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  • Blue Remembered Earth. Alastair Reynolds.

    From Titus G@21:1/5 to All on Wed Sep 4 17:56:08 2024
    Blue Remembered Earth. Alastair Reynolds. 2012

    Blue Remembered Earth is book one of the three part (so far), series
    Poseidon's Children. (Fantastic Fiction.)
    Recently I have been reading mainly general fiction with crime and some mediocre Fantasy so it was a treat to read of such a brilliant future so
    full of technical and social ideas ideas. I am surprised it has not been mentioned here?
    I just finished it today and am gobsmacked, not knowing where to begin,
    the brilliant plot, the diverse characters' interests and motivations, conflicts personal and political, the Evolvarium in the unrestricted
    area of Mars, the colour of quarks (BRG), the physical diversity of
    human shape, the neural augmentation that everyone has implanted
    eliminating all violence and used automatically for all communications
    (except talking), and more so I won't, (begin).
    Every one of the 800+ pages was enjoyable, a favourite this year.
    It appears that all three are standalone with number two, On the Steel
    Breeze, 2013, set a thousand years after Blue Remembered Earth.
    .

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  • From Titus G@21:1/5 to Tony Nance on Fri Sep 6 15:52:42 2024
    On 5/09/24 01:14, Tony Nance wrote:
    On 9/4/24 1:56 AM, Titus G wrote:
    Blue Remembered Earth. Alastair Reynolds. 2012
    snip

    I am so glad you liked this. I read this back in May, and didn't enjoy
    it as much as you did. The setting and science were great. My main
    problems were with the characters, but since the next one seems to share
    very few characters (if any) with this one, I plan to give it a try.

    I am guessing the characters were too shallow for you or maybe you did
    not like Geoffrey, the simple elephant man protagonist? The cousins were unusual but while the plot was unravelling, I was more interested in the setting and 'science'. (The fantasy book read before this, The House in
    the Cerulean Sea, was 95% relationships so perhaps I was glad to escape
    that atmosphere.)

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  • From Titus G@21:1/5 to Tony Nance on Sat Sep 7 15:26:04 2024
    On 7/09/24 09:19, Tony Nance wrote:
    On 9/5/24 11:52 PM, Titus G wrote:
    On 5/09/24 01:14, Tony Nance wrote:
    On 9/4/24 1:56 AM, Titus G wrote:
    Blue Remembered Earth. Alastair Reynolds. 2012
    snip

    I am so glad you liked this. I read this back in May, and didn't enjoy
    it as much as you did. The setting and science were great. My main
    problems were with the characters, but since the next one seems to share >>> very few characters (if any) with this one, I plan to give it a try.

    I am guessing the characters were too shallow for you or maybe you did
    not like Geoffrey, the simple elephant man protagonist? The cousins were
    unusual

    You have indeed guessed correctly - shallow as a contact lens case. I
    think, except for Geoffrey, every major character (and many minor
    characters) were some combination of self-absorbed, self-righteous, impulsive, unsympathetic, True Believer jerks.

    Geoffrey was fine, though he tends to accept/agree that every negative
    thing in the universe is his fault.


    As most of the characters were powerful being politicians or highly
    ranked in their organisations or ridiculously wealthy, they were all
    used to getting their own way. The cousins were identical in their
    thoughts. I think I pitied Geoffrey which allowed me to feel superior to
    him.
    Another aspect I liked was the suspense, the danger, the threats with
    almost no violence and no super heroes running marathons in bare feet
    with broken legs.

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