The Highest Frontier

by Joan Slonczewski

One of the most respected writers of hard SF, it has been more than ten years since Joan Slonczewski's last novel. Now she returns with a spectacular tour de force of the college of the future, in orbit. Jennifer Ramos Kennedy, a girl from a rich and politically influential family (a distant relation descended from the famous Kennedy clan), whose twin brother has died in an accident and left her bereft, is about to enter her freshman year at Frontera College.

Frontera is an exciting school built with media money, and a bit from tribal casinos too, dedicated to educating the best and brightest of this future world. We accompany Jenny as she proceeds through her early days at school, encountering surprises and wonders and some unpleasant problems. The Earth is altered by global warming, and an invasive alien species called ultraphytes threatens the surviving ecosystem. Jenny is being raised for great things, but while she's in school she just wants to do her homework, go on a few dates, and get by. The world that Jenny is living in is one of the most fascinating and creative in contemporary SF, and the problems Jenny faces will involve every reader, young and old.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Religion, Sci Fi Fantasy, Dystopia

448 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 1, 2011

About the author

Joan Lyn Slonczewski is an American microbiologist at Kenyon College and a science fiction writer who explores biology and space travel. Her books have twice earned the John W. Campbell award for best science fiction novel: The Highest Frontier (2012) and A Door into Ocean (1987). With John W. Foster she coauthors the textbook, Microbiology: An Evolving Science (W. W. Norton).

Reviews

[Stefan · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s been about a decade since Brain Plague, Joan Slonczewski’s last novel, came out, but I’d bet good money that more people remember the author for a novel that’s by now, unbelievably, already 25 years old — the wonderful and memorable A Door into Ocean, which won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, and which Jo Walton wrote about on Tor.com here.

Now, ten years after her last novel, Joan Slonczewski returns with The Highest Frontier, another insightful exploration of hard SF concepts with a thrilling plot and fascinating characters.

Put simply: even after a decade, this book was well worth the wait.

Read the entire review on my site Far Beyond Reality!

[Camelia Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

A GR friend says nowadays dystopian science fictions read like non-fictions. I agree, and The Highest Frontier is one of them.

The story is set 90 years in the future. At a glance, the future world looks good, technologically and biologically advanced. Humans have built sustainable habitats in the earth's lower orbit; cyborgs are every day existence; HIV has been tamed to fight diseases; genetic engineering everywhere, even in humans; human brains can be connected to virtual network through "brainstream", etc, etc... However, the advance of technology has not solved the environmental problems of our time. Carbon immersion is banned globally but it is already too late. The buried methane is unleashed. The sea rising becomes unstoppable. Cities lose to the sea. The death belt replaces Amazon rain forest. Countries fight over the ice free Antarctica. The ozone depletion makes un-treated humans blind by age of 30 and allows an alien microb-like life form descends onto the earth.

Ok, these are all the usual science fiction stuff. Nothing surprising. What give my goosebumps are the politics and the presidential election that so eerily similar to what we have been going through since 2016. The rise of Christian far-right groups, extreme religious believes hindering social and scientific development, the follies of American democracy, voting fraud and voter repression, voting against one's own interests, lies and misinformations, the blurred line between entertainment and politics, all too gut-wrenching to read.

Joan Slonczewski is a biologist. I always love the life science in her books. The Highest Frontier is no exception.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5/5 stars

Despite the minor frustrations some readers might find regarding biology speak and some confusing concepts that take time to figure out, The Highest Frontier is quite an amazing, thought provoking book about a dystopian earth and how society has evolved to fit that vision. Slonczewski’s world is vibrant and well realized. Every detail of her future vision is well thought out in riveting detail. The plot is tight and quickly flowing and Jenny is a wonderful character to follow. Many reviewers predict this book to be on the short list for many book awards, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that is the case. The Highest Frontier is a joy to read and highly recommended.

Read my full review here:

http://bookwormblues.blogspot.com/201...

