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Twenty Planets
Dark Orbit
Reports of a strange, new habitable planet have reached the Twenty Planets of human civilization. When a team of scientists is assembled to investigate this world, exoethnologist Sara Callicot is recruited to keep an eye on an unstable crewmate. Thora was once a member of the interplanetary elite, but since her prophetic delusions helped mobilize a revolt on Orem, she’s been banished to the farthest reaches of space, because of the risk that her very presence could revive unrest.
Upon arrival, the team finds an extraordinary crystalline planet, laden with dark matter. Then a crew member is murdered and Thora mysteriously disappears. Thought to be uninhabited, the planet is in fact home to a blind, sentient species whose members navigate their world with a bizarre vocabulary and extrasensory perceptions.
Lost in the deep crevasses of the planet among these people, Thora must battle her demons and learn to comprehend the native inhabitants in order to find her crewmates and warn them of an impending danger. But her most difficult task may lie in persuading the crew that some powers lie beyond the boundaries of science.
Upon arrival, the team finds an extraordinary crystalline planet, laden with dark matter. Then a crew member is murdered and Thora mysteriously disappears. Thought to be uninhabited, the planet is in fact home to a blind, sentient species whose members navigate their world with a bizarre vocabulary and extrasensory perceptions.
Lost in the deep crevasses of the planet among these people, Thora must battle her demons and learn to comprehend the native inhabitants in order to find her crewmates and warn them of an impending danger. But her most difficult task may lie in persuading the crew that some powers lie beyond the boundaries of science.
304 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 14, 2015
106 people are currently reading
5426 people want to read
About the author
Carolyn Ives Gilman
86 books158 followersCarolyn Ives Gilman has been publishing science fiction and fantasy for almost twenty years. Her first novel, Halfway Human, published by Avon/Eos in 1998, was called “one of the most compelling explorations of gender and power in recent SF” by Locus magazine. Her short fiction has appeared in magazines and anthologies such as F&SF, Bending the Landscape, The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Realms of Fantasy, The Best From Fantasy & Science Fiction, Interzone, Universe, Full Spectrum, and others. Her fiction has been translated into Italian, Russian, German, Czech and Romanian. In 1992 she was a finalist for the Nebula Award for her novella, “The Honeycrafters.”
In her professional career, Gilman is a historian specializing in 18th and early 19th-century North American history, particularly frontier and Native history. Her most recent nonfiction book, Lewis and Clark: Across the Divide, was published in 2003 by Smithsonian Books. She has been a guest lecturer at the Library of Congress, Harvard University, and Monticello, and has been interviewed on All Things Considered (NPR), Talk of the Nation (NPR), History Detectives (PBS), and the History Channel.
Carolyn Ives Gilman lives in St. Louis and works for the Missouri Historical Society as a historian and museum curator.
In her professional career, Gilman is a historian specializing in 18th and early 19th-century North American history, particularly frontier and Native history. Her most recent nonfiction book, Lewis and Clark: Across the Divide, was published in 2003 by Smithsonian Books. She has been a guest lecturer at the Library of Congress, Harvard University, and Monticello, and has been interviewed on All Things Considered (NPR), Talk of the Nation (NPR), History Detectives (PBS), and the History Channel.
Carolyn Ives Gilman lives in St. Louis and works for the Missouri Historical Society as a historian and museum curator.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 374 reviews
January 14, 2016
I don't know that I've ever said this, but what this story needs is more words.
You read that right.
Sara, an exoethnologist, has just returned to her home world of Capella. Things have changed quite a bit since she was last here, most significantly, a former mentor is now a government power-player and wants her to take a position on a first-contact mission. Unofficially, he'd also like her to keep tabs on a disgraced member of his clan. She readily agrees, and shortly after she and the contact team are beamed fifty-eight light years away to the first contact ship orbiting above the inhabited planet. And that is when things really get strange.
Sara is an easy character to relate to; a natural skeptic, independent, mischievous--a narrative centering on her was an easy way to be introduced to concepts of traveling between planets and the resulting challenges of time-line management. Before long, Gilman added the journal entries of Thora, the woman Sara is monitoring. Initially, I treated the journal entries as a secondary voice, but eventually they consumed the narrative and became one of the driving story-lines, not mere background device. The result is--in my immediate opinion--a bit of a scramble. Third person, first person historical, second person, dream states, first person. More words might have smoothed some of this out.
Then there's a plot. The beginning creates the assumption that Thora is in need of a minder, and Sara seems to fit the part. However, Sara's given almost no information about Thora (nor time to find it out, apparently). Not long after the group is established on the ship, a guard is murdered. Strangely, it becomes an event that is quickly forgotten. Other significant events happen and are equally quickly set aside. Given the character development, it left me puzzled that any of our characters could be so sidetracked.
I was reminded of a recent Ilona Andrews post where she advised on the use of flashbacks and whether they take a reader out of the narrative. The parallel here is that the many plot lines treated with virtually equal importance took me out of whatever plot I was following at the time. Gilman should have decided which was more important--the protection/Sara/Thora mystery, the events of discovery and first-contact, the exploration of metaphysical consciousness. They don't quite gestalt at the end, leaving me confused at what I was supposed to be reading.
What kept me going was excellent characterization and a clear strength of the story. The self-discovery of two of the characters felt quite genuine. It more than passes the Bechdel test with a variety of primary and secondary female characters interacting in many different capacities. There are a multitude of planets and cultural groups, so it is also pleasant to have a vague but present idea of future multi-culturalism, much like Star Trek: Next Generation. (Also like Star Trek, there are apparently 'good' cultures and 'bad' cultures).
