Risonanza orbitale

Century Next Door #1

by John Barnes

Melpomene Murray vive sull'Olandese Volante, una colonia di asteroidi situata a migliaia di chilometri da una Terra martoriata da malattie, guerre e inquinamento. Lei e i suoi coetanei, nati nello spazio, sono l'ultima speranza dell'umanità, e Mel sta iniziando a capire quanto sia difficile reggere il peso di questa responsabilità. È stata addestrata fin dalla nascita a guidare il genere umano verso il futuro, ma quello che gli altri non sanno è che Melpomene potrebbe avere altri piani...

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Young Adult, Science Fiction Fantasy, Space, Space Opera, Coming Of Age

279 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 1, 1991

About the author

John Barnes (born 1957) is an American science fiction author, whose stories often explore questions of individual moral responsibility within a larger social context. Social criticism is woven throughout his plots. The four novels in his Thousand Cultures series pose serious questions about the effects of globalization on isolated societies. Barnes holds a doctorate in theatre and for several years taught in Colorado, where he still lives.

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bar...

Reviews

[Cheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

In lieu of a review, I can copy in my comment on a thread about books like The City of Ember:
...
Here's a happy coincidence. I'm reading a book right now that is probably perfect.

Main character is YA and the book is fairly short and the plot and characters are accessible... but... 1. there is a sort of a mystery/ gradual relevation, and 2. there are mature words & scenes, and 3. there are complex themes to think about.

The young people are raised very differently than their parents, and so they're almost 'alien' in a way, and a lot of things we understand, including economy and technology, are different for them.

The apocalypse was a few decades ago from the current story, and recovery has hit a big bump, as we learn gradually.

Lots of What-If and World-Building but a good story beyond that, too. (Just beware the awkward beginning, do not DNF too early... it's all crafted intentionally.)
...
The ending didn't disappoint. 4.5 stars rounded up, because I'm going to be thinking about this for a while, and I want to reread it, and I might read the sequel(s).

[Tamahome · Rating 3 out of 5]

Explanation of my desire to read (animated whiteboard review):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMkeZJ...

Ack. Out of print and no ebook.

Ordered 'new' from Amazon for $6, dammit.


Got it in the mail today!




page 47/245 - Flying through it so far. Very similar to those old Heinlein juveniles. Sometimes I get a little confused with the science and the slang, but a lot of it is like sf candy, told from a young but very smart girl's point of view. It takes place on an asteroid converted into a space ship orbiting the sun between earth and mars (I had to look up what aphelion and perihelion mean), so there's a lot of tricks with gravity. Nice and short and it's a standalone story, I think (EDIT: not really). Unheard of in publishing these days. Why doesn't Barnes write stuff like this now? I guess it didn't sell well. Maybe it's a little too challenging for kids, and yet it's a kid's point of view. There's some heavy stuff about the future of earth, alternating with kids having fun in school, so far. Pos-def!

page 101/245 - Now it's getting more serious, more like Ender's Game. There's some suprising sexual references, and lots of math references. I didn't realize Luke reviewed one of the books in this series on his podcast, The Sky So Big So Black http://www.sfbrp.com/archives/98 . I like the succinct writing style, where you infer everyone's feelings from their actions and dialog, and not have it spelled out for you in long interior dialogs. Oh, this might be similar to Heinlein's Podkayne of Mars, which has a young female main character.

pg 215/245 - Almost done. Will easily finish in an hour. Kind of dragging my feet. I think I have ADD, and only like things new and shiny. There's a lot of crying.

pg 218/218 - Err, there is really only 218 pages. The rest is a preview of another book, a million doors or something. So, not bad. At least the narration is interesting. She's been assigned to write a novel for the world to see the asteroid culture, and commenting on it as she goes along.

[LauraW · Rating 4 out of 5]

The writing in this book is a bit dated and the time frames are no longer far in the future, but the central premise is still interesting: how can people raised in one culture raise children to manage a better culture? What happens if they cannot understand the changes they have wrought? Is the ending realistic? Problematic? Overly positive? This is not a great book, in terms of fascinating characters or riveting plot, but I do enjoy thinking about the above questions.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Melpomene Murray, age 13! One of Barnes most memorable characters. This is Barnes Light, and I have good memories of it. Let's see what I can find in the files: OK, here's part of an exchange with Rich Horton at rasfw, in 1999. Me: [browses booklog], I gave the highest score, for the Barnes books I've read (and remembered to log!), to Orbital Resonance (1991): A, close to A+, with a note to reread it sometime. I did, in late 2014, and logged "really good book" then.

