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Macrolife #1
Macrolife
Subtitled A Mobile Utopia, this pioneering novel about the meaning of space habitats for human history, presents spacefaring as no work did in its time, and since. A Utopian novel like no other, presenting a dynamic utopian civilization that transcends the failures of our history.
Epic in scope, Macrolife opens in the year 2021. The Bulero family owns one of Earth's richest corporations. As the Buleros gather for a reunion at the family mansion, an industrial accident plunges the corporation into a crisis, which eventually brings the world around them to the brink of disaster. Vilified, the Buleros flee to a space colony where young Richard Bulero gradually realizes that the only hope for humanity lies in macrolife - mobile, self-reproducing space habitats.
A millennium later, these mobile communities have left our sunspace and multiplied. Conflicts with natural planets arise. John Bulero, a cloned descendant of the twenty-first century Bulero clan, falls in love with a woman from a natural world and experiences the harshness of her way of life. He rediscovers his roots when his mobile returns to the solar system, and a tense confrontation of three civilizations takes place.
One hundred billion years later, macrolife, now as numerous as the stars, faces the impending death of nature. Regaining his individuality by falling away from a highly evolved macrolife, a strangely changed John Bulero struggles to see beyond a collapse of the universe into a giant black hole.
Epic in scope, Macrolife opens in the year 2021. The Bulero family owns one of Earth's richest corporations. As the Buleros gather for a reunion at the family mansion, an industrial accident plunges the corporation into a crisis, which eventually brings the world around them to the brink of disaster. Vilified, the Buleros flee to a space colony where young Richard Bulero gradually realizes that the only hope for humanity lies in macrolife - mobile, self-reproducing space habitats.
A millennium later, these mobile communities have left our sunspace and multiplied. Conflicts with natural planets arise. John Bulero, a cloned descendant of the twenty-first century Bulero clan, falls in love with a woman from a natural world and experiences the harshness of her way of life. He rediscovers his roots when his mobile returns to the solar system, and a tense confrontation of three civilizations takes place.
One hundred billion years later, macrolife, now as numerous as the stars, faces the impending death of nature. Regaining his individuality by falling away from a highly evolved macrolife, a strangely changed John Bulero struggles to see beyond a collapse of the universe into a giant black hole.
329 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1979
70 people are currently reading
484 people want to read
About the author
George Zebrowski
139 books24 followersGeorge Zebrowski was an American science fiction writer and editor who wrote and edited a number of books, and was a former editor of The Bulletin of the Science Fiction Writers of America. He lived with author Pamela Sargent, with whom he co-wrote a number of novels, including Star Trek novels.
Zebrowski won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 1999 for his novel Brute Orbits. Three of his short stories, "Heathen God," "The Eichmann Variations," and "Wound the Wind," were nominated for the Nebula Award, and "The Idea Trap" was nominated for the Theodore Sturgeon Award.
Zebrowski won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 1999 for his novel Brute Orbits. Three of his short stories, "Heathen God," "The Eichmann Variations," and "Wound the Wind," were nominated for the Nebula Award, and "The Idea Trap" was nominated for the Theodore Sturgeon Award.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
April 1, 2012
A shamefully underknown philosophical SF novel, sporting a bold, scintillating premise that will stimulate, expand, and ultimately BLOW your mind.
George Zebrowski, underheralded expander of horizons, flexed his ambition and penned a "reach for it," tour de force story, fashioned around a straightforward, but fascinating idea, described as follows on the Novel's opening page:
PLOT SUMMARY
The novel is cut into 3 segments, the first commencing in 2021, then jumping to the year 3000, and finally extending into some unfathomable distant future to witness the end of the universe.
Beginning in 2021, Zebrowski draws a picture of a "sun space" economy, in which the Moon, Mars and Ganymede have been colonized, and a 10 mile X 5 mile hollowed out asteroid, Asterdome, roams the inner solar system conducting scientific research. This latter will eventually become the first Macrolife. While this kind of near future is familiar territory for SF fans, Zebrowski does a good job grounding this "soon to be" with a genuineness that provides firm, steady foundation for the huge leaps to come.
This first section is designed to introduce us to a familiar world that we can easily relate to...a world that is soon ripped away from us in the wake of a well constructed catastrophe. The tragedy, caused by (nope, no spoilers here), devastates the planet, leading to an end to Earth as the center of humanity's future. In the wake if this apocalypse, the self-sufficient and mobile Asterdome becomes the future of the human race.
Good politics, good technology, some interesting family dynamics. A good opening section.
Flash to the year 3000, where macrolife (i.e., mobile, independent, self sustaining, self-replicating colonies) have become the dominant form of human development and expansion. In this section, we observe one such colony as it (1) prepares to give "birth" to a new macrolife, (2) encounters a "dirt-side" civilization of humanity and (3) wrestles with the deep divide that has grown between macroworlders and dirtworlders in physical, psychological, and intellectual development, as well as prejudices, biases and cultural conceits that continue to exist.
There is a lot of "wow" in this section, and Zebrowski's scientific cred is on full display here as he throws out big ideas without drowning the reader in an overabundance of technobabble.
Finally, we are time-warped to a future so distant as to be completely unrecognizable, and a version of humanity that is equally estranged from our present notions of ourselves. I don't want to go into details, but do want to remind you of the potential for serious mind tumefaction and psyche bulging.
Best to have a cold compress handy while reading this final section.
THOUGHTS:
Overall, amazed that this novel is not held in higher esteem as one of the more unique, ambitious novels of the period. When Zebrowski is writing filler and dialogue, he is competent, if not memorable. I would call these parts serviceable, but not worthy of major applause.
However, when he is getting his science on and addressing the meatiest parts of his story, both in terms of technology and in the psychological evolution of humanity, Zebrowski is mesmerizing. He calls to mind big, mold-breaking thinkers like Olaf Stapledon, A.E. van Vogt and H.G. Wells, and in some ways outstrips even their most intrepid extrapolations.
This is a story that should be read. If you haven't read Zebrowski before, you should really give him a try. Macro story, macro ideas, macro awesome.
4.0 to 4.5 stars. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
George Zebrowski, underheralded expander of horizons, flexed his ambition and penned a "reach for it," tour de force story, fashioned around a straightforward, but fascinating idea, described as follows on the Novel's opening page:
This concept of a new life form which I call Macro Life and Isaac Asimov calls "multi-organismic life" serves as a convenient shorthand whereby the whole collection of social, political, and biological problems facing the future space colonist may be represented with two-word symbols. It also communicates quickly an appreciation for the similar problems which are rapidly descending on the whole human race. Macro Life can be defined as "life squared per cell." Taking man as representative of multicelled life we can say that man is the mean proportional between Macro Life and the cell, or Macro Life is to man as man is the cell. Macro Life is a new life form of gigantic size which has for its cells, individual human beings, plants, animals, and machines.Nothing less than the next (and final) evolution of humanity into its most perfect, and almost unimaginable composition. Yeppers, this is big stage science fiction at its most audacious, in the mold of Stapledon, Wells and van Vogt. I might as well warn you now...brain swell from idea overload is a distinct possibility.
. . . society can be said to be pregnant with a mutant creature which will be at the same time an extraterrestrial colony of human beings and a new large scale life form.
PLOT SUMMARY
The novel is cut into 3 segments, the first commencing in 2021, then jumping to the year 3000, and finally extending into some unfathomable distant future to witness the end of the universe.
Beginning in 2021, Zebrowski draws a picture of a "sun space" economy, in which the Moon, Mars and Ganymede have been colonized, and a 10 mile X 5 mile hollowed out asteroid, Asterdome, roams the inner solar system conducting scientific research. This latter will eventually become the first Macrolife. While this kind of near future is familiar territory for SF fans, Zebrowski does a good job grounding this "soon to be" with a genuineness that provides firm, steady foundation for the huge leaps to come.