[Elliott Bäck · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would give it 5 stars, but for the endless repetition of "DIRG" and "amyloid".

[Jessica Strider · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Highest Frontier by Joan Slonczewski

Pros: interesting protagonist; fascinating world-building; thought provoking concepts

Cons: fair amount of repetition, especially at the beginning; several unexplained concepts and items, including one important to the plot

Jennifer Ramos Kennedy’s culture source was her great-grandmother, President Rosa Schwartz. A few months after a family tragedy she’s setting out for Frontera, a university on an orbiting space station. She chose it both because a family friend runs the school but also because it’s free of many of the things plaguing Earth: mosquitos carrying disease, risk of flood and methane quakes, the expanding Death Belt, and the need for DIRG bodyguards. But university life isn’t quite what she expected: her teachers are all a little crazy, her roommate is weird and has an unhealthy affiliation for ultraphytes, the alien plants that crave salt and spread from their landing site in Utah to be a scourge on the world, her slanball coach wants her well rested, a hard thing when she’s volunteering for the understaffed EMS, and there’s so much reading and work to do for classes.

Meanwhile, she’s knee deep in helping the Unity party win the next Presidential election. Jenny doesn’t understand how the Centrist Firmament belief is so strong when people live in space! But things on Earth have reached the point that if change doesn’t come soon, it’ll be too late for the planet. And yet the Centrists want to expand the solar array that’s expanding the Death Belt, intending for people to leave earth in the coming Rapture, relocating to other space stations. Stations that couldn’t possibly hold even a portion of the people on Earth.

And it turns out that Frontera isn’t as free of Earthly disasters as she was led to believe.

There’s very little exposition. You’re thrown into the novel with limited explanations of what things are and how the world has changed from what we currently know. While it’s an entirely character driven novel, something I’m not generally keen on, my interest never waned. There are plot points that pull the story into a thought provoking conclusion, but for the most part the book follows Jenny through her days, questioning the world and the politics that run it.

As a scion of a political family, Jenny knows politics, making her an excellent character to follow. Through her mother and conjoined twin aunts, she’s connected to the upcoming Presidential election; she helps when one of her professor’s runs for mayor; sees the struggle with personnel and supplies as she volunteers for EMS, and more. She also takes two politics courses, one on Teddy Roosevelt and the other on Aristotle and democracy, the lectures for which come up often in the text. The book’s ending questions how politics is done, and if it’s possible to fix a broken system.

The second point of view character, Dylan Chase, is President of the university, and through him we see the difficulties of managing his staff and securing sufficient financing. We also see him dealing with student problems: alcoholism, printer disease hacks, assault, and addiction.

The world-building is top notch: Spanish colloquialisms, tax playing at casinos, unique fashion trends, amyloid (sewage processed by hab shell microbes that’s used to ‘print’ everything from food to clothing to the shelters everyone lives in), the anthrax cables that transport ships between Frontera and Earth, Toynet, Kessler debris, I could go on. The sport of slanball is pretty cool too.

The supporting cast is wide and varied, though it focuses on Jenny’s family, a few professors, close students (including the players of her slanball team) and some of Dylan’s contacts (for his POV scenes). Jenny’s experiences at the school are also varied, from class work to parties to helping build houses for colonists.

The first few chapters contain a fair amount of repetition, especially with regards to Jenny’s family. Which makes it all the more strange that other concepts and terms are left unexplained. You figure out what DIRGs are pretty quick, but I don’t remember the acronym being explained. Similarly, Jenny notices an object on one of her teacher’s desks that affects the plot. She brings it up to another character, implying she knows the relevance of the object, but it’s not until the end of the book that as a reader I figured out what the object was and what it meant.

If you like a lot of character development and world-building in your science fiction, this is a highly entertaining, and sometimes thought provoking, read.