I also enjoyed the metaphysics of the story, although they didn't really evolve until mid-book. The science, however, was strictly for people that can accept a number of devices and not sweat the details. It reminded me of LeGuin and her device the 'ansible' that allowed instantaneous communication; there's a bit more psuedo-science than I suspect hard-core sci-fi fans might like. But it contains a bunch of interesting concepts to play around with.
Ursula LeGuin blurbed this--not an everyday occurrence--so I was expecting something quite great. However--and I mean this in the kindest way possible--this is LeGuin Lite. It will suit readers who don't have the patience for her slow and weighty building (a group in which I can sometimes be counted). There are Big Ideas here, but I don't think Gilman knows exactly the story she wants to tell. An author to look out for, certainly, but not a book for my shelves.
July 16, 2015
4 of 5 stars at The BiblioSanctum http://bibliosanctum.com/2015/07/16/b...
Dark Orbit is a fascinating novel and I enjoyed it a lot, but the book description is misleading, making it sound like it is a murder mystery (it’s really not), as well as a first contact with an alien species is involved (well, only sort of). However, I was hooked by the idea of an interdisciplinary team of scientists going on a research expedition to study a strange new planet, and as an Anthropology nerd, I was especially intrigued that an “exoethnologist” would be one of the main protagonists.
Said exoethnologist is Saraswati Callicot, who is also known as a Waster – someone who spends her life traveling to study worlds that can be light-years away, using wayport technology. Even though leaping across those great distances feel almost instantaneous to her, decades could have passed by in the normal flow of time. Sara is no stranger to leaving family, friends, and homes behind, not knowing if they will still be there when she emerges on the other side.
Her latest mission takes her farther than she has ever been, 58 light-years away to a newly discovered planet surrounded by dark matter, believed to be uninhabited. Sara’s official role on the ship is to study the interactions of the science team, even though that is only a cover for her real assignment to keep an eye on a fellow crewmate, a mystic named Thora Lassiter. Once a member of the elite, Thora has since fallen from grace due to her involvement in an uprising on the planet Orem, and the experience has left her somewhat unstable. This has also made Thora a political target, which makes Sara’s protection all the more important. However, not long after their arrival at the new planet dubbed Iris, a dead body of a crew member is found brutally decapitated, and on the landing crew’s first venture onto the planet surface, Thora disappears. The scientists also discover that Iris is in fact home to a civilization of people who are unable to see but have instead developed extrasensory perceptions to help them adapt perfectly to their lightless environment.
Nothing is as it seems in this story about facing an uncanny new world and being presented with the bizarre and unexplained. Dark Orbit explores important questions about human reactions to never-before-seen experiences, like encountering unknown alien societies and cultures. Unlike a lot of other narratives in this vein, the scientists in this book actually take a benevolent and holistic approach to the task, combining knowledge from their respective areas of expertise to solve the mystery of Iris while trying (as best they can) to follow all the interplanetary rules of establishing first contact. I found all this rather unique. I also think Anthropology enthusiasts will get a kick out of ideas presented in this novel which combines a variety of concepts from the study of humankind, and at the center of everything are the issues of cultural relativism and cultural preservation.
Newly discovered cultures are treated as a valuable resource, a font of information to learn from. Even an experienced and well-traveled exoethnologist like Sara starts to see things differently when she comes in contact with the blind society of Iris. Of all our senses, sight is perhaps the one we most take for granted, and this book definitely puts it in a whole new light. Carolyn Ives Gilman shows how important context is when looking at the way traditions develop, presenting it as a process that involves biological and environmental factors. In a less direct manner, the story also provides fascinating commentary into the nature of disability and the idea that it is relative, both physically and culturally. For instance, Thora is as helpless as a baby in the caverns of Torobe where the darkness is absolute, and multiple attempts to “teach” a local girl Moth how to see are met with failure because it was never an adaptation she needed in the first place.
Though I found Dark Orbit utterly engrossing, it’s also probably safe to say I enjoyed the book’s ideas more than the actual story. The plot itself is somewhat disjointed and hard to make sense of, and I did not much care for Thora’s point-of-view being told through the format of a transcribed audio diary, or her character herself that matter. In sum, this reads more like a philosophical piece than a mystery or a traditional tale of first contact, very different from the kind of story indicated by the novel’s blurb.
However, I was won over by Gilman’s deft handling of subjects that I have a deep interest in, even though this normally wouldn’t be my type of book. If you enjoy thought-provoking science-fiction, this might just work well for you too.
Dark Orbit is a fascinating novel and I enjoyed it a lot, but the book description is misleading, making it sound like it is a murder mystery (it’s really not), as well as a first contact with an alien species is involved (well, only sort of). However, I was hooked by the idea of an interdisciplinary team of scientists going on a research expedition to study a strange new planet, and as an Anthropology nerd, I was especially intrigued that an “exoethnologist” would be one of the main protagonists.
Said exoethnologist is Saraswati Callicot, who is also known as a Waster – someone who spends her life traveling to study worlds that can be light-years away, using wayport technology. Even though leaping across those great distances feel almost instantaneous to her, decades could have passed by in the normal flow of time. Sara is no stranger to leaving family, friends, and homes behind, not knowing if they will still be there when she emerges on the other side.
