レビュー要約

• 大胆な設定と知的な問題意識が評価される一方、説明の多さや語りの uneven さを重く感じる読者もいる。発想の強さで読ませる作品。

レビュー

• A flawed classic but worthwhile

  Few authors are confident enough to spend the first fifty pages of their novel describing nothing but the inner thoughts a 24th century evolved post-human as it whizzes through intergalactic space. Its like she is trying to put readers off with a challenging and difficult hump before you get to a recognisable protagonist that the readers can identify and sympathise with. Robson performs this feat with some style and a reader is left trying to pick up the pieces detailing a future society from the fragments scattered among this initial section with a protagonist that is not altogether likeable. In fact most of the characters are slightly unlikeable in their own way. The bulk of the book is an examination of the power relationships between different groups of this future world which is brisk and detailed enough to keep a reader entertained, without being bogged down. The two main downsides of the novel are how flawed each of the main characters are and also the ending which ends with a whimper rather than a bang. A worthwhile novel that throws a lot at the reader and expect the reader to do their own catching.

• Unusual novel about posthuman life, M-Theory, and everything

  Justina Robson's "Natural History" is a science fiction novel about individuality, loneliness, isolation, connection, freedom, purpose, the thirst for knowledge, speciation, virtual reality, and the impossibility of us simple 4-dimensional humans understanding the 11-dimensional multiverse that (according to M-Theory; see, e.g., String Theory and M-Theory: A Modern Introduction ) surrounds us. It's not a masterpiece, but it is, like all of Robson's work ( Mappa Mundi , Keeping It Real , etc.), philosophical, grounded in (at least some) real science, and at times playful. The novel begins with a near-fatal collision between interstellar probe Voyager Lonestar Isol and a debris field far outside our solar system. Isol is a "Forged" human; she is a cyborg craft with a human personality altered to relish the isolation of long-distance sub-light space travel. She sets unleashes a great deal of turmoil when she unexpectedly reappears near Earth, claiming not only to have acquired alien technology that allows her to travel faster than light, but also to have visited another planet on her way back. Though that world was once settled, it is now empty, she says, and the perfect refuge for Forged humans who long to escape the yoke of the "Unevolved" humans that created them. Everyone, from the Earth-based Gaiasol government to the Forged Independence movement, is both interested in and suspicious of Isol's claims and the alien tech she carries. Isol agrees to carry a passenger back to the world she visited -- an Unevolved archaeologist named Zephyr who specializes in the reconstruction of extinct cultures. Zephyr's job is to evaluate Isol's claims about this world and determine as much as possible about the absent aliens, assuming they exist. Zephyr and her colleagues quickly learn that neither the new world nor the alien tech are what they seemed at first. The choices confronting them are much less like those that faced the first Europeans exploring the Americas than like choices facing humans in Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End , Robert Charles Wilson's Harvest, The , and George R. R. Martin's A Song for Lya . While the alien tech and what it portends for all branches of humanity is what drives the novel, what really gives the book life is the oddly layered human society of Unevolved and Forged that Robson shares with us. We learn about the different classes of Forged both through their own eyes and through the eyes of Zephyr -- the character we probably get to know best. It's a good bit of world-building. Bottom line: Readers may find "Natural History" difficult to get into at first, and they may be a bit miffed when their expectations are subverted in the final third of the book, but it's a good piece of work from a brilliant sci-fi author, and well worth checking out.

• Great Read, Great Ideas

  By reading the other 2 reviews you can tell what the book is about, so I wont go over that again, but I have to say that it was a great book. I read alot of sci-fi and seldom review them. My only wish is that I could have learned more about Isol, the first chapter in the book hooked me and I could not quit reading it and the idea of forged humans is something I can see in the future. If you like hard scifi, interesting characters, grand ideas, and good storytelling, pick up this book. I have told others about it and they have enjoyed it as well. I cant want to see what the author does next and I rate this as one of the top sci-fi reads for the year so far.

• A gem

  This is one of the best sci fi books I have ever read and it is a shame it is not available in kindle. I am am drawn to the whole topic of machines that are conscious and what kind of consciousness that might be. This book gives a real flavour of how things may be very different when we have machines that can think for themselves. This book delights the mind

• the right stuff

  Plausible, fascinating. Mutitextured, with resonant characterisation, but brought to a climax too quickly .with perhaps divers narrative folds and excursions left unexplored. Will definitely seek out more of her work though

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