[Wealhtheow · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jenny Ramos Kennedy is the heir to two presidential families and a great deal of wealth. After her charming and extroverted twin dies, Jenny feels overwhelmed by the expectations of the world. Seeking to escape them, and to flee her fears of the increasingly frequent natural disasters on Earth, Jenny decides to go to college on a spacehub. There, her botany experiments, social life, and the upcoming elections all create a situation in which Jenny may either take the easy path of non-resistance, or agitate to change the world around her.

I liked the characters, but I thought there were too many view-point characters, with too little attention paid to each. I had the same problem with the plots and the future tech; there were just too many, all jostling for space. Slonczewski is fantastic at creating plausible but currently-fictitious creatures and technology, but I wish there had been better explanations of some of the tech (after numerous arguments between characters about what to do with the solarplates, someone finally explained what they were 200 pages in! Without knowing what they were, all those instances of discussion were meaningless to me.) and fewer biology lessons (I already know the differences between RNA and DNA, but even if I hadn't, that knowledge wasn't pertinent to the story). This felt a bit like a Connie Willis story, actually; I wish it had been a little more focused. My one other concern is that there are whole lines of dialog exclusively in Spanish, with no translation or guide in the back of the book.

All in all, though, this book features fascinating concepts with a likable but unique main character.

Trigger warning: a character is probably raped but doesn't remember it; no details are provided, one character talks about it in a victim-blaming way but the narrative does not support him, and it is not a major part of the book.

[Joshua Zucker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good fun, with some good drama and a whole bunch of subplots.

Something about it felt a little odd, like I was walking on the surface of something much deeper, but the characters weren't giving me glimpses into what was going on. Maybe I should say that the characters didn't feel as real as they should; despite the protagonist's point of view, it often felt like it was the narration of a plot and she never really FELT things, only DID things.

Still, a somewhat updated, rather Heinlein-esque story, reminding me of some of his young-adult writing.

[Liz Henry · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book and think it's hilarious. No one mentions the humor! Well, as far as a book about facing disasters can be funny, it is. I also love that so many of the characters end up revealing different disabilities -- asking for and getting accommodations. There are super clear echoes of Hurricane Katrina here so if you are interested in people's responses to disaster (both long-unfolding climate disasters and short term crisis) you will get a good hard look at disabled university students in space figuring out how to work together.

[Vicki · Rating 1 out of 5]

I could not get into this book, so I will not be finishing it. I found it very off putting by all it's weird scientific technologies. Oh, well, we can't love them all.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was between 3 and 4 stars for me. I liked it enough that I will read more of the author's books, but didn't love it--or did I? Right after this, I read a YA book about young people of the same age, and The Highest Frontier is ridiculously better written.

Our heroine, Jenny, is the scion of politically-prominent families who have contributed several American presidents. She has relatives in the current presidential race on both sides, and that race is a major plot element. There is a definite difference in the two parties, Unity and Centrist. The Centrists, and a high percentage of Americans, believe in kind of crazy Christian ideas, some (like the Rapture) similar to real-life beliefs and one major one about the Firmament--they believe that the stars are pasted on something solid out there. And this is a culture with space travel, all the way out to Jupiter. The Unity party is more concerned with the environment; Earth is suffering from global warming, an alien kind-of-mobile-weed that can be deadly, and various other crises. But Unity has to make a lot of compromises to have a chance at winning the election.

The book is set at a college in a space habitat orbiting the Earth, owned by Ohio. The college shares the hab with colonists, most of whom are fundamentalist Christian types, but not unfriendly towards the students.

The story is mostly from Jenny's viewpoint (there's also the viewpoint of the head of the college, who is a relative of hers). She comes up to the college for her freshman year. Her big interests are slanball, a popular sport where players move the ball with their minds, and plants. She makes a new best friend, who turns out to be there because she's a hacker and is banned from earth, has a roommate who's very odd, and finds a boyfriend who is unfortunately not gene-engineered like her. Lots of adventures and cool technology - the Toynet is a bunch of steps up in virtual reality from where we are now, and anthrax and amyloid are used to fabricate/print out all kinds of things).