Her latest mission takes her farther than she has ever been, 58 light-years away to a newly discovered planet surrounded by dark matter, believed to be uninhabited. Sara’s official role on the ship is to study the interactions of the science team, even though that is only a cover for her real assignment to keep an eye on a fellow crewmate, a mystic named Thora Lassiter. Once a member of the elite, Thora has since fallen from grace due to her involvement in an uprising on the planet Orem, and the experience has left her somewhat unstable. This has also made Thora a political target, which makes Sara’s protection all the more important. However, not long after their arrival at the new planet dubbed Iris, a dead body of a crew member is found brutally decapitated, and on the landing crew’s first venture onto the planet surface, Thora disappears. The scientists also discover that Iris is in fact home to a civilization of people who are unable to see but have instead developed extrasensory perceptions to help them adapt perfectly to their lightless environment.
Nothing is as it seems in this story about facing an uncanny new world and being presented with the bizarre and unexplained. Dark Orbit explores important questions about human reactions to never-before-seen experiences, like encountering unknown alien societies and cultures. Unlike a lot of other narratives in this vein, the scientists in this book actually take a benevolent and holistic approach to the task, combining knowledge from their respective areas of expertise to solve the mystery of Iris while trying (as best they can) to follow all the interplanetary rules of establishing first contact. I found all this rather unique. I also think Anthropology enthusiasts will get a kick out of ideas presented in this novel which combines a variety of concepts from the study of humankind, and at the center of everything are the issues of cultural relativism and cultural preservation.
Newly discovered cultures are treated as a valuable resource, a font of information to learn from. Even an experienced and well-traveled exoethnologist like Sara starts to see things differently when she comes in contact with the blind society of Iris. Of all our senses, sight is perhaps the one we most take for granted, and this book definitely puts it in a whole new light. Carolyn Ives Gilman shows how important context is when looking at the way traditions develop, presenting it as a process that involves biological and environmental factors. In a less direct manner, the story also provides fascinating commentary into the nature of disability and the idea that it is relative, both physically and culturally. For instance, Thora is as helpless as a baby in the caverns of Torobe where the darkness is absolute, and multiple attempts to “teach” a local girl Moth how to see are met with failure because it was never an adaptation she needed in the first place.
Though I found Dark Orbit utterly engrossing, it’s also probably safe to say I enjoyed the book’s ideas more than the actual story. The plot itself is somewhat disjointed and hard to make sense of, and I did not much care for Thora’s point-of-view being told through the format of a transcribed audio diary, or her character herself that matter. In sum, this reads more like a philosophical piece than a mystery or a traditional tale of first contact, very different from the kind of story indicated by the novel’s blurb.
However, I was won over by Gilman’s deft handling of subjects that I have a deep interest in, even though this normally wouldn’t be my type of book. If you enjoy thought-provoking science-fiction, this might just work well for you too.
February 8, 2017
I liked this more than I thought I would, rounding up to a 3.5 stars, but even though the big ideas were pretty interesting in themselves, it didn't quite reach the level I thought I wanted.
These big ideas came pretty fast and furious after a certain point, which I have no problems with. The novel begins with solid characterization, fairly interesting first-contact scenarios including the normal fish-out-of-water plots on both sides of the glass.
There's dark matter and interesting gravitational effects, but lest we get complacent with our word play, the most interesting part of this novel was the whole society of the sightless.
Orbits. As in Orbital Sockets. Pretty funny.
Is the world-building interesting and complete? Sort-of. Perhaps I'd have preferred a bit more in-depth exploration of the possibilities rather than just rolling around the surface of the blindness. The traversing of Branes was definitely interesting, but I don't know. Something about the novel felt too glitz and glam, relying on the surface of the ideas rather than the depth of the consequences.
There is a lot that happens on the idea side, though. Don't get me wrong. The novel isn't a slouch in that area. It's just that something didn't quite click with me on the sheer *story* side. It didn't wow me the way I was beginning to feel it might. Some of the conclusions were rather interesting, but it felt more like a rehashing of the old idea that certain senses or strengthened when a big one is lacking. Maybe I just wanted a little bit more.
Overall, I kept feeling like the novel kept coming closer to something really great, but it just missed that one little ingredient to push it there.
On that idea, I'm more than happy to check out the author's other books. She has certain strengths that I feel are kind of lacking in our modern SF. She's trying to make great characters and situations mesh with the great Idea realm that SF has always been known for. I can't deny that it's a great goal to strive for.
These big ideas came pretty fast and furious after a certain point, which I have no problems with. The novel begins with solid characterization, fairly interesting first-contact scenarios including the normal fish-out-of-water plots on both sides of the glass.
There's dark matter and interesting gravitational effects, but lest we get complacent with our word play, the most interesting part of this novel was the whole society of the sightless.
Orbits. As in Orbital Sockets. Pretty funny.
Is the world-building interesting and complete? Sort-of. Perhaps I'd have preferred a bit more in-depth exploration of the possibilities rather than just rolling around the surface of the blindness. The traversing of Branes was definitely interesting, but I don't know. Something about the novel felt too glitz and glam, relying on the surface of the ideas rather than the depth of the consequences.
There is a lot that happens on the idea side, though. Don't get me wrong. The novel isn't a slouch in that area. It's just that something didn't quite click with me on the sheer *story* side. It didn't wow me the way I was beginning to feel it might. Some of the conclusions were rather interesting, but it felt more like a rehashing of the old idea that certain senses or strengthened when a big one is lacking. Maybe I just wanted a little bit more.
Overall, I kept feeling like the novel kept coming closer to something really great, but it just missed that one little ingredient to push it there.