I miss rasfw. Even though it was a fearsome time sink! Like this isn't ?

[Wealhtheow · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first thought, on starting this book, was that the main character had a fantastic name: Melpomene Murray. The same naming convention as for asteroids exists for her generation. This is only the first of many differences between generations. In Mel's parents' lifetime, Earth's crumbling infrastructure finally collapsed. mutAIDS, ecological disaster, and countless wars all erupted in the same decade, killing much of Earth's population and leaving the planet almost uninhabitable. Mel's parents and a few thousand others escaped to live on a commercial space colony, The Flying Dutchman. They've raised their children to live in space, but are surprised at just how strange their children are to them.

Mel is a logical, empathic teenager, and I really liked her. When an immigrant from Earth joins her class, she tries to help him integrate. She is dumbfounded by the social changes he brings about, and hurt by her friends' new behavior. Barnes has written a book that captures the awkward stage of coming of age both for humans and new societies. It's a very interesting novel, and if it weren't for the last few chapters (which dribble on to no purpose), I would have rated this far higher.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

On the surface, much of the book describes adolescent lives - that by itself would not interest me.

But there are other layers. The story takes place on a hollowed-out asteroid which orbits the Sun such that at one point it passes near Earth and at another time passes near Mars. This "ship" is still in the process of being transformed for interplanetary commerce. In various ways, life differs from what we're used to on Earth, so we see future possibilities.

As the story progresses, we learn that Earth experienced a worldwide catastrophe several decades ago. Earth's population and ability to maintain a technological civilization by itself has be seriously reduced. On the ship there are two main generations: Those who came to the ship as adults lived through the catastrophe by being individualists who were willing to do whatever they had to in order to survive. These parent-age people were recruited to be crew members by the private company that owns and runs the ship. The company wants the people aboard the ship to be loyal company employees who act as a team for the best interests of the company. That's a different personality type than those original crew members. The younger people on the ship - including the adolescent main characters - have been socially engineers, hypnotized, and otherwise manipulated according to a plan which was thought to result in the desired loyal company team members. However, the older generation, which was shaped by life on Earth and the catastrophe, haven't accurately understood all of the effects of life on the ship and the various manipulations on their children...

Younger reader may be happy to see that (eventually) the parents admit that teens know better than grown-ups.

***

The story thread about parents whose personalities and conceptual frameworks were molded by the old society's framework didn't anticipate some dynamics of life in the new framework reminded me of an analogous issue. While building a post-capitalist society we may find that those raised under capitalism don't always anticipate some of the dynamics of the new society. It is good to know this and prepare for it.

[Liriope · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this read. The beginning threw me off a bit-the story is told as though written by the main character. The main character is also quite young (12) although people reach adult status earlier in the novel.

It also uses made-up slang, which I usually find very annoying and overused in most books, but it wasn't annoying in this one. For one thing, there were only a couple of slang words, which were easy to pick up from the context and weren't used so much that they became irritating.

It's actually a very mature book considering most of the characters ages. The book also has kind of a psychology/sociology in space thing going on. The situation and relationship with Earth is very interesting and well developed, although it's not overstressed.

My only complaint is that this book ended too soon! Good thing for me there's a couple more books in the series (though as far as I understand, they're stand-alone but related)

[Mambo De · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sono arrivato a metà, ma è di una noia, di una rottura di coglioni unica. Scritto/tradotto male.
Bo, Uranino delusino.

[Tikhon Jelvis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A post-climate-disaster, far-future space-faring book set on a space ship built out of an asteroid in the distant future of... 2025...

Dates aside, I actually found Orbital Resonance more interesting and engaging than I expected. I picked the book up because it looked like the kind of generic space science fiction I've enjoyed ever since middle school. And in some ways that's what it was, but it managed to have some interesting twists and strong characterization while also avoiding most of the predictable tropes and cliches of the genre.

While the book had its share of neat (and thoroughly plausible!) ideas about long-term living in space, the focus was more sociological: what would it be like to grow up in an odd sort of artificially managed collectivist culture? Could one generation really manage and control the next generation to such an extent, even in as confined a setting as an asteroid space ship? Just writing out the questions like this feels a bit bland, but Orbital Resonance introduced the ideas gradually enough that they felt more natural and motivated. At the very least, I was certainly interested in following along to see how everything played out, and I'd recommend the book to anybody else as well.