I was a bit put off by all the religion, but it was intrinsic to the story. All in all, a fun book.

[Ove · Rating 5 out of 5]

What If You Believe Your Roommate Is An Alien?

This is a story about a young girl going to college so it includes teenage love, dealings with teachers and unruly fraternity boys, the whole coming of age thing. But that is the simple part what if you believe your roommate is an alien? Or that your professor is trying to brainwash you? Or that you fear the space station will be flooded? Glad to know you are not crazy?

Joan Slonczewski is new to me so I did not have any preconceptions beyond the blurb which made me think of a strong girl going to college on a space station possible with some aliens involved.

Jenny comes across a sweet easy-to-like main character. She is a spawn of the Ramos Kennedy family which are deep into the politics of the time, on both sides. The political part felt a bit too true and reflects things easy to imagine of our own time. I am talking from the far north of Scandinavia here.

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Yes there are small mini-elephants in Jenny’s room now and then but I am talking about the aliens. Earth is to a large part devastated by ecological calamities but on top of that it is being infested by alien RNA based life, mostly as a thick layer over the Great Lakes but they are changing fast much like viruses. The Ultraphytes or Ultras are important to the story and the whole series. Jenny’s parallel between smallpox decimating the Indians even before they saw a white man and the Ultra was fascinating and a bit scary.

I like reading about Jenny dealing with it all and doing ordinary teenage things too. The ordinary things make the futuristic world more tangible. And there lots of fascinating futuristic concept to take in. They have printers that can print out almost anything including real viruses. Hacks are frequently life-threatening and outbreaks of new tailor-made diseases are common. People don’t pay taxes any more they are Taxplayers and gamble at a casino instead and the surplus fund the government. Some of the names of technologies and gadgets feel a bit juvenile like Toynet and calling bears for teddies. Teenagers of today would never use that kind of vocabulary but many things might change in a hundred years.

Jenny also does sports. She plays Slanball the game of mind force (See Slan a novel by A E Van Vogt about telepaths). It is a bit like that game in Harry Potter.

Joan is a microbiologist with teaching experience and that comes across in her writing. I particularly liked the way she used virtual worlds for teaching and anthrax for building the space elevator. It has been a pleasure to read this new-to-me author. Her last novel came out more than ten years ago and this is the first novel in the Frontera Cycle so I hope it doesn’t take another ten years to write the next one because I want to read it and read it soon. The story has a young adult feel to it but worked well for me at my age. It is also stand alone if that is what you prefer.

Joan told me that the Frontera Cycle will continue with Jenny. She visits Cuba, and discovers that ultraphytes have evolved to grow in the ocean–but what are they up to? Meanwhile, back at Frontera for her sophomore year, the college faces an uncertain future because the casino is losing money–and proposes an alarming solution.

The Highest Frontier get my strong recommendation.

[Susie Munro · Rating 2 out of 5]

Content note: discussion of sexual assault.

Really conflicted about this one. I enjoy hard scifi, and it can be pretty difficult to access novels both written by women and featuring a female protagonists and is written by a woman. There are lots of very good things about this novel: a neat and well thought out future socio-political environment, a young woman protagonist who you know just enough about to sympathise with, pretty decent portrayals of neuroatypical and diverse characters and some nifty existing and imagined science. Dudebros are treated with the disdain the so richly deserve and the romance sub plot is very minor and not a trigger for any major character development.

I'm also a sucker for a multipurpose motif and the frontiers here (an orbital college, Jenny's moving away from home to said college, overcoming the loss of her brother and her own limitations, first contact and the political battle to fund space exploration) are many and varied. The novel functions well as a critique of academia, of fundamentalism (religious and otherwise) and the vagaries of formal politics and post-modern capitalist economics. I liked the agency allowed to Jenny as she interacted with the characters around her - none of them really drove her development, it was hers to own.