On that idea, I'm more than happy to check out the author's other books. She has certain strengths that I feel are kind of lacking in our modern SF. She's trying to make great characters and situations mesh with the great Idea realm that SF has always been known for. I can't deny that it's a great goal to strive for.
zzz-books-not-for-me
February 17, 2016Read in 15-17 February, 2016. DNF:70%
Pros:
-A highly original and thought-provoking story mixed with eastern philosophy and existential questions.
-Technology - I loved how the author described the huge amount of time spent during the travel between solar systems as "going to sleep", and waking up the next day to find all your grand-children are 3 times your age! Technology plays an important role in sci-fi and the author has done her share of research.
-The Alien World - the planet is pretty unsettling, despite its beauty - tall grass that cuts like knives, caverns with rocks that reflect your image into infinity and so on. But the best and most original are the "aliens"! I'm not going to spoil anything, but let's say they have a pretty weird way of communicating and seeing the world.
-Protagonist - I enjoyed reading from her POV, too bad about half of the book is about another, less compelling character.
Cons:
-Failed to grab me completely. Despite all the Pros above, I felt detached and uninterested - not sure if it's the character's fault or the writing style, but something just didn't click for me. Even at 70% I still didn't care if I finish it or not.
-The pacing was pretty good at first, but then it felt like the story was just spinning into small circles with little to no progress whatsoever.
-Lack of sufficient description - it took me some time before I knew what the aliens actually looked like. One of the characters ends up in a place where she's practically blind so I was expecting more information about the smells, sounds and temperature of the places.
-Apart from their "communication" and "seeing" abilities, the aliens are rather dull.
-An almost-rape scene or an actual rape (not sure, I kind of tried to skip over it and avoided paying any attention) around 65-67% in the book. Really put me off and resulted in me abandoning the book.
-Bored. Just bored.
I know many people don't like leaving a book unfinished, but my personal belief is - life is too short to be wasted on things that bore you.
If you like sci-fi books with aliens and first encounters I recommend:
If you like creative and imaginative alien worlds with cool creatures, amazing characters and compelling story:
If you like it the other way around - one human ending up on an alien planet
Pros:
-A highly original and thought-provoking story mixed with eastern philosophy and existential questions.
-Technology - I loved how the author described the huge amount of time spent during the travel between solar systems as "going to sleep", and waking up the next day to find all your grand-children are 3 times your age! Technology plays an important role in sci-fi and the author has done her share of research.
-The Alien World - the planet is pretty unsettling, despite its beauty - tall grass that cuts like knives, caverns with rocks that reflect your image into infinity and so on. But the best and most original are the "aliens"! I'm not going to spoil anything, but let's say they have a pretty weird way of communicating and seeing the world.
-Protagonist - I enjoyed reading from her POV, too bad about half of the book is about another, less compelling character.
Cons:
-Failed to grab me completely. Despite all the Pros above, I felt detached and uninterested - not sure if it's the character's fault or the writing style, but something just didn't click for me. Even at 70% I still didn't care if I finish it or not.
-The pacing was pretty good at first, but then it felt like the story was just spinning into small circles with little to no progress whatsoever.
-Lack of sufficient description - it took me some time before I knew what the aliens actually looked like. One of the characters ends up in a place where she's practically blind so I was expecting more information about the smells, sounds and temperature of the places.
-Apart from their "communication" and "seeing" abilities, the aliens are rather dull.
-An almost-rape scene or an actual rape (not sure, I kind of tried to skip over it and avoided paying any attention) around 65-67% in the book. Really put me off and resulted in me abandoning the book.
-Bored. Just bored.
I know many people don't like leaving a book unfinished, but my personal belief is - life is too short to be wasted on things that bore you.
If you like sci-fi books with aliens and first encounters I recommend:
If you like creative and imaginative alien worlds with cool creatures, amazing characters and compelling story:
If you like it the other way around - one human ending up on an alien planet
November 30, 2016
I thought this one was very well written and incorporated some extremely interesting and different ideas. I loved the way dark matter and quantum entanglement were explained so clearly. I have to disagree with those who felt the ending was unsatisfactory; I was quite happy with it.
July 25, 2015
The story is that a group of scientists are on a mission to an odd solar system that looks to have a high concentration of dark matter (it's gravitationally lensing stars behind it). The main protagonist Sara is an exoethnologist with a twofold mission, to supervise the other main protagonist Thora, and to study the social structure among the other scientists. That all goes quickly out the window when Thora goes missing and the planet they're investigating turns out to be inhabited.
The setup for this one is deep, with a fascinating society in the Twenty Planets that the scientists are from, another fascinating society that Thora has just escaped from prior to the mission and the society of the natives of the planet who are all blind. Central to the book are different ways of perceiving and thinking about the world and the filters of our perceptions and cultures. The philosophy parable of Plato's Cave is in many ways central to the book (although referred to as "shadows on the wall", because otherwise it's all a bit too obvious as the blind people live in a cave).
The SF plot is cool, the idea of dark matter structures teases fascinating imagery if you know anything about the physics of dark matter. The characters are compelling, with Sara from a culture that is taught to mock and tear down authority wherever it's found and Thora recovering from a unwanted treatment for mental illness. The background and world building is amazing across all three worlds, with the barbaric culture of Orem that's left its scars on Thora overshadowing much of the book (a true rape culture where almost all relationships are defined in terms of predator/prey and there's even a name for something best described as intended rapist/preferred victim).
But all that being said, if this book is standalone then it woefully fails to follow through on all the promise of its premise. As the first book in a duology or trilogy I'd be a lot happier, but I can't find any indication that there's going to be another one. (A personal bugbear anyway; as a reader I don't mind reading the first book of a series if I'm aware that it's a series and set my expectations accordingly).