This first section is designed to introduce us to a familiar world that we can easily relate to...a world that is soon ripped away from us in the wake of a well constructed catastrophe. The tragedy, caused by (nope, no spoilers here), devastates the planet, leading to an end to Earth as the center of humanity's future. In the wake if this apocalypse, the self-sufficient and mobile Asterdome becomes the future of the human race.
Good politics, good technology, some interesting family dynamics. A good opening section.
Flash to the year 3000, where macrolife (i.e., mobile, independent, self sustaining, self-replicating colonies) have become the dominant form of human development and expansion. In this section, we observe one such colony as it (1) prepares to give "birth" to a new macrolife, (2) encounters a "dirt-side" civilization of humanity and (3) wrestles with the deep divide that has grown between macroworlders and dirtworlders in physical, psychological, and intellectual development, as well as prejudices, biases and cultural conceits that continue to exist.
There is a lot of "wow" in this section, and Zebrowski's scientific cred is on full display here as he throws out big ideas without drowning the reader in an overabundance of technobabble.
Finally, we are time-warped to a future so distant as to be completely unrecognizable, and a version of humanity that is equally estranged from our present notions of ourselves. I don't want to go into details, but do want to remind you of the potential for serious mind tumefaction and psyche bulging.
Best to have a cold compress handy while reading this final section.
THOUGHTS:
Overall, amazed that this novel is not held in higher esteem as one of the more unique, ambitious novels of the period. When Zebrowski is writing filler and dialogue, he is competent, if not memorable. I would call these parts serviceable, but not worthy of major applause.
However, when he is getting his science on and addressing the meatiest parts of his story, both in terms of technology and in the psychological evolution of humanity, Zebrowski is mesmerizing. He calls to mind big, mold-breaking thinkers like Olaf Stapledon, A.E. van Vogt and H.G. Wells, and in some ways outstrips even their most intrepid extrapolations.
This is a story that should be read. If you haven't read Zebrowski before, you should really give him a try. Macro story, macro ideas, macro awesome.
4.0 to 4.5 stars. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
November 20, 2025
Check out my full, spoiler light, video review HERE.
Zebrowski takes the concept of Macrolife, which was coined by scientist Dandridge Cole, and uses it in the science fiction/speculative fiction story.
The novel is broken up in 3 parts. In the 1st part we are introduced to a near future that has had some technological advances that allow for exponential human growth throughout the solar system. This first part is mainly focused on the family who is responsible for this groundbreaking material. When everything goes south, groups of humans end up leaving the solar system to start a new form of humanity.
Part 2 is 1000 years in the future as remnants of humanity meet up on a distant planet. One group has been successfully traveling the galaxy as a Macrolife entity. The other group has fallen on hard times and have reverted back to a primitive society on a strange world. This is the longest and mostly philosophical section of the book.
Part 3 takes place in a very distant future where entropy is winding down the universe. One of our characters wakes up after being part of a collective intelligence for most of his existence. Someone/something pulls him from this collective and gives him a sense of individuality once again. The finale of this one is truly awe inspiring.
This book has a grand scope and covers so many different scientific ideas, philosophies and writing styles. I don’t think he executes everything perfectly, but he does them all very competently and with a clear, understandable prose (at least for me). So, while this isn’t a perfect book for me it still deserves 5 stars.
Zebrowski takes the concept of Macrolife, which was coined by scientist Dandridge Cole, and uses it in the science fiction/speculative fiction story.
The novel is broken up in 3 parts. In the 1st part we are introduced to a near future that has had some technological advances that allow for exponential human growth throughout the solar system. This first part is mainly focused on the family who is responsible for this groundbreaking material. When everything goes south, groups of humans end up leaving the solar system to start a new form of humanity.
Part 2 is 1000 years in the future as remnants of humanity meet up on a distant planet. One group has been successfully traveling the galaxy as a Macrolife entity. The other group has fallen on hard times and have reverted back to a primitive society on a strange world. This is the longest and mostly philosophical section of the book.
Part 3 takes place in a very distant future where entropy is winding down the universe. One of our characters wakes up after being part of a collective intelligence for most of his existence. Someone/something pulls him from this collective and gives him a sense of individuality once again. The finale of this one is truly awe inspiring.
This book has a grand scope and covers so many different scientific ideas, philosophies and writing styles. I don’t think he executes everything perfectly, but he does them all very competently and with a clear, understandable prose (at least for me). So, while this isn’t a perfect book for me it still deserves 5 stars.
June 18, 2018
I found this book on a list of specially priced books on Amazon.com. According to the description it was considered to be a science fiction classic - one of the more important science fiction books written in the past several decades. I was thrilled to have found it because I've been reading science fiction since I was a teen in the 1980's, and I'd read many of the classics during the course of my life. If there was one that I had missed then so-be-it. Time to catch up!
When I began Macrolife I quickly realized that the characters were going to be pretty thin - as in "not deep or robust". Honestly, I think that is indicative of many of the older science fiction authors including Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and Jack Williamson. And with additional honesty, that never bothered me. That crew wrote some amazing, thought-provoking books that I have appreciated greatly during the course of my reading life. However in the case of Macrolife, I didn't initially know what year it was published, so the whitewashed characters caught me off-guard. If it had been a more recent novel then it probably wouldn't have passed the critical requirements.
But as I read the story and the philosophy describing macrolife, which is largely based on the concepts of Dandridge Cole who suggested that we should use asteroids to make containers for ourselves and our societies so that we can move out to the stars in a new phase of societal evolution, I began to understand that the philosophy and scope of Macrolife were grand and deep. Interestingly though, it was the way, at an early point in the story, that the author George Zebrowski referred to the ship's computers that made me realize that the book was much older than I thought. For some reason, I'd initially thought it was from the late 90's or early 2000's.
Those were years when I was ramping up in my career and my ability to keep track of new authors and books suffered relative to my earlier years, from grade school through college, when I read voraciously and so found new authors and books on a regular basis. But when I saw the dated reference to computers I looked up the publication date and found that Macrolife had been published in 1979. That seemed strange to me because that was just prior to the years when I started reading everything I could get my hands on, from Dune to the HeeChee and Rendezvous with Rama. In those years I was learning about the masters and their most famous works. And in retrospect, I simply didn't recall having heard anything about George Zebrowski.
Was this because his last name started with a "Z" which meant that his books were likely on the bottom right shelf at all of the Waldenbooks and B. Dalton's where I used to buy my books in the 1980's? Or was it because Macrolife really didn't make that much of a stir back then.
In the end, it didn't matter, so I kept reading. I quickly understood the concepts of Macrolife as described by Zebrowski. Using Cole's ideas Zebrowski makes the point that "Macro Life is to man what man is to the cell." So if we move into space and live in growing and evolving asteroid homes, those worldlets become the life of space and we become the cells that make it work, grow, and progress. But I quickly began to realize that Zebrowski kept hammering away at the topic as if it were difficult to understand, when in fact I got it pretty early on.
Now, there's a strong chance that I "got it" because so many authors have since dealt with this kind of topic, and I've read so many of them that the idea seems very familiar to me. But even so, the book really, REALLY makes this point. Over and over and over. In fact, it makes the point to the detriment of the characters and in the end both characters are plot are as thin as onion skin while the philosophy comprises the bulk of the book.
At one point in the novel, a character who is a clone of an earlier character even sits down to read the writings of the nephew of his original self. The reading is yet another philosophical ramble about Macrolife and how it will/did change mankind. And the character reads the INTRO to the book which is incredibly long and which makes points that have been described already. I was really worried that the clone character would begin to read the actual book and then we'd be reading a book within a book and it would be telling us things that we already learned in the earlier portions of the real-world book. Luckily it didn't go so far.
In the end the story is broad and huge and takes us from Earth in 2021 all the way to the end of our universe and into the next universe that is born after ours ends. It is full of neat concepts and ideas that, in my opinion, have been explored by many other authors since Macrolife was written. I see echoes of Zebrowski's ideas coming forth in more modern writers such as Peter F. Hamilton, Iain Banks, and Alastair Reynolds.