And hey, while having some interesting twists, Orbital Resonance still was a bit nostalgic for me! It's exactly the sort of book I could imagine checking out from my local library back when I was a teen. And, in fact, that was exactly how I read my last John Barnes book—One for the Morning Glory—although that one was so different in style, tone and content it's hard to believe it was written by the same person. But hey, I still remember it 15 years later (as much for the amusing wordplay as anything else), so it left a nice impression!

[Kathy KS · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written in 1991, this tale of life on a space station inside an asteroid is somewhat outdated but worth reading and pondering. Since many changes in technology have happened to our world a few things might have been written differently. And the action takes place on that space station largely during the years 2025-2026. The young people have always lived there; the adults probably are close to my own children's current ages, so have memories of life on Earth before some pretty awful events have left it a mere shadow of our world. (I enjoyed this because it certainly hasn't happened that quickly!)

A pre-teen is asked to write a book about life on the Station that can be shared with the people on Earth so that they can understand daily life for the spacers. In this way, it's a school story. But there are many things that might make this a good book for discussion about things that are both the same and different from our current world. The viewpoints of the young people about privacy actually might be closer than we think. Some people might think things seem very "touchy-feely", but the whole society is worth thinking about. (No more because of giving spoilers)

Although I found it interesting, I read the blurbs about the next three books in the series. They might tie together, but I don't think I'll be continuing with them.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book had an impact on me when I read it in 7th grade,* and I've thought about it from time to time since then. Over the years the title faded from my memory. When I started my Goodreads about and tried to add it, I drew a blank.

15 years of wondering, I finally figured out the name! Figured I should get around to reading it and, surprisingly, the book holds up 30 years later. Barnes is writing to a "coming of age" audience and trying to help his young readers work though ideas of social dynamics, hierarchies, and why we act the way we do at that age, but even though it's a bit transparent the main character is very believable as are many of the other characters and I think he succeeded. The primary quandry about social engineering and the impact adults have as they try to shape youth is interesting. SciFi concepts throughout the book also hold up fine, nothing special but enough to be interesting.


* A female classmate loaned me her copy and said I should read it. I just now realized that we resemble two of the main characters in several ways and she may have been subtly flirting, but I was naive, oblivious, and shy at the time, so nothing came of it.

[Kevin Phyland · Rating 3 out of 5]

Melpomene Murray is a 13yo girl on the space colony Flying Dutchman, which orbits elliptically between Earth and Mars. As part of a school course she is tasked with writing a book about her experiences, ostensibly to explain their upbringing to Earth inhabitants. Earth has been practically destroyed by disease and wars and the children and teens on the habitat have been raised to cooperate with each other ‘for the good of the ship’. They are constantly surveilled, but gradually Melpomene finds anomalies between how the kids behave on the ship and how their parents and other Earthsiders behave. When Theophilus, a new student from Earth arrives, he disrupts their social system with aggression and isolation tactics and the adults seem unconcerned. It finally dawns on Melpomene that they are an experiment and it looks like it might have failed… John Barnes has given us a fascinating and entertaining glimpse into Homo nova in a coming-of-age tale worthy of the Heinlein YA novels. Well worth a read for adults down to tweens.

[Karl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short, character-driven science fiction novel set in what was, at the time of publication, the near future of the 2020s. The action occurs on a modified asteroid converted into an orbital habitat, Flying Dutchman, which is a haven from an Earth suffering from terminal ecological and social decay. The best part of the book is the first hand perspective of Melpomene Murray, a thirteen year old born on the Flying Dutchman, as she navigates the usual challenges of adolescence and the special circumstances under which she lives. Melpomene is a great character, funny and empathetic, and her honest reflections on her life and those around her make the book highly readable. John Barnes is engaged in a lot of world-building, gradually revealing the details of Earth's rather dismal future and the social dynamics of Flying Dutchman's society. The story is deceptively minimal, as there are larger issues about social hierarchies, the expectations of older generations for their children, and questions about individual will hidden behind the coming of age story.

