All the Birds in the Sky – Charlie Jane Anders

Teens Patricia and Laurence go to the same school. They could not be more different in background and interests, but they do have two things in common. They are both very odd, and they are both severely bullied. As a young child, Patricia had a surreal experience in which she talked to birds. Or maybe she was just dreaming. Laurence is attempting to develop a self-aware computer in his bedroom closet. Their parents are completely unable, even actively unwilling, to connect with their children. The two youngsters find solace and friendship in each other; kindred spirits despite their seemingly diametrally opposed ways of seeing the world. Eventually, Patricia ends up going to witch school, and Laurence is set on his path to tech whiz stardom.

Years later, the two reconnect in San Francisco. The world is by now in a bad place, with looming eco-catastrophe and global tensions. A feeling of the end times permeates the zeitgeist. Patricia’s realm of magic and Laurence’s dabbling in hypertechnological machinery on the fringes of known science seem completely incompatible. And yet the two protagonists stumble towards each other, sometimes bouncing off each other’s misunderstandings and prejudices. But all the while inexorably building a friendship of trust and commitment.

The novel is full of strange events, which Ms. Anders skillfully describes in a matter of fact prose full of clever and delightfully unexpected turns of phrase. Patricia’s sometimes dreamlike experiences and Laurence’s Silicon Valley free-flow tech world are both strange, and magical, and antagonistic, and they both connect to the world in their own ways. Shining through the sometimes weirdness of the novel’s events and narrative is a story of two imperfect people trying to get on in life. In a metaphor of growing up, they somewhat inevitably end up in the middle of grand events that they wish they could control better, and realise that those who came before them didn’t really know what they were doing either.

Just as much as I enjoyed the book, it is clear that many others will dislike it strongly. It does not seem a novel to which you can be indifferent. And that is a large part of its charm.

Seveneves – Neal Stephenson

SevenevesIn a very near future, the Moon is destroyed, suddenly and without warning. Within a few days, scientists figure out that the seven pieces will impact each other again and again, breaking into ever smaller pieces until after two years the process reaches a sort of critical mass. Then, so many large meteors will impact the Earth’s atmosphere that it will broil, annihilating all life on Earth in an event named the “Hard Rain”. Desperate measure are implemented to launch as many people as possible into space before the end. It is estimated that it will take 5000 years until the Hard Rain abates and Earth can be made inhabitable again.

Seveneves is a very long novel divided into three parts. Part one details events from the destruction of the Moon to the Hard Rain. Part two chronicles the struggle for survival after the Hard Rain and the nadir of human population, as well as the momentous decisions at this point. Part three jumps five thousand years into the future, with Earth being repopulated and the human race split into seven races. It is an epic story focusing on themes of resilience, survival and most of all what it is that makes us human. What are the traits that make us who we are? What drives us to conflict, cooperation, competition and rationality? Seveneves asks the question: Can such traits be altered in the human race through genetic tinkering, and what would happen if they were?

In the beginning of part three, there is a feeling of disjointedness with the rest of the story, but after a while this somewhat separate story with entirely new characters starts feeling like an appropriate bookend to parts one and two, with a perspective on ancient events down the long lens of history, and with the results of the experiment at hand.

The text is littered with info-dumps, mostly about space technology. Detailed explanations about orbital mechanics and the physics of free-falling chains abound. I personally found this content very interesting, but I can understand that not all would. The prose flows easily from page to page, filling the reader with a real desire to find out what will happen on this great odyssey. For it is truly an odyssey, an epic of monumental proportions drawing the entire human race, with all its history and heritage, down to a single point, literally a single room, and then chronicling its resurgence.

4½Rosbochs