But I have to wonder if those are really echoes. Did those authors read Macrolife? Did it change their minds about human potential, or give them ideas about how to describe a potential path for humanity in space? Or, in fact, are these concepts so simple and straightforward (at least in theory) that they can be considered obvious? My suspicion is that the latter may be true. I'm not certain that Zebrowski has "defined" anything so much as he might be one of the early adopters of this concept. But when I realized that Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968 (and actually was building on stories from much earlier), then I also realized that Zebrowski wasn't really doing original work. So factor that in with weak characterization and a nominal plot I found Macrolife to be less-than-astonishing and, in fact, very preachy. It could have dropped 100 pages and suffered very little.
I do realize that I'm jaded since I'm writing this from 2014. Maybe this book had an impact on some writers or other thought leaders that are doing work today. If so, that's great. But I'd rather read those authors now since they are able to integrate the science that we know or theorize today. Macrolife is dated, and probably best serves as an example of the mindset from 1979. But the impact it may have on today is limited by its peculiarity to a world that is 35 years in the past. It's a long, repetitive read and I think there are other books that explore the concept more deeply that are more accessible to today's readers.
When I began Macrolife I quickly realized that the characters were going to be pretty thin - as in "not deep or robust". Honestly, I think that is indicative of many of the older science fiction authors including Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and Jack Williamson. And with additional honesty, that never bothered me. That crew wrote some amazing, thought-provoking books that I have appreciated greatly during the course of my reading life. However in the case of Macrolife, I didn't initially know what year it was published, so the whitewashed characters caught me off-guard. If it had been a more recent novel then it probably wouldn't have passed the critical requirements.
But as I read the story and the philosophy describing macrolife, which is largely based on the concepts of Dandridge Cole who suggested that we should use asteroids to make containers for ourselves and our societies so that we can move out to the stars in a new phase of societal evolution, I began to understand that the philosophy and scope of Macrolife were grand and deep. Interestingly though, it was the way, at an early point in the story, that the author George Zebrowski referred to the ship's computers that made me realize that the book was much older than I thought. For some reason, I'd initially thought it was from the late 90's or early 2000's.
Those were years when I was ramping up in my career and my ability to keep track of new authors and books suffered relative to my earlier years, from grade school through college, when I read voraciously and so found new authors and books on a regular basis. But when I saw the dated reference to computers I looked up the publication date and found that Macrolife had been published in 1979. That seemed strange to me because that was just prior to the years when I started reading everything I could get my hands on, from Dune to the HeeChee and Rendezvous with Rama. In those years I was learning about the masters and their most famous works. And in retrospect, I simply didn't recall having heard anything about George Zebrowski.
Was this because his last name started with a "Z" which meant that his books were likely on the bottom right shelf at all of the Waldenbooks and B. Dalton's where I used to buy my books in the 1980's? Or was it because Macrolife really didn't make that much of a stir back then.
In the end, it didn't matter, so I kept reading. I quickly understood the concepts of Macrolife as described by Zebrowski. Using Cole's ideas Zebrowski makes the point that "Macro Life is to man what man is to the cell." So if we move into space and live in growing and evolving asteroid homes, those worldlets become the life of space and we become the cells that make it work, grow, and progress. But I quickly began to realize that Zebrowski kept hammering away at the topic as if it were difficult to understand, when in fact I got it pretty early on.
Now, there's a strong chance that I "got it" because so many authors have since dealt with this kind of topic, and I've read so many of them that the idea seems very familiar to me. But even so, the book really, REALLY makes this point. Over and over and over. In fact, it makes the point to the detriment of the characters and in the end both characters are plot are as thin as onion skin while the philosophy comprises the bulk of the book.
At one point in the novel, a character who is a clone of an earlier character even sits down to read the writings of the nephew of his original self. The reading is yet another philosophical ramble about Macrolife and how it will/did change mankind. And the character reads the INTRO to the book which is incredibly long and which makes points that have been described already. I was really worried that the clone character would begin to read the actual book and then we'd be reading a book within a book and it would be telling us things that we already learned in the earlier portions of the real-world book. Luckily it didn't go so far.
In the end the story is broad and huge and takes us from Earth in 2021 all the way to the end of our universe and into the next universe that is born after ours ends. It is full of neat concepts and ideas that, in my opinion, have been explored by many other authors since Macrolife was written. I see echoes of Zebrowski's ideas coming forth in more modern writers such as Peter F. Hamilton, Iain Banks, and Alastair Reynolds.
But I have to wonder if those are really echoes. Did those authors read Macrolife? Did it change their minds about human potential, or give them ideas about how to describe a potential path for humanity in space? Or, in fact, are these concepts so simple and straightforward (at least in theory) that they can be considered obvious? My suspicion is that the latter may be true. I'm not certain that Zebrowski has "defined" anything so much as he might be one of the early adopters of this concept. But when I realized that Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968 (and actually was building on stories from much earlier), then I also realized that Zebrowski wasn't really doing original work. So factor that in with weak characterization and a nominal plot I found Macrolife to be less-than-astonishing and, in fact, very preachy. It could have dropped 100 pages and suffered very little.
I do realize that I'm jaded since I'm writing this from 2014. Maybe this book had an impact on some writers or other thought leaders that are doing work today. If so, that's great. But I'd rather read those authors now since they are able to integrate the science that we know or theorize today. Macrolife is dated, and probably best serves as an example of the mindset from 1979. But the impact it may have on today is limited by its peculiarity to a world that is 35 years in the past. It's a long, repetitive read and I think there are other books that explore the concept more deeply that are more accessible to today's readers.
February 4, 2017
I don't regret reading this book; it was interesting, but definitely a period piece rather than a classic that will stand the test of time. The book is divided in three parts - the near future, a thousand years later, and a more distant future - but the entire work is (continuously) a riff on two questions: what happens when expansion into space frees a civilization from material scarcity? (Answer: it becomes sort of socialist libertarian) How can humans best achieve true fulfillment? (Answer: by always learning more). This is complicated by a third question of craft: for an author writing a book that follows humans into the far future, how can one depict post-humans in a way that is emotionally engaging and appealing to a reader? (Answer: by making key characters throw-backs who stand in for the reader).
However, the first two questions are only necessarily connected - and only have these particular answers -- from the perspective of Late Modernism. The book wraps them up in the single buzzword 'macrolife', which seems to mostly mean 'stages in the development of sentient civilization'. It has something to do with intelligences being networked, and a lot to do with their being driven to learn while being uncompetitive about energy and material resources. This comes across as strongly teleological, or Whiggish, or Hegelian. The personal conflict for the characters arises from the fact that change disrupts economies and lifeways and eventually even memories. There's death and disaster, and some (fairly modest) sex in there too, but it is muffled by pages of quasi-philosophical debates between characters trying to come to terms with the transience of everything. If the characters were Buddhists, they'd be much happier, and the book would be shorter.
However, the first two questions are only necessarily connected - and only have these particular answers -- from the perspective of Late Modernism. The book wraps them up in the single buzzword 'macrolife', which seems to mostly mean 'stages in the development of sentient civilization'. It has something to do with intelligences being networked, and a lot to do with their being driven to learn while being uncompetitive about energy and material resources. This comes across as strongly teleological, or Whiggish, or Hegelian. The personal conflict for the characters arises from the fact that change disrupts economies and lifeways and eventually even memories. There's death and disaster, and some (fairly modest) sex in there too, but it is muffled by pages of quasi-philosophical debates between characters trying to come to terms with the transience of everything. If the characters were Buddhists, they'd be much happier, and the book would be shorter.
September 22, 2020
Rich people destroy the world then get to sail away in a giant floating habitat to live in a utopian ideal until the end of time? That sounds . . . entirely plausible, if a bit inaccessible to the rest of us unless you think the world is going to be saved through stock buybacks.