The depiction of life on the asteroid settlement was one of the better parts of the book, and it comes across as fairly believable. The settlers from Earth have traded their privacy and chance for solitude for a degree of safety and modest comfort. Their children, born in space and seeing Earth as a curious "other", are better adapted to this life and ultimately Melpomene will subvert the hidden agenda of her parents and teachers. I did think that too much of the novel was taken up with descriptions of sporting events and academic competitions. While they do drive the development of the characters and their relationships, it got a little repetitive after a while. I found Melpomene's teen angst to be generally well balanced against the other aspects of the novel, though your mileage may vary on the somewhat familiar young adult protagonist tropes. Flying Dutchman is a fascinating setting, though even in 1991, I might have doubted that something so large and complex could have been built within 20 years, even under the best of circumstances. I do not judge science fiction on its prophetic ability, but the book does have a common feature of much of near-future SF in taking contemporary problems and amplifying them to disaster levels. Sadly, climatic collapse, regional wars, and pandemics are not so strange a prediction for the 2020s after all...

[Beelzefuzz · Rating 2 out of 5]

The overall idea being explored is interesting: kids being programmed by their parents, but their parents not anticipating everything the new world could bring and therefore the programming being incomplete.
The tone is inconsistent: it is simplistic and YA, then people are rubbing one out to go to sleep or talking about erections. So who is the target audience? Maybe I don't read enough YA to know if masturbating is a common plot device.
If it is not YA, there are no stakes for anything happening unless failing a class is important to you, but would anything bad happen to these people except they take the class over again? They do not even wring their hands and cray about possibly being held back. No reason to care about taking tests over and over for roughly 100 pages.

Overall, this seems to be a reaction to Ender's Game --explaining future school and pointless games, but unlike Ender's Game, there is never a payoff for having to sit through this stuff.

[Garry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Barnes is one of those authors whom I rarely agree with but enjoy the writing oh so much. He hits to the heart of sci-fi, examining various concepts and then asking "What it would it look like if we really did this?" In this case he asks what would happen if we educated/hypnotized/indoctrinated an entire generation of children to simply be better people than the previous generation? Its a great question, but I disagree with his premise that one can educated certain elements out of our hearts. Regardless, I enjoyed the journey.

[Albert_Camus_lives]

Melpomene Murray's concerns are those of any teenager: homework, friends, dates. But Melpomene lives on the Flying Dutchman, an asteroid colony located thousands of miles from an Earth almost destroyed by disease, war, and pollution. She and her spaceborn classmates are humanity's last hope, and Mel's just starting to realize how heavy a responsibility that is.

[William Crosby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice to have a scifi writer who makes up lingo. (It's annoying to read other writers who use 20th century U.S. slang and lingo even though the setting is in the 23rd century.)

Written as a journal story by a teen. Too much teen angst and relationship stuff.

A social commentary on how deviance (unco's) is developed (using practices common in late 20th century earth).

[Beth Friedman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reread after many years. It feels weirdly dated, especially since it was written in 1991 but is set right around now. We have a better future than this book did, but the book has better tech. This is one of my two favorite John Barnes books.

[Nate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fine. Perfectly good book. Just not to my taste.

[Edward Johnston · Rating 5 out of 5]

I last read this 20 years ago and it stuck with me. I am keeping it on my shelf

[Mirko Mattiuzzo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Un mucchio di cazzate, parole inventate senza senso e scrittura che non so neanche come offendere. Forse due stelle sono perfino troppe

[Guido]

Why you might like it: Polity/world design with engineering texture. Rubric match: not yet scored. Uses your engineering/rigor/first-contact/world-building rubric. Tags: near-future, polity, ideas

[Berna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liked it, but not in a couldn’t put it down sort of way.

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally published on my blog here in October 1999.

The front cover of this edition bears an endorsement from Orson Scott Card comparing Barnes to Robert A. Heinlein. On the basis of earlier Barnes novels, the John Brunner-like Mother of Storms and the brutal Kaleidoscope Century, this may seem rather a strange comparison to make. Yet Orbital Resonance is distinctly reminiscent of the best of Heinlein's books for teenagers, a tradition to which Card's own Ender's Game perhaps also belongs. (Orbital Resonance has a low-gravity game which is quite similar to that battle room in Ender's Game.

Set on a space station designed to aid the colonisation of Mars, the background to Orbital Resonance is a ruined Earth in only a few decades time. The satellite is the last bastion of the civilisation of mankind; there a group of gifted children are being conditioned to become the new elite of the human race. The novel takes the form of the journal of one of these children, Melpomene Murray, as they approach adulthood and a crisis in the form of a new arrival from Earth in their class.