It's still good enough for me to recommend it, even though it's half a book. This is one of the few modern SF books that mostly embraces that FTL travel is not possible technologically and posits a believable interstellar society anyway. It's also a novel where the majority of the society is multi-racial and multi-ethic with believable cultural reactions to a society that has lived generations with invasive technology (privacy taboos, personal copyright morals, intellectual property of personal experiences).
The setup for this one is deep, with a fascinating society in the Twenty Planets that the scientists are from, another fascinating society that Thora has just escaped from prior to the mission and the society of the natives of the planet who are all blind. Central to the book are different ways of perceiving and thinking about the world and the filters of our perceptions and cultures. The philosophy parable of Plato's Cave is in many ways central to the book (although referred to as "shadows on the wall", because otherwise it's all a bit too obvious as the blind people live in a cave).
The SF plot is cool, the idea of dark matter structures teases fascinating imagery if you know anything about the physics of dark matter. The characters are compelling, with Sara from a culture that is taught to mock and tear down authority wherever it's found and Thora recovering from a unwanted treatment for mental illness. The background and world building is amazing across all three worlds, with the barbaric culture of Orem that's left its scars on Thora overshadowing much of the book (a true rape culture where almost all relationships are defined in terms of predator/prey and there's even a name for something best described as intended rapist/preferred victim).
But all that being said, if this book is standalone then it woefully fails to follow through on all the promise of its premise. As the first book in a duology or trilogy I'd be a lot happier, but I can't find any indication that there's going to be another one. (A personal bugbear anyway; as a reader I don't mind reading the first book of a series if I'm aware that it's a series and set my expectations accordingly).
It's still good enough for me to recommend it, even though it's half a book. This is one of the few modern SF books that mostly embraces that FTL travel is not possible technologically and posits a believable interstellar society anyway. It's also a novel where the majority of the society is multi-racial and multi-ethic with believable cultural reactions to a society that has lived generations with invasive technology (privacy taboos, personal copyright morals, intellectual property of personal experiences).
November 30, 2016
4.5. I loved the characters, the science/magic, the world building. We just need - MORE! I can imagine many endings, though, which if proof to me that this was a book that got my brain going.
April 14, 2019
'Dark Orbit' is a fast easy read which nonetheless is loaded with speculative ideas. Gravity wells, meditation, dimensions, branes, blindness, particle science and seeing reality are combined with the exploration of another planet in another galaxy far away. However heroic the pursuit of life in the Universe may be, the story of the questship Escher is a satisfying Big Idea story. A very light touch of mystery and conspiracy spike up the anxiety levels a couple of ticks. Little Moth in particular is the heart of the novel as well as the solution, so keep your eye on her (a small spoiler and as obvious as your own reality - hehe). Saying any more will diminish enjoyment. Besides, science is not my best subject, plus meditation practices are a bit beyond me except to aid me in falling asleep.
Today's scientists, at least the ones I met and know about, remind me often of the Indian tale of a group of blind wise men who touch an elephant in a single area of its body to learn what it is like. Each man examines a different part of the elephant, such as the trunk or a tusk or the ear. They each do intricate experiments, with measurements and motion, on the square foot of elephant they are exploring, quantifying and notating. Afterwords, they meet and learn that they have completely different 'observations' and thus different conclusions at what they discovered about elephants. Sometimes violence and prejudice follow, and each brainiac walks away with extreme and hardened positions of certainty of their own conclusions.
When a man of vision (hehe) walks by and sees the entire elephant, the blind men learn they are blind. "While one's subjective experience is true, it may not be the totality of truth. If the sighted man was deaf, he would not hear the elephant bellow." from Wikipedia.
'Dark Orbit' appears to me to deflate a bit everything that is sacred to science and to emphasize some social truths. The book seems to refer explicitly to ancient and wise parables which refer to learning, like the parable of elephant anatomical discovery, as well. Genuine scientists would find this a fast and fun read, if maybe unimportant, but I would hope cause some introspection.
I subscribe or have subscribed to "New Scientist", "Science News", and "Smithsonian Magazine", along with many other general science magazines in my life. I also worked as a secretary for Ph.D.s running a science department at a huge university. What I have noticed is a lot of science today is microscopic and otherwise limited in scope. Few scientists today actually expand their research beyond their square patch of chosen examination - or paying sponsors.
When a writer, and it often is a writer, or a polymath engineer or scientist, or sometimes an administrator, pulls together the story of a discovery or research project, then and only then history, applications, consequences and politics are added, sometimes with genuine disruption qualities.
One of the angles some writers explore is the often competitive early scramble for initial funding of a project, and the professional jealousies which grow out of acquiring more maintenance funds. Some excellent non-fiction history-of-science books I have read show how often background realities of human failings and hobbies (Yes! Hobbies!) have affected research discoveries and results, though few scientists believe any background scrums are important to the actual research - to them, the scientific method is writ and results ironclad in reality if reproducible and measurable. Anything which falls outside of this narrow observable, measurable, math-heavy path does not exist or matter.
I wonder what most scientists think of Einstein's dream (a dream inspired Einstein's most famous discoveries), or those other earlier scientists who believed in ghost universes full of dead souls - beliefs which led to verifiable uses of electricity, physics, engineering designs and creative math -which has resulted in our current technological paradise?
This intelligent book of 'lite' science fiction is now a favorite. I am very amused at the title 'Dark Orbit', since eyes are often described as orbits in poetry or as the bone cavity that eyes are contained within anatomically.