Its not quite an oligarch's wet dream, though. Subtitled "A Mobile Utopia", it tries to tell the story of humanity through the eons as we outgrow our world and our solar system and perhaps eventually our conception of ourselves in an attempt to defy Time. Published at the end of the seventies, its one of several books in the annals of SF that try to come to terms with the potential survival of humanity over the course of millions of years and what we might evolve into in the process, taking it cues from two of the more notable authors in the subgenre, Arthur C Clarke and Olaf Stapledon. Clarke, who is blurbed on the cover as loving this book, gave us a blueprint in this with "Childhood's End" back in the Fifties, where an alien race rules over Earth while actually supervising their steps into the next stage of humanity's development. But even that work was decently influenced by Stapledon, who may not be as well-known today (he died in 1950), but who had a sense of scale was kind of dizzying. This book attempts to be a sort of love child between Stapledon's "Last and First Men" (a story about humanity evolving through the millennia) and "Star Maker" (a really really really longview of the Universe . . . to give you a sense of how large a temporal canvas he was operating under, the entire "Last and First Men" which covers a huge amount of time is about three paragraphs in "Star Maker"), while also trying to give us an idea of what society might be like all those years in the future.
To do that, he divides the book into three parts, all of which involve various members of the Bulero family (well, the last two parts involve the same one). The first part takes in 2021, in a world strangely not ravaged by a pandemic, political unrest and a climate crisis all at the same time and thus already feels like a utopia. The Bulero family has been eating out for free for decades on the discovery of an element they charmingly call "Bulerite", which is used to build massive cities and other structures. There's a fair amount of bad blood between patriarch Jack, estranged wife Janet, his brother Sam and son Richard but we don't get to experience too much of it before it becomes clear that maybe Richard should have invested a little more into R&D than stock buybacks because it turns out that Bulerite is inherently unstable and since every building was apparently all built at the same time, literally everything starts to fall apart simultaneously. Oops, to say the least and an object lesson as to why naming things after yourself isn't always the best idea, even if its good for the ego.
From there we get a sort of political thriller as everyone has to deal with the fallout of essentially destroying the world as the Bulero family escapes to the solar system's other colonies, who have to make decisions in the power vacuum that erupts, with Richard more interested in hanging out in the Asterome, a hollowed out asteroid that sees all the chaos and thinks that maybe this is a good time to exit stage right.
Of the three parts this is probably the most interesting from an action standpoint since at least stuff happens and we can indulge in the messed up family dynamics of the Buleros . . . except its soon clear that Richard doesn't have much of a personality besides discussing the concept of "macrolife" endlessly with his uncle and girlfriend (the story makes a big deal about the family meeting her for the first time and her kind of mysterious past but then goes nowhere with it, strangely). The swirl of events makes up for it to some extent as once the buildings start falling apart we're in a state of constant crisis where family is on the run. But it often feels like a means to an end as well, just developments required to get us where we need to be, on that sweet road to macrolife.
The macrolife takes center stage in the second part. Set centuries after the last part, it features John Bulero, a clone of Sam (but doesn't have his memories or personality so he might as well be a clone of me) and a relative youth in the macroworld that he's macrolivin' in. Humanity has filled out giant hollow asteroids and set forth into the galaxy, occasionally running into other bits of humanity that have set up civilizations on other worlds. They run into one of those more primitive branches of humanity first, where John has a not-great experience before stumbling back to Earth just in time to realize a) everyone didn't die and b) there's about to be a fairly momentous meeting and its not with them.
One of the problems with utopias is that writing about successful ones is really boring and writers for years have been trying to figure out ways around that, ranging from Ursula Le Guin's "The Dispossessed" to Austin Tappan Wright's "Islandia" to Alan Moore's post-nearly-everyone-getting-killed utopia at the end of "Miracleman" (before handing it off to Neil Gaiman to let him deal with the problem). Most of these writers either construct it a way that utopias work best for everyone who understands and buys into the ground rules, and what tension does occur is due to an inherent flaw that everyone is consciously (or otherwise) overlooking or the idea that maybe not everyone is benefitting equally, especially if you don't fit in. Zebrowski's contribution to the genre sort of acknowledges this but also subjects us to John Bulero being lectured endlessly about how great this utopia is, or reading his ancestor's many writings on macrolife. It makes for interesting reading if you're trying to dissect the concept of the utopia itself but its light on anything actually happening . . . other than a brief spurt of brutal combat there's very little action or tension . . . even negotiations with Earth and the subsequent visit from another party don't give us any conflict whatsoever, merely another example of how wonderful macrolife is.
Which may be true . . . hey, its Zebrowski's novel and its not like I'm going to be around to find out if he's right or we just ultimately immolate ourselves by setting all the greenhouse gases on fire. What it feels like he lacks here in spots is that sense of awe-inspiring scale that his predecessors were able to engender . . . I know the circumstances are everyday life for these people but if you can't make me go "whoa" at the prospect of giant hollowed out rocks cruising around the galaxies then maybe its worth rethinking the approach. We don't get much of a sense of how civilization could changed, especially with everyone so separated . . . one of the weirdest parts is when they go back to earth everyone converses normally like the macroworlders left last week . . . you would think some slippage would occur with language (we do get that, but with the primitive people and its more to demonstrate how civilization has gone backwards) and even frames of reference. I visit a country on the other side of the planet and there's some cultural gaps that have to be overcome since we don't come from the same background . . . I can't imagine two branches of humanity who haven't seen each other in centuries and have been living in two completely different environments aren't going to be on some level incomprehensible to each other. But its like me visiting my parents after having been away for a while, where they're more concerned I'm not going to sneak all my books back into the house.
Then we get to the third part in the far, far future where macrolife has gone viral and all the cool kids are doing it . . . except the cool kids are mostly one homogenous mass of experiences and emotions, like if someone had melted your yearbook into a single page. But there's no time to catch anyone on the flipside because the flipside is arriving shortly with the death of the known universe and to that end the overall macrolifers have resurrected an individualized version of John Bulero to somehow marshal them through the crisis and hopefully arrive on the other side, wherever that might be. Leaving aside that over billions of years of evolution the best they can think of is to bring back the clone of a rich dude from the 21st century to help convince everyone not to freak out because we've jumped so much from one part to the next without really getting a sense of the intervening period we're not really that invested in these people and it again becomes more about how you're invested in macrolife as a concept. So we essentially get a conversation between Bulero and the remainder of Macrolife about, you guessed it, macrolife while the universe comes to its natural end around them. Again, Zebrowski fails to really convey the sense of scale or just how weird a place the end of time would be (I feel like, even though its not scientific at all, Moorcock's "Dancers at the End of Time" series really nailed how entrophically weird things could get, just from a tonal standpoint) so its mostly just a guy we barely know arguing with italics until the book is over. Although the finale is uplifting, which barely feels like real life at all.
Its not a bad book, just a book that I'm not sure successfully builds upon what the books have gone before it managed to pull off. Zebrowski's got the "macrolife" concept to feed into the narrative but sometimes you wonder if his desire to illustrate macrolife from a storytelling standpoint gets in the way of telling an actual story. It just doesn't feel bold enough or widescreen enough in parts to really make you feel the scope of it, how much time is passing and how little of it we occupy in our brief lives. If he gets one feeling right, it’s the constant frustration of the characters to avoid death and in a sense the entire book is in a race against forever, people fighting against the limits of their own lives, then the life of their world, their species, their galaxy and eventually against the universe itself. That frustration, the most palpable element outside of the endless macrolife discussions, is probably the most optimistic bit about the book. These people want to live forever not simply because of a fear of death but a fear of the cessation that comes with it. To them its not a peace but a halt to learning, to exploring, to the very act of being, understanding the more there is to know the more we realize how much we don't know. That struggle to stick around so they can learn just one more thing is perhaps the most inspiring part of the book and I wish Zebrowski had highlighted it more. Because I may not be able to relate to humanity becoming one big italicized brain, but I can look at a future date on a calendar and be curious about what the world will look like and where we'll be. And I can do the math on my own age and realize that it may be just out of my feasible reach but I can understand the desire to be able to take another swipe with a feather at infinity and the hope that, somehow, I can be around for the another attempt.