So why isn't a four star rating? One reason and one reason only. Jenny and a classmate are sexually assaulted at a frat party. While the actual assault isn't discussed in detail, and it is possible it's an attempted rather than completed assault, you do get Jenny's perspective of the lead up (very little signposting of whats about to happen) and confused amnesia following.Just enough detail to be triggering. Its acknowledged that the victimisation of young women is a common practice at that particular fraternity but the consequences are limited to suspension from a sporting team (and that only after pressure from parents)... And then the assault disappears from the plot and is never mentioned again. If there was supposed to be a point in there about the complicity of campus leadership in campus sexual assaults and the tendency for complaints to swept under the rug so they don't jeopardise funding and/or reputation, it needed to be made much more clearly. As it is, it seems tacked on as an afterthought and has no real impact on the plot, subplots or Jenny as a character. Rape as a plot device is guaranteed to set me to ranting, but it isn't even that here, its completely extraneous to every.other.thing.that.happens. Given the otherwise strong representation of women, some fairly progressive economic and environmental politics and the notable diversity of characters its inclusion in completely inexplicable.

While the repetition of the tech-y neologisms was a bit strange and the novel done without fewer sub plots (its a pretty dense book at times) I found it engaging enough that I would have liked to rate it more highly.But badly handled sexual assaults are too intensely problematic to ignore.

[Catherine Siemann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Academics in literature departments write novels about academics, usually satirical. Academics in science departments possibly write hard science fiction. Slonczewski, chair of the biology department at Kenyon College, has written something that's both, and political satire besides.

As far as plot and characterization goes, it's decent but not exceptional. However, the narrative successfully plays with multiple strands of speculation, ranging from genetic engineering and 3D printing to climate change and alternative energy, the impact of the Internet on our everyday lives and the unwillingness of politicians to take an actual stand on anything, religion in its various aspects (in a future with space stations, gene spliced babies and a conjoined-twin presidential candidate, there's also been a resurgence of fundamentalist heliocentrism, while at the same time one of the book's most positive characters is a gay Catholic/Episcopal priest who's married to the college president).

The book's protagonist, Jennifer Ramos Kennedy, is good at almost everything, but, as the scion of a privileged political family, she's been genetically engineered to be that way. There's a potentially star-crossed relationship with a naturally-born scholarship student, but that is only one strand of the narrative, not its center. Politics, as well as the protagonist's coming of age, are more central. The most troubling thing about the book is a campus rape which is swept under the carpet a bit too easily -- the character suffers but moves on fairly quickly, and the reader is denied any closure, as the perpetrators are expelled rather than brought to trial. It would have been better to have left that out, if it wasn't going to be given its due. There were also some scientific references I couldn't puzzle out, like the anthrax strands which were used to transport people and property from Earth to the Frontera space station and back, or the medical uses of HIV. There was a lot more extrapolation, however, that the nonspecialist reader could follow quite easily.

I heard Slonczewski speak at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (2015), where she was one of the guests of honor, and she was witty and knowledgeable. Other reviewers have suggested this is one of her weaker books; if that's true, I quite look forward to her best.

[Crystal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I made it about halfway through this book. I was looking for some new SF to try, which is unusual for me, and so I sifted through my "to read" shelf for something that looked a little different. This one certainly fits the bill. After reading reviews on Amazon and elsewhere, I was aware that many found the book lacking in plot but well written, and for me I usually prefer the latter over the former. Unfortunately, the complete lack of plot got on my nerves and I decided to put down the book when I found it too annoying to slog through the technical bits for no apparent reward. I will say this - the SF elements here are truly inventive and integrated holistically into the setting. If a neat setting and innovative technology concepts were all I needed to get through a book, this one has them in spades. The characters fell flat, however. I had no interest in Jenny or any of the other named characters. Except for her best friend in college, Anouk, and her transparently alien roommate, Mary, they all seemed relatively interchangeable. I also found it strange that no actual plot showed up because there were plenty of elements thrown in for conflict, such as Jenny's sadly departed twin brother, the alien invasion by the plantlike Ultraphytes, and Jenny's participation in the world's newest sport, slanball. None of it really felt like it was driving any of the events of the book, however, which is why I feel comfortable saying that the plot was lacking.

