Alright, just finished #TheTerraformers by #AnnaleeNewitz

Liked:
imagining the sentient trains as the catbus from totoro
The Environmental Rescue Team concept and domos
Thinking about the ethicality of Intelligence metrics
Newitz's continued weird sex.(Homo Arceans(sp) don't have the usual configuration)

Disliked:
Multi-generational story over centuries left me feeling a bit unmoored on what's going on and where/when we were.

Enjoyed it but wouldn't suggest bumping it up your reading lists.

At the juncture of enormously sophisticated bioengineering and ecological awareness, life-form rights and community ethics, and impressively evil corporate profiteering, @annaleen’s The Terraformers is a book for our time and a novel that makes me excited about science fiction again #books #SFF #ScienceFiction #TheTerraformers

@lunalein @bookstodon Finished _The Terraformers_ by @annaleen the other day and I can’t remember the last time I was so sad to leave a world… parts of it are indeed dystopian, but building toward the possibility of something better is very obviously part of its ethos. Highly recommend. #TheTerraformers

Let's start in the middle, or actually, the middle of the last third of the book. Moose, a sentient cat reporter, and their friend Scrubjay, a train temporarily in the guise of a robot beaver, go to a demo night for indie video games at a club in the robot cruising district. Like most trains, Scrubjay loves games and eagerly tries out one of the demo games, Farm Revolution. It sucks.

https://rinsemiddlebliss.com/posts/2023-04-14-unplayable-games-terraformers-review/

#blog #blogging #BookReview #TheTerraformers #narratives

Come with me on a journey where I talk about what an imaginary game inside The Terraformers told me about the kind of story it tries to tell, and why it's so hard to tell that kind of story.

https://rinsemiddlebliss.com/posts/2023-04-14-unplayable-games-terraformers-review/

#blog #blogging #BookReview #TheTerraformers

If you're looking for a normal kind of book review, the kind that says, should I read this book? Is it good? The answer is yes. It has a sentient moose that communicates by text messages. What more do you need to know?

How about a nice discussion about an imaginary game inside the book instead?

** Unplayable games and untellable tales **

A sort of review of The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz

https://rinsemiddlebliss.com/posts/2023-04-14-unplayable-games-terraformers-review/

#blog #blogging #BookReview #TheTerraformers #narratives

Here I was having a good time reading the third part of The Terraformers. Just full on heart-emoji-eyes for the newest protagonist, Scrubjay who happens to be a flying-train-person, and their cat-person friend named Moose 😍

... but then I entered chapter 40 and @annaleen decided to rip all of the hearts right out of my eyesockets 🥺

#TheTerraformers #annaleenewitz #bookrecomendation #fedibooks

Nem toda história com vacas mecânicas defensoras da Justiça, ratos-toupeiras engenheiros genéticos e alces voadores que conversam por mensagens de texto são de humor ou contos de fadas.

Resenha do livro The Terraformers, de
@annaleen, lá no Brogue:

https://cassano.com.br/2023/02/28/the-terraformers-um-futuro-sustentavel-e-com-ratos-toupeiras-falantes-mas-infelizmente-familiar/

#scifi #TheTerraformers #sustentabilidade #solarpunk #utopia #leiascifi #livros

I really liked this theme, and I liked the variety of beings with different bodies, needs, pronouns, and ways of thinking we get to meet.

Annalee Newitz, as in "The Future of Another Timeline", does "sticking it to dudebros" (of various genders) just really well, so that hopeful outlook is a delight.

But they also develop a world, its cultures and nations and ecosystem, as well as the tools necessary to get there, in an amazing way.

(4/n, n=4)

#TheTerraformers #Books2023

People are both different kinds of humans, but also other beings of similar intelligence and verbal faculties: robot drones, but also uplifted cows, moose, and others developed from animals. Others are built having their speech artificially limited: they can only talk about special topics or using a limited vocabulary.

The different ways in which that's both fraught and evil are explored in detail, as well as the workarounds there might be.

(3/n)

#TheTerraformers #Books2023

We follow both members of this nation and ones of the ERT still working for the development company through deep time, watch them tweak and monitor the environment as well as negotiate and fight with the corporation about their rights - using leaked memos and their legal consequences as well as the threat of Plate Tectonics.

A major theme are the different categories beings (both biological and not, both are manufactured anyway) are classified into.

(2/n)

#TheTerraformers #Books2023

So I finished @annaleen's "The Terraformers".

Set on the planet Sask-E, which is being developed as a Pleistocene-like vacation resort by a corporation. In order to do the titular terraforming and keep the ecosystem in check, they employ the Environmental Rescue Team (ERT). The members are technically their slaves, but still bound by their own codex and ethos, and done of them break away and found their own secret and hidden nation.

(1/n)

#TheTerraformers #Books2023

I'm about 1/3 through @annaleen 's #TheTerraformers and damn, this is good. The interlude between parts I and II has a lot of blink-and-you-could-miss-it detail, so read closely and remember what the terraformers look like.

There's also a reference to the Environmental Rescue Team's Trickster Squad and I'm wondering how much is based on trickster myths and how much on the Monkey Wrench Gang? I mean, especially with a river in contention.

The ending reminds me of "Ancillary Justice": winning by bringing the enemy to the negotiation table using clever legal thinking, starting a new nation and government, everything being messy and full of committee meeting and hope.

It's a good way to end such a story. Realistic yet hopeful.

#TheTerraformers #Books2023

"Nobody is really sure what the biobank was for, but archaeologists think it probably had some kind of ritual use."

What else?! Archaeologist never change, apparently.

😂

#TheTerraformers #Books2023

So, the "Blessed" (*puke sounds* because that's so horrible a name!). Similar to the "Focused" in "A Deepness in the Sky", who are also modified and enslaved? But were actual people once?

Still wondering about workarounds. You could do a lot with metaphor, I think. Talk about construction work or cooking without really doing so.

Weaponized metaphors, eh?

#TheTerraformers #Books2023

"Sometimes the best way to handle resources is to perceive when they aren’t resources at all. They are people. Maybe it’s hard for you to understand because everyone in La Ronge is slaved, but that’s what it means to govern. A government’s job is to recognize people, to help them make their own agreements with each other—and if you do your job well, those people become your political allies."

(Something something human resources department...)

💙

#TheTerraformers #Books2023

Also, it probably says a lot about me* that I'm constantly thinking about how to circumvent these artificial speech limits (if going rogue and hiding isn't feasible). Using a shorthand with lots of proper names, Darmok-style? Hack it and hide the fact, like Murderbot did with the Governor Module?

Test helps with the latter; that the former hasn't been more widely explored is sad.

*I have lots of respect for sneaky disobedience and an anti-authoritan streak...

#TheTerraformers #Books2023

Thinking about how "bringing into the Great Bargain", i.e. changing intelligence and verbal communication skills to human levels, is similar to "uplifting" species in David Brin's #Uplift cycle.

There, no artificial limits are implemented, but client species are de facto enslaved and often heavily modified and weaponized.

It also has themes coming to terms with this new intelligence; I've always liked how the humans /ask/ the Kiqui if they want to be uplifted.

#TheTerraformers #Books2023

Interesting reading coincidence: as in #Meru, we have people being designed instead of letting chance put them together. The alloy do it somewhat playfully, but (at least sometimes) also with a clear path for the offspring in mind. Here, it's just done to make better slaves.

That's certainly evil, but I think the designing to a goal /always/ buts a burden on the child. It's hard enough to live up to expectations; I can't imagine having to live up to specifications.

#TheTerraformers #Books2023