Its not quite an oligarch's wet dream, though. Subtitled "A Mobile Utopia", it tries to tell the story of humanity through the eons as we outgrow our world and our solar system and perhaps eventually our conception of ourselves in an attempt to defy Time. Published at the end of the seventies, its one of several books in the annals of SF that try to come to terms with the potential survival of humanity over the course of millions of years and what we might evolve into in the process, taking it cues from two of the more notable authors in the subgenre, Arthur C Clarke and Olaf Stapledon. Clarke, who is blurbed on the cover as loving this book, gave us a blueprint in this with "Childhood's End" back in the Fifties, where an alien race rules over Earth while actually supervising their steps into the next stage of humanity's development. But even that work was decently influenced by Stapledon, who may not be as well-known today (he died in 1950), but who had a sense of scale was kind of dizzying. This book attempts to be a sort of love child between Stapledon's "Last and First Men" (a story about humanity evolving through the millennia) and "Star Maker" (a really really really longview of the Universe . . . to give you a sense of how large a temporal canvas he was operating under, the entire "Last and First Men" which covers a huge amount of time is about three paragraphs in "Star Maker"), while also trying to give us an idea of what society might be like all those years in the future.
To do that, he divides the book into three parts, all of which involve various members of the Bulero family (well, the last two parts involve the same one). The first part takes in 2021, in a world strangely not ravaged by a pandemic, political unrest and a climate crisis all at the same time and thus already feels like a utopia. The Bulero family has been eating out for free for decades on the discovery of an element they charmingly call "Bulerite", which is used to build massive cities and other structures. There's a fair amount of bad blood between patriarch Jack, estranged wife Janet, his brother Sam and son Richard but we don't get to experience too much of it before it becomes clear that maybe Richard should have invested a little more into R&D than stock buybacks because it turns out that Bulerite is inherently unstable and since every building was apparently all built at the same time, literally everything starts to fall apart simultaneously. Oops, to say the least and an object lesson as to why naming things after yourself isn't always the best idea, even if its good for the ego.
From there we get a sort of political thriller as everyone has to deal with the fallout of essentially destroying the world as the Bulero family escapes to the solar system's other colonies, who have to make decisions in the power vacuum that erupts, with Richard more interested in hanging out in the Asterome, a hollowed out asteroid that sees all the chaos and thinks that maybe this is a good time to exit stage right.
Of the three parts this is probably the most interesting from an action standpoint since at least stuff happens and we can indulge in the messed up family dynamics of the Buleros . . . except its soon clear that Richard doesn't have much of a personality besides discussing the concept of "macrolife" endlessly with his uncle and girlfriend (the story makes a big deal about the family meeting her for the first time and her kind of mysterious past but then goes nowhere with it, strangely). The swirl of events makes up for it to some extent as once the buildings start falling apart we're in a state of constant crisis where family is on the run. But it often feels like a means to an end as well, just developments required to get us where we need to be, on that sweet road to macrolife.
The macrolife takes center stage in the second part. Set centuries after the last part, it features John Bulero, a clone of Sam (but doesn't have his memories or personality so he might as well be a clone of me) and a relative youth in the macroworld that he's macrolivin' in. Humanity has filled out giant hollow asteroids and set forth into the galaxy, occasionally running into other bits of humanity that have set up civilizations on other worlds. They run into one of those more primitive branches of humanity first, where John has a not-great experience before stumbling back to Earth just in time to realize a) everyone didn't die and b) there's about to be a fairly momentous meeting and its not with them.
One of the problems with utopias is that writing about successful ones is really boring and writers for years have been trying to figure out ways around that, ranging from Ursula Le Guin's "The Dispossessed" to Austin Tappan Wright's "Islandia" to Alan Moore's post-nearly-everyone-getting-killed utopia at the end of "Miracleman" (before handing it off to Neil Gaiman to let him deal with the problem). Most of these writers either construct it a way that utopias work best for everyone who understands and buys into the ground rules, and what tension does occur is due to an inherent flaw that everyone is consciously (or otherwise) overlooking or the idea that maybe not everyone is benefitting equally, especially if you don't fit in. Zebrowski's contribution to the genre sort of acknowledges this but also subjects us to John Bulero being lectured endlessly about how great this utopia is, or reading his ancestor's many writings on macrolife. It makes for interesting reading if you're trying to dissect the concept of the utopia itself but its light on anything actually happening . . . other than a brief spurt of brutal combat there's very little action or tension . . . even negotiations with Earth and the subsequent visit from another party don't give us any conflict whatsoever, merely another example of how wonderful macrolife is.
Which may be true . . . hey, its Zebrowski's novel and its not like I'm going to be around to find out if he's right or we just ultimately immolate ourselves by setting all the greenhouse gases on fire. What it feels like he lacks here in spots is that sense of awe-inspiring scale that his predecessors were able to engender . . . I know the circumstances are everyday life for these people but if you can't make me go "whoa" at the prospect of giant hollowed out rocks cruising around the galaxies then maybe its worth rethinking the approach. We don't get much of a sense of how civilization could changed, especially with everyone so separated . . . one of the weirdest parts is when they go back to earth everyone converses normally like the macroworlders left last week . . . you would think some slippage would occur with language (we do get that, but with the primitive people and its more to demonstrate how civilization has gone backwards) and even frames of reference. I visit a country on the other side of the planet and there's some cultural gaps that have to be overcome since we don't come from the same background . . . I can't imagine two branches of humanity who haven't seen each other in centuries and have been living in two completely different environments aren't going to be on some level incomprehensible to each other. But its like me visiting my parents after having been away for a while, where they're more concerned I'm not going to sneak all my books back into the house.
Then we get to the third part in the far, far future where macrolife has gone viral and all the cool kids are doing it . . . except the cool kids are mostly one homogenous mass of experiences and emotions, like if someone had melted your yearbook into a single page. But there's no time to catch anyone on the flipside because the flipside is arriving shortly with the death of the known universe and to that end the overall macrolifers have resurrected an individualized version of John Bulero to somehow marshal them through the crisis and hopefully arrive on the other side, wherever that might be. Leaving aside that over billions of years of evolution the best they can think of is to bring back the clone of a rich dude from the 21st century to help convince everyone not to freak out because we've jumped so much from one part to the next without really getting a sense of the intervening period we're not really that invested in these people and it again becomes more about how you're invested in macrolife as a concept. So we essentially get a conversation between Bulero and the remainder of Macrolife about, you guessed it, macrolife while the universe comes to its natural end around them. Again, Zebrowski fails to really convey the sense of scale or just how weird a place the end of time would be (I feel like, even though its not scientific at all, Moorcock's "Dancers at the End of Time" series really nailed how entrophically weird things could get, just from a tonal standpoint) so its mostly just a guy we barely know arguing with italics until the book is over. Although the finale is uplifting, which barely feels like real life at all.
Its not a bad book, just a book that I'm not sure successfully builds upon what the books have gone before it managed to pull off. Zebrowski's got the "macrolife" concept to feed into the narrative but sometimes you wonder if his desire to illustrate macrolife from a storytelling standpoint gets in the way of telling an actual story. It just doesn't feel bold enough or widescreen enough in parts to really make you feel the scope of it, how much time is passing and how little of it we occupy in our brief lives. If he gets one feeling right, it’s the constant frustration of the characters to avoid death and in a sense the entire book is in a race against forever, people fighting against the limits of their own lives, then the life of their world, their species, their galaxy and eventually against the universe itself. That frustration, the most palpable element outside of the endless macrolife discussions, is probably the most optimistic bit about the book. These people want to live forever not simply because of a fear of death but a fear of the cessation that comes with it. To them its not a peace but a halt to learning, to exploring, to the very act of being, understanding the more there is to know the more we realize how much we don't know. That struggle to stick around so they can learn just one more thing is perhaps the most inspiring part of the book and I wish Zebrowski had highlighted it more. Because I may not be able to relate to humanity becoming one big italicized brain, but I can look at a future date on a calendar and be curious about what the world will look like and where we'll be. And I can do the math on my own age and realize that it may be just out of my feasible reach but I can understand the desire to be able to take another swipe with a feather at infinity and the hope that, somehow, I can be around for the another attempt.