Current science fiction seems to fall mostly into two categories, being either primarily extrapolative and speculative or fantasy entertainment. 'Dark Orbit' is squarely both.
(As an extra fillip, IMHO, a female science-fiction author best captures how the focused masculine scientific eye is far more limited than the naturally gestalt functioning of feminine brains when given an opportunity to be put into play - I 'see' that in this novel, but I may be prejudiced in my unscientific opinion.)
Today's scientists, at least the ones I met and know about, remind me often of the Indian tale of a group of blind wise men who touch an elephant in a single area of its body to learn what it is like. Each man examines a different part of the elephant, such as the trunk or a tusk or the ear. They each do intricate experiments, with measurements and motion, on the square foot of elephant they are exploring, quantifying and notating. Afterwords, they meet and learn that they have completely different 'observations' and thus different conclusions at what they discovered about elephants. Sometimes violence and prejudice follow, and each brainiac walks away with extreme and hardened positions of certainty of their own conclusions.
When a man of vision (hehe) walks by and sees the entire elephant, the blind men learn they are blind. "While one's subjective experience is true, it may not be the totality of truth. If the sighted man was deaf, he would not hear the elephant bellow." from Wikipedia.
'Dark Orbit' appears to me to deflate a bit everything that is sacred to science and to emphasize some social truths. The book seems to refer explicitly to ancient and wise parables which refer to learning, like the parable of elephant anatomical discovery, as well. Genuine scientists would find this a fast and fun read, if maybe unimportant, but I would hope cause some introspection.
I subscribe or have subscribed to "New Scientist", "Science News", and "Smithsonian Magazine", along with many other general science magazines in my life. I also worked as a secretary for Ph.D.s running a science department at a huge university. What I have noticed is a lot of science today is microscopic and otherwise limited in scope. Few scientists today actually expand their research beyond their square patch of chosen examination - or paying sponsors.
When a writer, and it often is a writer, or a polymath engineer or scientist, or sometimes an administrator, pulls together the story of a discovery or research project, then and only then history, applications, consequences and politics are added, sometimes with genuine disruption qualities.
One of the angles some writers explore is the often competitive early scramble for initial funding of a project, and the professional jealousies which grow out of acquiring more maintenance funds. Some excellent non-fiction history-of-science books I have read show how often background realities of human failings and hobbies (Yes! Hobbies!) have affected research discoveries and results, though few scientists believe any background scrums are important to the actual research - to them, the scientific method is writ and results ironclad in reality if reproducible and measurable. Anything which falls outside of this narrow observable, measurable, math-heavy path does not exist or matter.
I wonder what most scientists think of Einstein's dream (a dream inspired Einstein's most famous discoveries), or those other earlier scientists who believed in ghost universes full of dead souls - beliefs which led to verifiable uses of electricity, physics, engineering designs and creative math -which has resulted in our current technological paradise?
This intelligent book of 'lite' science fiction is now a favorite. I am very amused at the title 'Dark Orbit', since eyes are often described as orbits in poetry or as the bone cavity that eyes are contained within anatomically.
Current science fiction seems to fall mostly into two categories, being either primarily extrapolative and speculative or fantasy entertainment. 'Dark Orbit' is squarely both.
(As an extra fillip, IMHO, a female science-fiction author best captures how the focused masculine scientific eye is far more limited than the naturally gestalt functioning of feminine brains when given an opportunity to be put into play - I 'see' that in this novel, but I may be prejudiced in my unscientific opinion.)
July 14, 2015
Saraswati Callicot lives a life out of time: she travels via lightbeam from world to world, hopping decades each time, emerging in a changed culture. But one day she gets a unique opportunity: visit a new planet, deemed habitable, with all sorts of weird dark matter aberrations. Her secret mission? Keep an eye on Thora Lassiter, who's claimed to have had "visions" that have now been treated.
It only takes a few chapters for everything to go wrong. A crew member is murdered. Thora disappears. And, oh, by the way, this planet is inhabited after all, so Sara has to deal with a First Contact situation no one was prepared for.
Carolyn Ives Gilman dives deep into hard science fiction here, but she understands that both the physical sciences and the social sciences can be "hard." Sure, there's talk of gravity and dark matter and perceptions of reality, but Sara, exoethnologist, discusses differences in cultures and knowledge exchanges and the effect of observation on a native society. The science is the real star here, as the most fascinating aspect of the book is how it challenges our basic concepts of what’s real: the aliens they discover do not perceive reality by sight (and, in fact, don’t even comprehend what “sight” is), and I loved seeing (no pun intended) the perspective of a people completely baffled by something we take for granted, a sense that we trust wholeheartedly even though it is not necessarily the truth. There’s a lot of heady, potentially mindblowing stuff here, if you unpack everything that Gilman is saying.
Predictably, I loved the child alien, Moth, who is adorably naïve about us but also adorably condescending because we do things that make no sense to her, from her perspective. It’s just so cool to think about how we might be seen by a race who interacts with the universe in a very different way. The book focuses more on Thora than I expected; I was more interested in Sara.
While I did love all the science and interaction with alien culture, I felt like there was another, more plotty story struggling to be noticed and finally giving up, engulfed by the expedition. Gilman sets up a diverse crew with the potential for conflicts and differing agendas, but the story potential ends up feeling like an afterthought, with major reveals stuffed into the last few pages. Also, the aliens speak with “thy” and “thou” for no apparent reason and it’s kind of silly, though I assume the antiquated speech is meant to contrast with their advanced knowledge of reality.