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're in the mood for science fiction jam-packed with speculation, ideas, and a lively and often satirical wit, I recommend Joan Slonczewski’s John W. Campbell Award winner The Highest Frontier, which Tor brought out in 2011. You get a space elevator, an alien invasion that has made parts of Earth nearly uninhabitable, a space habitat powered by microbes, a realistically disorienting and all-pervasive Internet-like system (Toynet), a troubled and intelligent protagonist (Jennifer Kennedy Ramos, a genetically-engineered descendant of the celebrated American Kennedys), a political campaign for the U.S. Presidency, and more, including the threat of disaster for both the Earth and the habitat that houses Frontera, the college Jenny attends. Slonczewski, a research biologist who is also a professor at Kenyon College, thrusts you headfirst into this future world but has the narrative strength to make you stay there long enough to find your bearings. (This review also appears in slightly different form in my recent post at Ambling Along the Aqueduct, the blog of Aqueduct Press.)

[kvon · Rating 4 out of 5]

College in space. Lots of floated ideas about biology, politics, and history. Commentary on current issues--instead of creationists, fundamentalists focus on the biblical idea of the Firmament and the
iconology of Noah's Ark saving the select and holy. And instead of inevitable climate change is a spreading adapatable alien organism. The internet (toynet) is more pervasive, and private virtual worlds (think second life) are more alluring. Jenny is a shy scion of a politically major family (think Kennedys) who wants to escape for a while from constant surveillance and adjust to her twin's recent death. She learns how better to manage her skill sets in college, as well as the usual perils of college life--crazy roommate, reckless friends, first love, and predators. Some of the endpieces were telegraphed early on, and it was frustrating waiting for the characters to catch up. I liked the characters and worried what would happen to them. Lots of details hidden in the background of the worldbuilding.

[Alexa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a perfect read for me. Slonczewski throws you right into her built world with no interpretation at all; just the intellectual challenge I adore. (Oh how I hate long-winded patronizing exposition!) It is a multi-layered satire of politics, academia, and environmental devastation. Her ability to poke fun at issues that deeply concern her amazes me. What truly caught my attention though is her exploration of gender roles. This is a story about a very shy young woman who prefers to work in the background. The questions raised are: is this a failure – a handicap that one should work to overcome, is it a respectable choice – just one of many ways to accomplish things in the world, or is it intrinsically part of some women’s femininity?

[Tamlyn · Rating 1 out of 5]

From the dust-cover, I thought this might be my kind of book. I like futuristic novels and novels about colleges so this should have been my cup of tea. But I could only read about 10 pages and got so lost in all the verbiage and "newness" of the world the character lived in that I lost interest. Back to the library!

[Jack Deighton · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is not much Science Fiction that deals directly with politics. It’s possibly too contentious a subject. In The Highest Frontier, though, Slonczewski extrapolates from the US situation of the 2000s to present a scenario where a fundamentalist group known as Centrists states baldly that the Sun (and the Firmament) go round the Earth and whose adherents form the core of one of the two main political parties. There has been a sort of balance between those two parties lasting many elections - a statistical tie the last five times - but the results have been accepted, albeit with riots following the count. (Riots apart that is not arguably as grim as things have turned out in the real world where US election results are questioned simply because one side believes that no-one could possibly have voted for the other or else that their opponents’ votes have been inflated nefariously and therefore the elections were fraudulent. No one in Slonczewski’s scenario is claiming election fraud.) A man known as the Creep, due to a medical intervention after an accident leaving only his head and hands as original to him: those hands have a tendency to move away from his body, has been Vice-President for the last several terms. Candidates chose someone else as running-mate but they always got dropped as liabilities just before the vote. Direct taxation seems to have been relinquished - what a USian notion – instead people known as taxplayers have levies placed on their gaming activities.