July 2, 2025
Dandridge Cole coined the term macrolife to describe self-contained and mobile asteroid habitats that he envisioned as the fundamental units of life on the galactic stage. Zebrowski was clearly very taken by this idea, and his 1979 novel lays out a future history of humanity and macrolife in three parts.
We witness a global catastrophe that leaves only a scattering of humanity on Mars, Ganymede, and, most crucially, on a single hollowed-out asteroid that departs the solar system to become the first macrolife. In part two, we jump to the year 3000 when multiple habitats roam the galaxy using faster-than-light drives. The last part is set at the end of the universe, where macrolife is ubiquitous.
The heart of the novel is an exploration of the idea that humanity's future lies more in space habitats than it does on planets. However, Zebrowski inflates this idea into a philosophical doctrine verging on religion, and repeatedly batters the reader with overwrought argument. A significant amount of the book is devoted to his repeated polemical exposition as bombastic characters ponder the worthlessness of planets and their barbarian cultures in contrast to the unlimited potential of macrolife. So pervasive is this meta-discussion that an already thin plot is stretched almost to invisibility, and the flat, pompous characters are never developed.
In the couple of action-oriented scenes, Zebrowski achieves good pacing, but frankly, this book could have done with a vicious edit. There was a lot of potential to explore his ideas in a more rounded way through his characters, but ultimately, he delivered a one-sided lecture. The book also suffers from weak female characters who only exist for sex, and weak descriptive writing - characters seem frequently defined by their hairstyle and eye colour.
I picked this up because the sequel, Cave of Stars, is in Broderick and Di Filippo's 101 best SF novels, but this experience has discouraged me from diving straight in.
We witness a global catastrophe that leaves only a scattering of humanity on Mars, Ganymede, and, most crucially, on a single hollowed-out asteroid that departs the solar system to become the first macrolife. In part two, we jump to the year 3000 when multiple habitats roam the galaxy using faster-than-light drives. The last part is set at the end of the universe, where macrolife is ubiquitous.
The heart of the novel is an exploration of the idea that humanity's future lies more in space habitats than it does on planets. However, Zebrowski inflates this idea into a philosophical doctrine verging on religion, and repeatedly batters the reader with overwrought argument. A significant amount of the book is devoted to his repeated polemical exposition as bombastic characters ponder the worthlessness of planets and their barbarian cultures in contrast to the unlimited potential of macrolife. So pervasive is this meta-discussion that an already thin plot is stretched almost to invisibility, and the flat, pompous characters are never developed.
In the couple of action-oriented scenes, Zebrowski achieves good pacing, but frankly, this book could have done with a vicious edit. There was a lot of potential to explore his ideas in a more rounded way through his characters, but ultimately, he delivered a one-sided lecture. The book also suffers from weak female characters who only exist for sex, and weak descriptive writing - characters seem frequently defined by their hairstyle and eye colour.
I picked this up because the sequel, Cave of Stars, is in Broderick and Di Filippo's 101 best SF novels, but this experience has discouraged me from diving straight in.
Read
July 23, 2020While the 2nd part of the title is "A Mobile Utopia," I wouldn't describe this as a utopian novel. Clearly, Zebrowski considered a space habitat capable of interstellar travel to be desirable (and an alternative to planet-based disaster,) but his portrayal of the habitat is limited. He focuses on several characters (mainly 2, each in different eras) who discuss, write material, and deal with personal issues. Readers learn some about the habitat in general, and some more about a particular subset of its people. Through at least most of the book, these characters view the society as in process.
The last section takes place 100 billion years in the future as entities of merged consciousnesses fear the end as the universe collapses back into a single black hole. Perhaps, Zebrowski considered the billions of years of merged consciousnesses to be a utopia. However, we're not shown this at its norm. Rather, we're shown a time when quasi-individual consciousnesses of past individuals are separated out because the group minds aren't able to get themselves to take action while these remnants of long ago are able to act to find a solution.
You should note that the edition I listened to began with 30 pages of quotes praising the book. Obviously, not everyone had my reaction. Several of the quotes make references to Stapledon. I wasn't so impressed with Stapledon, but if you were...
Personally, I wasn't satisfied with Zebrowski's view that planet-based society is doomed to always fail, yet somehow it can generate the right kind of people and survive without self-destruction long enough to develop interstellar space habitats.
The last section takes place 100 billion years in the future as entities of merged consciousnesses fear the end as the universe collapses back into a single black hole. Perhaps, Zebrowski considered the billions of years of merged consciousnesses to be a utopia. However, we're not shown this at its norm. Rather, we're shown a time when quasi-individual consciousnesses of past individuals are separated out because the group minds aren't able to get themselves to take action while these remnants of long ago are able to act to find a solution.
You should note that the edition I listened to began with 30 pages of quotes praising the book. Obviously, not everyone had my reaction. Several of the quotes make references to Stapledon. I wasn't so impressed with Stapledon, but if you were...
Personally, I wasn't satisfied with Zebrowski's view that planet-based society is doomed to always fail, yet somehow it can generate the right kind of people and survive without self-destruction long enough to develop interstellar space habitats.
September 20, 2017
Long story short: some writer heard of the concept of macrolife and got excited about it. Really excited. I mean really over the top obsessed, can't think or talk about anything else anymore, excited. Then he decided to write a book about it. After all, he's an author and how else to spread the good news of macrolife to anyone who will hear? Sadly, he forgot to add an interesting plot or characters I didn't want to throttle. But you know, it's all good, because it's about macrolife!
In case you're wondering what macrolife is, it's basically just the idea of turning an asteroid into a space ship. That's it.
The little bit of story there is is divided into three parts.
Beware that if you decide to read this book, you'll constantly be listening to one character or another pontificating about why macrolife is the best thing since sliced bread. Make sure not to think too much while reading or you'll start wondering why the writer thinks it's fair to compare life in an asteroid with cutting edge technology to life on a planet without even the technology to make a proper cutting edge.
In case you're wondering what macrolife is, it's basically just the idea of turning an asteroid into a space ship. That's it.
The little bit of story there is is divided into three parts.
Beware that if you decide to read this book, you'll constantly be listening to one character or another pontificating about why macrolife is the best thing since sliced bread. Make sure not to think too much while reading or you'll start wondering why the writer thinks it's fair to compare life in an asteroid with cutting edge technology to life on a planet without even the technology to make a proper cutting edge.
June 9, 2014
Macrolife is a term originating from Dandridge Cole which "has for its cells, individual human beings, plants, animals, and machines". In other words, self-contained human colonies in space. Macrolife the novel explores the future history of macrolife as a form of life for human (and really, all) life in the universe.
It is set in three parts, where the first part is macrolife's beginning, the second is its (I guess you could say) adulthood, and the third its maturity in the very far future. The first part is somewhat weak as it concentrates on the altogether unbelievable catastrophe which serves as macrolife's impetus. The second part serves a useful outsider's view to macrolife as its lead doesn't feel like a part of it. It also contains plenty of soul-searching. I thought the third part's inclusion was somewhat odd but it did end on an impressive note.
Macrolife is a meditative novel and it is at its best when it does exactly that; there's more than the average amount of food for thought passages here. It's definitely not at its best when something is happening, or with characters, or much else, but then, I don't think they're the point of this book. I wouldn't recommend this to a casual reader of sf, but I would consider this essential sf reading nonetheless if for nothing else than its vision.
It is set in three parts, where the first part is macrolife's beginning, the second is its (I guess you could say) adulthood, and the third its maturity in the very far future. The first part is somewhat weak as it concentrates on the altogether unbelievable catastrophe which serves as macrolife's impetus. The second part serves a useful outsider's view to macrolife as its lead doesn't feel like a part of it. It also contains plenty of soul-searching. I thought the third part's inclusion was somewhat odd but it did end on an impressive note.