Dark Orbit packs a lot into 300 pages, and it will certainly change the way you look at the world. Because…are you really even looking at the world? How much of the world are you not seeing?
It only takes a few chapters for everything to go wrong. A crew member is murdered. Thora disappears. And, oh, by the way, this planet is inhabited after all, so Sara has to deal with a First Contact situation no one was prepared for.
Carolyn Ives Gilman dives deep into hard science fiction here, but she understands that both the physical sciences and the social sciences can be "hard." Sure, there's talk of gravity and dark matter and perceptions of reality, but Sara, exoethnologist, discusses differences in cultures and knowledge exchanges and the effect of observation on a native society. The science is the real star here, as the most fascinating aspect of the book is how it challenges our basic concepts of what’s real: the aliens they discover do not perceive reality by sight (and, in fact, don’t even comprehend what “sight” is), and I loved seeing (no pun intended) the perspective of a people completely baffled by something we take for granted, a sense that we trust wholeheartedly even though it is not necessarily the truth. There’s a lot of heady, potentially mindblowing stuff here, if you unpack everything that Gilman is saying.
Predictably, I loved the child alien, Moth, who is adorably naïve about us but also adorably condescending because we do things that make no sense to her, from her perspective. It’s just so cool to think about how we might be seen by a race who interacts with the universe in a very different way. The book focuses more on Thora than I expected; I was more interested in Sara.
While I did love all the science and interaction with alien culture, I felt like there was another, more plotty story struggling to be noticed and finally giving up, engulfed by the expedition. Gilman sets up a diverse crew with the potential for conflicts and differing agendas, but the story potential ends up feeling like an afterthought, with major reveals stuffed into the last few pages. Also, the aliens speak with “thy” and “thou” for no apparent reason and it’s kind of silly, though I assume the antiquated speech is meant to contrast with their advanced knowledge of reality.
Dark Orbit packs a lot into 300 pages, and it will certainly change the way you look at the world. Because…are you really even looking at the world? How much of the world are you not seeing?
May 11, 2017
Dark Orbit deliberately harkens back to the Hainish novels of Le Guin, but it is no pale imitation. Set in Gilman's "Twenty Planets" universe (no need to read the previous works, though you may want to when you're finished with this one), the premise of Dark Orbit finds a team of scientists sent to explore a distant, recently discovered planet. The planet and its surrounding space exhibit some inexplicable (and dangerous) phenomena, and the team stumbles upon a long forgotten settlement of humans who have adapted to their surroundings in astonishing ways.
Like Le Guin, Gilman casts a wide net over her setting and its characters - mixing sociological, philosophical, and scientific musings, but never in a preachy or heavy handed way. The novel's intellectual vigor mirrors its highly intelligent and capable, but happily unsophisticated, protagonist, and this reader is thankful for that.
The plot of Dark Orbit unfolds primarily as one of scientific exploration and discovery, but I especially appreciated the way Gilman slowly and sneakily built up the conflicts and obstacles that gave the story its dramatic momentum. I was caught off guard by the book's emotional payoff because the author duped me into thinking I didn't need one. That's just plain great writing, and a hell of a neat trick to pull off.
There are too many fascinating nuances to this book to get into in detail, but if I could quickly sum up its best qualities, I would say it's expansive without being epic, gripping but never melodramatic, and contemplative without ever losing momentum. It's the kind of minor masterpiece that doesn't shine so much as glimmer steadily in the darkness.
(Oh, and if she wanted to, Gilman could probably make a decent living generating sci-fi character names for other people's novels. She's a naming genius. My fave: Dagan Atlabatlow. For real.)
Like Le Guin, Gilman casts a wide net over her setting and its characters - mixing sociological, philosophical, and scientific musings, but never in a preachy or heavy handed way. The novel's intellectual vigor mirrors its highly intelligent and capable, but happily unsophisticated, protagonist, and this reader is thankful for that.
The plot of Dark Orbit unfolds primarily as one of scientific exploration and discovery, but I especially appreciated the way Gilman slowly and sneakily built up the conflicts and obstacles that gave the story its dramatic momentum. I was caught off guard by the book's emotional payoff because the author duped me into thinking I didn't need one. That's just plain great writing, and a hell of a neat trick to pull off.
There are too many fascinating nuances to this book to get into in detail, but if I could quickly sum up its best qualities, I would say it's expansive without being epic, gripping but never melodramatic, and contemplative without ever losing momentum. It's the kind of minor masterpiece that doesn't shine so much as glimmer steadily in the darkness.
(Oh, and if she wanted to, Gilman could probably make a decent living generating sci-fi character names for other people's novels. She's a naming genius. My fave: Dagan Atlabatlow. For real.)
June 20, 2016
What a wonderful surprise this turned out to be. If you're at all interested in perception - that is, not just how people see one another, but how humans from Earth perceive the world around them, this book is worth picking up. I also love that the ideas are so alien - many books about space travel include landscapes very similar to our own, or beings who are just like us but on another planet. This book goes a bit further and makes you consider some what ifs.
Really impressive overall.
Really impressive overall.
May 8, 2016
Dark Orbit's striking cover, strong promotional buzz, and positive reviews and recommendations (Ursula le Guin wrote the cover blurb) had me very excited when this book finally came into the library. It doesn't quite live up to the hype, but it certainly strives to some high expectations and in a shoot-for-the-moon situation, it lands pretty solidly in the "good sci-fi" category.