This is not to say that politics is all that the book concerns itself with, even if Cuba is the fifty-second state of the Union. Global warming has led to Dead zones and migration northwards in the US, a type of plant known as ultraphyte (it ‘feeds’ on uv light) threatens to engulf Earth’s habitat niches and is a further source of political contention.

Jenny Ramos Kennedy is a child from a political family with ancestors and living relatives on both sides of the political fence who have been Presidents. She has been sent to a college on a space habitat known as Frontera to complete her education. Her twin Jordi with whom she was supposed to attend Frontera recently died in an accident and she has been assigned a companĕra roommate called Mary, who is strange. Access to off-world is via a space elevator built from anthrax. Biological engineering is advanced enough to render the material both strong and unharmful. On Frontera, amyloid and carboxyplast are the main structural materials. Resources seem not to be much of a problem at least for the rich. Jenny prints her clothes everyday. Mini versions of Earth creatures provide a simulation of everyday fauna. A political course for some reason leans heavily on Theodore Roosevelt and presumably in his memory the bears on Frontera resemble the toy ones named after him. A version of the internet called Toynet exists. It connects to someone’s personal toybox, is accessed by brainstreaming and usually manifests as an intrusive news service fronted by a reporter called Clive. Frontera’s power source can occasionally be cut off by orbiting debris but does engender the rather pleasing portmanteau word solarray.

There is a ton of such explanation at the beginning of the novel, more often than not clunkily introduced. It slackens off somewhat later on but never entirely disappears.

Jenny’s life is complicated by her family’s political connections. She also is an adept at a game called slanball, a sort of cross between hockey and quidditch only with no magic. The act of slanning instead involves brainstreaming. Her coach is of the strict nothing-must-interfere-with-training type with whom Jenny’s volunteering as a medical first responder and her occasional lack of sleep do not go down well. The game seems to be forgotten about in the latter half of the book, though. Jenny also involves herself with local politics. Voting in these elections includes a ridiculous stipulation that people vote in person, handwriting their choice into the ballot book using a uranium based ink.

Early on in her studies Jenny is told that ultraphyte genes have been found in pileworms. Her tutor leads her into research on plants which can “laugh” due to the introduction of neurons. These are developed into Arabidopsis sapiens and Mary instigates experiments with negative and then reverse controls, which become wisdom plants. Here someone mentions a Greek tag Sophia philai paromen, wisdom is the highest frontier, from which Slonczewski presumably took her title. The plants’ placement onto the stage of a Presidential debate leads to an unusual exchange between the candidates.

Jenny’s attraction to fellow student Tom is par for the course for a tale of an older adolescent – they have the usual misunderstandings and some awkwardness as regards their relative social status - but Slonzcewski’s treatment of such young love and sex is rather coy, in the latter case to the point of blink and you might miss it.

In this future more or less everyone is in effect their own political commentator/extrapolator - a nod to an SF forerunner is provided by a poster of the fictional political predictor Hari Seldon on a classroom wall.

However, the conclusion by some of Slonczewski’s characters that voting is no longer of any utility is a dangerous concept.

[Cicely · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part hilarious tongue-in-cheek political/academic satire, part contemplation of gender roles, part touching coming-of-age story, all set in the distant future with a delightful plot and characters. Delicious! (And it even has a riff on the dangers of early weaning!)

[Stephanie Foust · Rating 4 out of 5]

A coming-of -age novel set in the 22nd century but it is so much more.The mayoral & presidential races parody current politics but this book foretells a future with great ecological destruction amid great scientific discoveries.Very highly recommended.

[Sarah S · Rating 3 out of 5]

Presents some interesting ideas about politics and science, but the writing is shaky enough that I almost put the book down after 40 pages.