Macrolife is a meditative novel and it is at its best when it does exactly that; there's more than the average amount of food for thought passages here. It's definitely not at its best when something is happening, or with characters, or much else, but then, I don't think they're the point of this book. I wouldn't recommend this to a casual reader of sf, but I would consider this essential sf reading nonetheless if for nothing else than its vision.
December 11, 2017
I wanted to read this book solely to study space habitats, but the plot was surprisingly insightful.
May 21, 2019
Much better than modern science fiction - less of the fluffy description and interpersonal relations, and more stuff to make you think.
November 30, 2022
Zebrowski earns the comparisons to Olaf Stapledon, this scifi epic charts the evolution of humanity into gods, spanning from the not-too-distant-future to the End Of Time.
July 7, 2023
Is this a good book? Yes and no. Do I regret reading it? No. So I think that’s your answer. It boils down to whether you like story or ideas. This is an ideas book. The ideas encompassed in each of the 3 sections are breath-taking. They story, not so much.
This book can’t be talked about without spoilers. It encompasses the present until the death of the universe and the birth of the next.
The first section begins in 2021. There are colonies on the moon, Mars, in the asteroid belt, and on Ganymede. I must have missed the news broadcasts of their establishment. It reminds we in part of the old movie When Worlds Collide (I know the movie is based on the book by Balmer and Wylie, but I haven’t read that) and Neal Stephenson’s ‘Seveneves’. It’s a hopeful book striving for Utopian ideals, but beset by human nature. There is an amazing amount of ideas for humanity’s expansion into space crammed into 100 pages. This is also the problem in this section. It’s just ideas there’s a simple convenient plotline and almost no characterisation, though there are a lot of people with names. Virtually interchangeable. I frequently didn’t know which persons perspective I was in, but it didn’t really matter as they existed simple to talk about the ideas.
The second part is set in 3000. And becomes an episode of Star Trek where Kirk gets his leg over. The science becomes a LOT softer than in the first part. The number of character is reduced, which improves the depth of their characterisation, but that’s not really an improvement since the main character is Captain Kirk.
The macrolife of the title have become the embodiment of Clarke’s Law (the tech/magic one). The principle character descends to a collapsing post-tech world to get his end away. Once the village where he lands are all nicely dead to wrap up that part of the story we return to the macrolife for a sermon on the benefits of life off planet to that on planet. It contains some interesting ideas but is more theology/philosophy than proven science.
The third section jumps billions of years to the end of the universe where the gestalt universal macro life consciousness re-embodies the protagonist from part 2 to mansplain the last several billion years to him. Again, there are some interesting ideas, but the story is dead in water.
There are some brilliant ideas outlined in this book, but I feel it would have worked better as a pop science non-fiction book on cosmology rather than a novel. That said, I don’t regret reading it.
This book can’t be talked about without spoilers. It encompasses the present until the death of the universe and the birth of the next.
The first section begins in 2021. There are colonies on the moon, Mars, in the asteroid belt, and on Ganymede. I must have missed the news broadcasts of their establishment. It reminds we in part of the old movie When Worlds Collide (I know the movie is based on the book by Balmer and Wylie, but I haven’t read that) and Neal Stephenson’s ‘Seveneves’. It’s a hopeful book striving for Utopian ideals, but beset by human nature. There is an amazing amount of ideas for humanity’s expansion into space crammed into 100 pages. This is also the problem in this section. It’s just ideas there’s a simple convenient plotline and almost no characterisation, though there are a lot of people with names. Virtually interchangeable. I frequently didn’t know which persons perspective I was in, but it didn’t really matter as they existed simple to talk about the ideas.
The second part is set in 3000. And becomes an episode of Star Trek where Kirk gets his leg over. The science becomes a LOT softer than in the first part. The number of character is reduced, which improves the depth of their characterisation, but that’s not really an improvement since the main character is Captain Kirk.
The macrolife of the title have become the embodiment of Clarke’s Law (the tech/magic one). The principle character descends to a collapsing post-tech world to get his end away. Once the village where he lands are all nicely dead to wrap up that part of the story we return to the macrolife for a sermon on the benefits of life off planet to that on planet. It contains some interesting ideas but is more theology/philosophy than proven science.
The third section jumps billions of years to the end of the universe where the gestalt universal macro life consciousness re-embodies the protagonist from part 2 to mansplain the last several billion years to him. Again, there are some interesting ideas, but the story is dead in water.
There are some brilliant ideas outlined in this book, but I feel it would have worked better as a pop science non-fiction book on cosmology rather than a novel. That said, I don’t regret reading it.
February 7, 2021
Macrolife, written in 1979 by George Zebrowski, received a lot of rave reviews and is cited by some as one of the best science fiction books of all time. With press like that I had to read it. Having done so, I have very mixed feelings about this book.
The book is divided into three sections - Sunspace 2021 (pretty disappointing reading that section in the year 2021 as we haven’t advanced as the book predicted), Macrolife 3000, and The Dream of Time. The first section is a bit of a soap opera about the Bulero family and their invention of bulerite. The second section is about the differences between living on a space platform that moves around the universe verses living on a dirt planet. The third section is about entropy and what happens at the end of our universe.
I found the entire book slow moving. At times ideas were presented in a rather simplistic fashion and at other times esoteric and overly complicated. While all three sections had some interesting ideas and concepts, I enjoyed reading the second section the best. The overall question of the book is whether or not a civilization on a dirt planet, where there is competition for natural resources, can progress or is always doomed to fail. The author feels that civilizations require Macrolife platforms in space that “reproduce” constantly taking in more resources and spawning more space for the growing population. As each new platform is built those inhabitants can choose their focus and direction and then set off to explore the universe.
While there were a number of important female characters in the book, way too much time was spent on one a main character’s sexual exploration. Every new woman he met seemed to be first evaluated as a sexual partner. In his first meeting with a humanoid group on a distant planet he is having sex with the woman leader within a few hours. Captain Kirk had nothing on Richard Bulero.
Several times I thought of putting this book down rather than reading to the end - something I VERY rarely do. However, I pressed on. I did find some of the ideas in this book interesting and worth pondering but, if I had to do it all again, I would have gone with my first instinct to stop reading after the first fifty pages.
The book is divided into three sections - Sunspace 2021 (pretty disappointing reading that section in the year 2021 as we haven’t advanced as the book predicted), Macrolife 3000, and The Dream of Time. The first section is a bit of a soap opera about the Bulero family and their invention of bulerite. The second section is about the differences between living on a space platform that moves around the universe verses living on a dirt planet. The third section is about entropy and what happens at the end of our universe.
I found the entire book slow moving. At times ideas were presented in a rather simplistic fashion and at other times esoteric and overly complicated. While all three sections had some interesting ideas and concepts, I enjoyed reading the second section the best. The overall question of the book is whether or not a civilization on a dirt planet, where there is competition for natural resources, can progress or is always doomed to fail. The author feels that civilizations require Macrolife platforms in space that “reproduce” constantly taking in more resources and spawning more space for the growing population. As each new platform is built those inhabitants can choose their focus and direction and then set off to explore the universe.
While there were a number of important female characters in the book, way too much time was spent on one a main character’s sexual exploration. Every new woman he met seemed to be first evaluated as a sexual partner. In his first meeting with a humanoid group on a distant planet he is having sex with the woman leader within a few hours. Captain Kirk had nothing on Richard Bulero.
Several times I thought of putting this book down rather than reading to the end - something I VERY rarely do. However, I pressed on. I did find some of the ideas in this book interesting and worth pondering but, if I had to do it all again, I would have gone with my first instinct to stop reading after the first fifty pages.
