / etc). There's certainly PLENTY of shade thrown at the capitalist forces at work here, but the book brushes past most discussion of terraforming itself by having it occur on a planet that is entirely a lifeless orb.
Mostly, I think it's interesting for me to think about comparing this book's ERT rangers vs evil corporation perspectives against the third perspective from To Be Taught, If Fortunate, by Becky Chambers. That book has the most humble approach to (attempted) zero-impact space exploration that I've ever seen. Characters change themselves and their bodies to fit into the new environment. Whereas The Terraformers is about changing the environment to suit (current for us) human bodies as a marketing gimmick, even when there's a furry VR gym's worth of body types and body swapping.
In The Terraformers erzählt Annalee Newitz die Geschichte eines gesamten Planeten und der Personen, die auf ihm leben. Das Unternehmen Verdance verdient sein Geld damit, ganze Planeten über Jahrhunderte und -tausende hinweg zu terraformen und dann das gewonnene Land an Investoren zu verkaufen. Das ist auch der Plan für Sask-E, dessen Geschichte das Buch in Ausschnitten begleitet: von den allerersten “menschlichen” Siedlern bis hin zu der entstehenden Gesellschaft und ihren Folgen.
Im Mittelpunkt von The Terraformers stehen die Personen, die die Verwandlung des Planeten steuern und begleiten – entsprechend bestimmen sich auch die thematischen Schwerpunkte des Romans: geht es am Anfang besonders um die Stabilität des Ökosystems, kommen später die Perversionen eines galaktisch-libertären Kapitalismus hinzu und schließlich Faschismus und Rassismus.
Der besondere Twist dabei ist, dass Newitz das Konzept der Person weit ausdehnt: So ist in der Welt des 50. Jahrtausends Intelligenz nicht mehr auf hominide Körper beschränkt, sondern auch …
In The Terraformers erzählt Annalee Newitz die Geschichte eines gesamten Planeten und der Personen, die auf ihm leben. Das Unternehmen Verdance verdient sein Geld damit, ganze Planeten über Jahrhunderte und -tausende hinweg zu terraformen und dann das gewonnene Land an Investoren zu verkaufen. Das ist auch der Plan für Sask-E, dessen Geschichte das Buch in Ausschnitten begleitet: von den allerersten “menschlichen” Siedlern bis hin zu der entstehenden Gesellschaft und ihren Folgen.
Im Mittelpunkt von The Terraformers stehen die Personen, die die Verwandlung des Planeten steuern und begleiten – entsprechend bestimmen sich auch die thematischen Schwerpunkte des Romans: geht es am Anfang besonders um die Stabilität des Ökosystems, kommen später die Perversionen eines galaktisch-libertären Kapitalismus hinzu und schließlich Faschismus und Rassismus.
Der besondere Twist dabei ist, dass Newitz das Konzept der Person weit ausdehnt: So ist in der Welt des 50. Jahrtausends Intelligenz nicht mehr auf hominide Körper beschränkt, sondern auch in tierischen, künstlichen oder hybriden Körpern zu finden. Dabei behilft sich Verdance mit “Limitern”, die die Intelligenz der Wesen bewusst begrenzen, um sie weiter als “dumme” Tiere einsetzen zu können - wenn auch in einem deutlich zivileren Umgang, als wir dies heute tun. Andere Gruppen hingegen stellen sich gegen diese Limiter. Auch hieraus ergeben sich spannende Konflikte.
All dies macht The Terraformers zu einem durchweg zeitgemäßen Vertreter der Ecological Science Fiction. Neben allen thematischen Anregungen ist es zudem sehr gut zu lesen und unterhaltsam sowie spannend zu lesen.
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