Barnes also makes points about the way that the West lives today, by looking at how the relatively affluent children on the satellite see the lives of those remaining on Earth's surface, a place of continual famine and desperate want. Part of the school curriculum is a subject intended to enhance the children's understanding of and empathy for what is going on, yet they are virtually unaffected by the video footage, merely making such callous and stupid comments as "why don't they just grow more food?". They may be gifted, but they find it exceptionally difficult to understand any point of view different from the culture conditioned on them; another example is the complete incomprehension the narrator has as to why her word processor might possibly query the use of the word "clitoris" as "audience-inappropriate" (after all, girls on Earth must have them too).

Like Heinlein, Barnes manages to write convincingly as a bright teenage girl. (As a man in his thirties, I may not be the best judge of this, but he at least convinced me.) The sentimentality of Heinlein is absent, and Melpomene's crushing discovery of the years of manipulation at the hands of her parents is strongly handled.

[Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Orbital Resonance" by John Barnes examines the life of its protagonist, 13-year old Melpomeme Murray, in a combination of a coming of age tale and sociological and political commentary about an alternate future involving a rapidly degenerating Earth. I didn't know what to expect for this, being my first Barnes novel overall, but I was pleasantly surprised and drawn into many of the moments within this work.

Melopomeme is a likable lead to follow. I'll fully admit that I liked and identified with her voice and natural poise for relating her experiences (even down to the special language she uses, like "Pos-def"). She's described in the way of a typical teenager - having school, friends, and other concerns, though she lives within an asteroid colony called "The Flying Dutchman". Given the terrible state of Earth with dwindling resources, an outbreak of mutAIDS, ongoing war and hostility among other factors, generations are being transferred to the asteroid colonies in order to save humanity as they know it. Melopmeme tells of her day to day trials and tribulations. Some of it is very interesting, especially the ongoing trials of Melpomeme helping a new recruit adjust to his life on the colony despite the social stigma that others assign to him (Randy). It operates very much like what the social clique system operates with teens in today's society, though having more weight since the environment weighs much more on delegating these kids have to work together as a central group. There are other things like the games that are vivid and interesting to watch unfold. Barnes has an intriguing blend of imagination as well as commentary about the weight of the issues he depicts.

However, I have to say there were many times when the work tends to dwindle too much, and it took me a while to get through those parts in order to hit the next point where it became intriguing again. It takes slice of life, political/social commentary, and science fiction and wraps it all into a web of experiences for the heroine, though I think the last chapter could've amounted to more than what it did, to my chagrin. The book also shows its age in places since it was penned in 1991, so there may be aspects where the ideals seem outdated or odd with the mention of certain years.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed most of the ride that "Orbital Resonance" took me on, and appreciated some of the messages that it put forward. I know it's the first book in a related (but not necessarily connected) series, and I'm interested enough to pursue the other books to see where they go.

Overall score: 3/5

[Fabio R. Crespi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Urania ha appena pubblicato "Risonanza orbitale" ("Orbital Resonance"; trad. di Stefano Ternavasio), primo romanzo della serie "Century Next Door" di John Barnes, originariamente pubblicato nel 1991.
Mi pare opportuno specificarlo perché la storia si svolge negli anni 2024/2025 ed è ambientata su un'asteroide/astronave (in divenire) con un'orbita modulata in modo che "l’afelio sia sempre un passaggio ravvicinato a Marte e il perielio un passaggio ravvicinato alla Terra". Ma quanto eravamo ottimisti all'inizio degli anni '90 per penasre che il nostro progresso ci avrebbe portato lassù in una trentina d'anni?

"Tu appartieni alla nave"
La popolazione terrestre è stata decimata dalla Moria (sorta di evoluzione dell'AIDS) e il pianeta è stato successivamente reso quasi invivibile dall'Euroguerra: pochi rimangono sulla Terra, Marte è in fase di terraformazione e sull'Olandese Volante, asteroide/astronave a cui accennavo sopra, viene istruita una nuova generazione di esseri umani nati nello spazio.
Il racconto avviene in forma di diario tenuto da una tredicenne destinata ad essere una figura rilevante nel "Piano", programmato per la rinascita dell'umanità. In realtà si tratta di un lavoro di ingegneria sociale praticato su una popolazione quasi aliena rispetto alla cultura terrestre e, una volta rivelato il piano, non esattamente d'accordo con le linee di sviluppo previste all'origine dai terrestri (o "lombrichi", come definiti dalla nuova popolazione).