December 14, 2023
In the 1970s orbiting space colonies like O’Neill postulated were all the go. It birthed books like Varley’s Titan and this one by George Zebrowski, where artificial worlds come under the broad term ‘macrolife’. In this one the Bulero family have risen to global economic dominance through the heavy element bulerite which has immense structural strength and has become the go-to material for everything from auto parts to kilometre-high arcologies. However, it is discovered that it is unstable after many decades and collapses releasing bond energy. Needless to say this is disastrous for the Earth and by extension the Buleros, who flee to space. Using a hollowed asteroid, Asterome, the survivors head off to greener stellar systems over the next thousand years. Having discovered a cheat for super-c travel the descendants (and even some millennia-old originals) return to Earth. They find it greening up again and surrounded by human space colonies awaiting the arrival of some aliens. The aliens share some information before leaving humanity to deal with the end of the Universe. Or can it be cheated to? Heavy on the term ‘macrolife’ and discursive and philosophical, it still has some huge ideas and rewards a close reading.
January 30, 2021
https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3565159.html
I picked this up as one of the few sf novels set in 2021; the other two (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and The Children of Men) are better, and also only half of this is set in 2021, the rest being in the year 3000. At the end of the first half of the book, the planet earth disintegrates due to some carelessly wielded new technology. I can say with confidence that this is the most pessimistic of all of the future 2021s I looked at. The rest of the book sees the remnants of humanity zipping between star systems on a converted asteroid, occasionally descending to settled planets to bonk some of the primitives and fight some of the others, and eventually achieve transcendence. The book seems to have a lot of fans who feel it had an important Message. Frankly it seemed to me much the same plot as the Cities in Flight series, with perhaps a little jazzed-up tech (but really only a little).
I picked this up as one of the few sf novels set in 2021; the other two (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and The Children of Men) are better, and also only half of this is set in 2021, the rest being in the year 3000. At the end of the first half of the book, the planet earth disintegrates due to some carelessly wielded new technology. I can say with confidence that this is the most pessimistic of all of the future 2021s I looked at. The rest of the book sees the remnants of humanity zipping between star systems on a converted asteroid, occasionally descending to settled planets to bonk some of the primitives and fight some of the others, and eventually achieve transcendence. The book seems to have a lot of fans who feel it had an important Message. Frankly it seemed to me much the same plot as the Cities in Flight series, with perhaps a little jazzed-up tech (but really only a little).
April 4, 2019
A philosophical treatise that talks about the "future' of humanity, and also the Universe...
A very skillful exercise that looks at individuals, and also the entire horizon of time.
Sometimes the plot is slow and didactic, but always intense and thought provoking.
It takes time, and I agree with one of the famous authors (I think Asimov) who says that this is one book that he wants to read again...
A slow food type of meal that is satisfying, & takes time to digest..
Recommended for the thinking non-escapist reader
A very skillful exercise that looks at individuals, and also the entire horizon of time.
Sometimes the plot is slow and didactic, but always intense and thought provoking.
It takes time, and I agree with one of the famous authors (I think Asimov) who says that this is one book that he wants to read again...
A slow food type of meal that is satisfying, & takes time to digest..
Recommended for the thinking non-escapist reader
July 1, 2023
A novel full of science and and grand ideas worked out in interesting detail more than plot and characters - I think the author could have benefitted from the input of an evolutionary biologist as he pays little attention to the billions of years of evolution which optimizes us for living on planet earth as well as the biodiversity which makes our existence possible.
November 6, 2021
annoying. it could be good science fiction if it wasn't describing all the petty thoughts of the main characters
January 10, 2023
Great beginning, getting worse as book goes on. By the end slow, boring, navel gazing.
October 15, 2023
Such bad writing… none of the characters motivations make sense, the social dynamics get weirder and weirder, plus the “science” is gibberish.
July 25, 2011
Very interesting concept, good beginning and middle. Kind of a weak ending. The basic idea of making our own worlds out of asteroids and traveling the universe is great. A completely controlled environment, with less scope for the vagaries of nature. The basic impulse for immortality gets taken a bit too literal however, with trying to find a way to exist beyond the universe itself. The ending was too out there for me, but the start was fascinating.
This version of utopia shares the “elimination of scarcity” tenent of many of the more modern cyber life visions. Space gives access to limitless energy – directly from the stars after all. With no energy limits then human life and ambition is limited only by our imagination and capacity to organize.
The day we start mining out an asteroid and convert its interior it will be step one in the path to non-planetary living. Best way to build a long-range spacecraft probably.
Recommend it for the basic concept; everyone will have a different vision of what the ideal society will truly be in the end.
This version of utopia shares the “elimination of scarcity” tenent of many of the more modern cyber life visions. Space gives access to limitless energy – directly from the stars after all. With no energy limits then human life and ambition is limited only by our imagination and capacity to organize.
The day we start mining out an asteroid and convert its interior it will be step one in the path to non-planetary living. Best way to build a long-range spacecraft probably.
Recommend it for the basic concept; everyone will have a different vision of what the ideal society will truly be in the end.
January 18, 2019
Follows the same format as Brute Orbits, with one act in the near future, one act in the far future, and one act in the distant future. This book suffers from each of the three acts being overlong. It's also an annoying book. The family at the center of act one accidentally destroys the Earth. The characters and the narration complain they now feel threatened and their property rights aren't respected. OK, you destroy the Earth and it instills hostility in the surviving Earthlings.
Later, ALL individuals surrender to the collective. Their personalities are consumed and they become merely particles. But then we are asked to be concerned with the fate of the particles. No one cares about the fate of a mote of dust.
The lead narrator's plaintiff and quavering voice gets very old very fast.
To be avoided.
Later, ALL individuals surrender to the collective. Their personalities are consumed and they become merely particles. But then we are asked to be concerned with the fate of the particles. No one cares about the fate of a mote of dust.
The lead narrator's plaintiff and quavering voice gets very old very fast.
To be avoided.
May 26, 2018
Oh oh oh... This is why I don't like hard SF books. Great ideas but boring stories—if one can even call it a story. I really gave it a chance, but at page 180, Zebrowski seemed more interested in still explaining his ideas of Macrolife rather than making me care one iota for any of the characters... in what fictional world is this okay? What is the point of investing so much time to grasp the world and the science behind it, if no one gives a damn what happens to those in it? And since when is it okay to just tell, tell, tell... some action, some emotional depth, some intelligent communication... something, please.
This is not for me.
This is not for me.
September 6, 2016
Starts off interesting but then in the second half it takes some time off to retell the most cliched story of advanced civilisation visiting a backwards planet you have ever read in your life after which it goes completely off-the-rails until the end. Do yourself a favour and stop at the end of part one. I rate the book highly mostly because it has some novel ideas. Pity about the delivery - the characters and plot are just a poor excuse to explore the space colony ideas. 5 minutes after finishing the book I can't tell you anything about the protagonist(s?).
August 15, 2011
I exercised my right to quit on a book with this one.
I was more than one hundred pages in and had no idea what was going on. I couldn't keep the characters straight (and there weren't even that many), and I just could not even begin to grasp the concept of macrolife at all--no matter how many times and how in depth it was described. I had been forcing myself to read it for three weeks, and had only made it that far, so I decided it was a lost cause. Oh well.
I was more than one hundred pages in and had no idea what was going on. I couldn't keep the characters straight (and there weren't even that many), and I just could not even begin to grasp the concept of macrolife at all--no matter how many times and how in depth it was described. I had been forcing myself to read it for three weeks, and had only made it that far, so I decided it was a lost cause. Oh well.
June 10, 2009
Listed as one of the best 100 books of Sci-Fi, and I have to agree. Using unique philosophy and plot, Zebrowski takes out all the stops on human potential in the universe. I most love thought provoking books versus entertainment.
August 1, 2013
It had an interesting start, a few neat parts in the middle that did not last long and an ending that makes you go 'huh?'. Overall, some of the technology is neat, but the characters are forgettable.
August 20, 2008
Earth is destroyed by the use of some metal, people take off for space, blah, blah, blah.
January 24, 2016
Too wildly optimistic for my tastes. Ignoring reality can be fun, but not to the extent that the premises of this novel require to work.
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