[Peter Goodman · Rating 3 out of 5]

“The Highest Frontier,” by Joan Slonczewski (Tor, 2011). Another book written by a scientist which takes the science beyond where I’d like to go. In this case, Slonczewski is chair of biology at Kenyon College, and the center of the book is about DNA, RNA, cellular biology and evolution. It’s set in a not-too-distant future where human civilization on earth is slowly being swallowed by global warming (more and more of the planet is underwater), but AI seems to be advancing exponentially. Everyone apparently has either computers implanted in their brains or have developed telepathy: they open windows in their minds to see and communicate with dozens of people at once; they can send “brainkisses” to one another. The US is divided into two main parties: Centrists, who among other things believe in a biblically literal world in which, despite space travel, the earth is still the center of the universe and the stars are part of a God-created Firmament; and Unity, which wants to expand to the planets, accept evolution and scientific evidence, and is generally forward looking. The electorate is split evenly between them, and elections are usually decided by fractions of a point. (There is a lot about polling and wondering whether the elections are real at all.) There are almost-self-supporting space colonies called spacehabs, one of which contains Frontera College, which our heroine Jennifer Ramos Kennedy is about to enter as a freshman. She comes from a famous, powerful political family (Kennedy, get it?). There is a wild card: the ultras, extraterrestrial creatures that emit cyanide and seem to be slowly spreading through the world. As you can tell, this is a very imaginative, complicated world, and I don’t feel like going through the plot, other than to say that I was not drawn very deeply into it, or the characters. This is another novel where there is a deeply existential threat---the ultras could wipe out all humanity---but no one seems to be all that worried about it. And all the talk about RNA and DNA etc interested me less and less.

http://highestfrontier.com/

[Bob · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a disappointing read. I read two of her previous novels some time ago and enjoyed them so it seemed reasonable that I would likely enjoy this one as well. However, after I read nearly half the book, I had to admit that this one just didn’t hold my attention. I kept waiting for a strong plot line to kick in to motivate me but, as of halfway, it didn’t happen. I did enjoy her continued use of biologically built buildings and that she expanded this to computer printing of pretty much anything of use but this wasn’t enough for me. I didn’t engage enough with the characters and kept seeking a plot hook to keep me in. But, alas, I have now given up and moved on.

[Unwisely · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am a sucker for a pull-quote about Heinlein, but I got less far in this book than the last one I failed out on (p. 264, ca ~60%). (I was going to make a joke comparing this to one of the terrible Heinleins, but I finished all of those.)

The set up could've been interesting but I didn't really care about any of the characters or the situation and bleh.

There was one pretty good jab about the protagonist (freshman in college) who had never gotten a grade below an A+++ before, but, man, couldn't make myself get any farther. And eventually it had to go back to the library.

[Talia · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was a disappointing read. Still interesting, but a tonal mismatch with the plot for almost the entire book. The characters were a bit obnoxious and flat, which felt like an author who was to disconnected from the characters she was writing. And the characters, despite being set further in the future, felt like a barely-disguised retread of older-generations' views on my own generation. Again, disappointing.

[Silyara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely well written, thoughtful, and complex. It's a diverse and living world populated with flawed three dimensional characters. Science fiction that feels real like our world, rich in the details that make life life, where some have changed and look unfamiliar but feel familiar. It doesn't pull punches with the commentary its themes make toward everyone and all the choices we make.

[Whitney · Rating 1 out of 5]

I can see the appeal, but for me, this book just screamed, "trying too hard."

The sentence structure/dialogue/ideas were all fine, and seemed put together well, but this was a case of so much info dump without explaining, that it grew exhausting trying to read. I liked the idea, which makes this a letdown, since I couldn't get past the first fourth.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kind of a coming of age/ going away to school story. Jenny is the heir to one of America's most famous political families but she wants to study biology. She starts college at the world's first university in space and then has to navigate a bunch of weird events while keeping up with classes, playing a sport, and dealing with new friends. There's also an alien terrorist and a flood.

[liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just like every Slonczewski I’ve read so far, this was a very odd, compelling, and thought-provoking read. Her environmental angles are always both sharp and nuanced. Plenty of interesting ideas about the future without tedious Now I Am Worldbuilding passages. Highly recommend if the summary sounds good to you.