Il romanzo ha il sapore antico delle storie di formazione fantascientifiche denominate "juvenile" (tipo "Podkayne of Mars" di Heinlein, per intenderci - anche se l'autore non lo considerava un juvenile): storie comunque con uno spessore diverso dall'attuale narrativa young adult. E, infatti, l'autore mette parecchia carne al fuoco in quello che è il diario di una ragazzina che sta per entrare nell'età adulta (a quindici anni) e riesce a dipingere un quadro interessante (e ottimistico, nonostante le premesse) per un possibile futuro che la nuova umanità potrebbe costruire. L'unico difetto della storia è l'utilizzo di alcuni termini di uno slang giovanile, che risulta piuttosto artificioso. Ma si tratta di un peccato veniale.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this, written as though by the teenage protagonist Melpomene who's required to compose something for people on earth to help them understand life on an asteroid. It becomes something of a diary. A new kid arrives from earth, and as she writes about the incidents that ensue and about things going on in her personal life, we discover issues of conflict in a society that's based on consensus, where being branded an "unco" (uncooperative?) is a serious problem.

I noticed in particular that the educational system employed a fascinating blend of competition and collaboration -- students always know their own exact rank, and strive to increase it; yet, they're routinely grouped with others in a way that makes that rank partially dependent on their helping all the weaker students. An interesting adaptation to a culture in which everyone's life depends on everyone else's ability to do his/her job well.

One thing I found particularly interesting was the question of how the adults had programmed their children, and whether they had the right to mess with their minds, even though they thought it was for the good of the group .

This is an excellent read for those who like their science fiction to raise moral questions as well as to entertain. I'll definitely read the others in the series. Apparently, I already read and enjoyed #4, but it was quite a while ago and I don't remember it. Better to do them all in order now, though I can't tell whether any of the books in the series is actually dependent on the others or shares any characters.

[Enrico Ravelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

John Barnes nel 1991 scrive uno young adult destinato ad un pubblico adulto. Romanzo riuscito? Ni! Risonanza Orbitale è una storia di luci e ombre con tanti Pro ed altrettanti Cons. Il format è quello di un draft che l’adolescente Melipomene, scrive prima come sorta di compito, poi come guida per i terrestri alla conoscenza della struttura spaziale in cui vive. Barnes rende credibile questa ragazzina in transito puberale e i suoi rapporti con i coetanei, ma se guardate in controluce si vede l’autore interessato sostanzialmente ad illustrare alcune teorie di ingegneria sociale. Il ritmo in diverse parti è veloce e godibile, ma in altre come durante le spiegazioni delle gare di matematica, di discipline sociali o addirittura dei loro sport ricreativi rallenta e fa sprofondare il lettore (quantomeno me) nella noia. Decisamente interessante l’ammissione che pianificazioni ed ingegneria sociale sono ad alto tasso di rischio causa l’imprevedibilità del singolo e l’impossibilita di prevedere tutte le variabili (alla faccia della Psicostoria di Sari Heldon) ma la soluzione scelta mi ha lasciato un po' freddo. Romanzo sufficiente, ma nel mio caso destinato a non essere memorabile. Ad maiora

[Gar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Part of John Barnes' "Century Next Door/Meme Wars" un-series (as they're not sequels, simply related and connected). Definitely the most lighthearted and least apocalyptic of the three I've read (still tracking down the fourth), but also the least satisfying.

At this point in the world's timeline, Earth is pretty much a shambles, its ecology thrashing due to some extrapolated quasi-weapons technology and thus most heavy industry moved off-world. The Flying Dutchman is a "transfer ship" designed to stay in long orbit as a generation ship; the new generation of kids born on the ship are all basically molded and mentally conditioned and mildly-brain-stapled from early on--but this isn't gone into in thoughtful depth, because it's from the kids' perspective. It's a mild coming-of-age tale overall, with a rather abrupt stopping rather than an ending.

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although the main character is thirteen-year-old Melpomene Murrary, this is not a story for young people. Although she lives on an asteroid colony desperately needed to supply a dying Earth, this is not a story about space and space-faring. It is very much a story of social engineering in the mode of Ender's Game. It asks the same question, what would you do to a group of young people who must must fulfill the desperate mission of Earth? Instead of competitive geniuses though, these engineers create a society where young people don't want to function outside of their highly cooperative groups. All of their schooling and grading is built on this group model. This makes tremendous sense in this environment except when you need a leader.

This is an amazingly creative novel and thought-provoking as well.