I really wanted this book to be as good as the hype, and as I read it, I really wanted it to be as good as it could be - as good as it SHOULD be. There are so many elements of great story and character and world-building here that are all dragged down or unsupported by clunky prose that does little more than move the story along and surface-level explorations of wide-reaching, deep ideas. The novel is about exploration and knowledge in a very broad sense, attacking and deconstructing the very ways we learn and experience the world as the characters explore a new planet and unexpectedly deal with a First Contact situation. The feel of the story incorporates le Guin's anthropological bent, the whimsy and sly humor of Charles Stross, and a lot of science and even plot points from Peter Watts' Blindsight (the main character is on a First Contact mission with the soon-impossible job of reporting on the crew to their bosses, and one character literally experiences blindsight). But it falls short of the methodological thoroughness of le Guin, the connectedness and consistency of Stross, and the rigor of Watts (though that last is not necessarily a bad thing).
So, the problems. On the surface level, there's a lot of dialogue devoted to one-liners, interchangeable comments that don't feel driven by any sort of character motivation, and the unnecessary device of italicizing half the book to indicate it's a different speaker. The main plot of the book is solid, but there are a lot of threads that feel unfocused and loose or only appear when the author remembers them, like the tension between Sara and Atlabatlow, Thora's history, and their actual original mission and the rest of the people on the ship who still want to accomplish that mission (Sara never once actually completes her ostensible job on the ship). There were a lot of world-building moments where I wasn't sure if I was supposed to laugh or to take it seriously, and regardless of the seriousness, the stated motivations and belief systems rarely influenced actual behavior. There's frequent listing of ethnicities and religions and even scientific modes of inquiry and how the affect the person's behavior and beliefs, but aside from saying "This means so-and-so acted this way" they aren't carried out, and don't provide depth to the world. Sara is Balavati, for example, which means she is supposed to buck all authority, but she follows the chain of command for the most part - even becoming a co-commander on one mission - though she does so begrudgingly. If all of the quirky belief systems were carried out to their full depth it would have created a beautifully rich and unique and complex world, but it's mostly left to be one-off jokes or occasional hasty re-assertions that "So-and-so IS this way" (even if their actions or dialogue don't show it at all). The lack of depth and the ham-fisted over-explanation of the world is what makes me unsure what is caricature and what is serious. For example: on the main planet, knowledge is the main export, and knowledge is their main product, and while the characters say that copyright and proprietary information are important, their information gathering structure and their general relationship to knowledge is not any different than our own. That lack of translation from importance in small/isolated interactions to importance and change in the macro structure makes the huge emphasis on Sara having to pay for information like where a hotel is seem farcical.
As I mentioned before, the main preoccupation of this book is with how we know what we know, and how our methods of knowing limit what we can possibly know. The scientists on the ship are grouped by their scientific methods (see the paragraph above on lack of consistency of world-building though), one of the characters practices "intuitive science" where she tries to figure out new ways to learn through the senses humans have and ascertain what we can't learn through those senses, and the big plot point - the weird clumps of dark matter or dark energy or fold rain or whatever, the book isn't really clear on whether those things are related but I guess we're supposed to assume they are - is that there's some kind of force at work that we can't directly perceive. And there's "beminding," which basically means that we all instantiate in the ways that others perceive us to be. The themes are inconsistent, though; there are lot of conflicting, muddled messages about what these plot elements tell us that knowledge *is* and what reality *is* and what that means for us, and the story waffles between those messages given whatever plot element is dominant at the time in an aimless, haphazard way that doesn't build, convalesce, or create depth.
But on the bright side! It's incredibly inventive and strives for such a huge, layered world. There's a civilization of blind people who live deep in a cave, and their lifestyle and habits and habitat are so well thought out it's a pleasure to read. Their method of travel is also intriguing, though what's obvious to the reader takes a while for the book to acknowledge and I wish it had gone more into the implications of their method of travel for the physical structure of the world and the people, but overall it's pretty well thought-out. I liked the idea of the characters (though again we see very little character development at all, mostly just neutral narration that underutilizes the unique perspectives of the main characters) and Thora's history and the glimpses of the Twenty Planets civilization and government. There's a lot of surface in the novel, but the surface is pretty to look at and if I could have this be re-written to be just as pretty and intricate on the surface with depth to match, it would be one of the best SF books I've ever read. But sadly, it's not great, just good.
I really wanted this book to be as good as the hype, and as I read it, I really wanted it to be as good as it could be - as good as it SHOULD be. There are so many elements of great story and character and world-building here that are all dragged down or unsupported by clunky prose that does little more than move the story along and surface-level explorations of wide-reaching, deep ideas. The novel is about exploration and knowledge in a very broad sense, attacking and deconstructing the very ways we learn and experience the world as the characters explore a new planet and unexpectedly deal with a First Contact situation. The feel of the story incorporates le Guin's anthropological bent, the whimsy and sly humor of Charles Stross, and a lot of science and even plot points from Peter Watts' Blindsight (the main character is on a First Contact mission with the soon-impossible job of reporting on the crew to their bosses, and one character literally experiences blindsight). But it falls short of the methodological thoroughness of le Guin, the connectedness and consistency of Stross, and the rigor of Watts (though that last is not necessarily a bad thing).
So, the problems. On the surface level, there's a lot of dialogue devoted to one-liners, interchangeable comments that don't feel driven by any sort of character motivation, and the unnecessary device of italicizing half the book to indicate it's a different speaker. The main plot of the book is solid, but there are a lot of threads that feel unfocused and loose or only appear when the author remembers them, like the tension between Sara and Atlabatlow, Thora's history, and their actual original mission and the rest of the people on the ship who still want to accomplish that mission (Sara never once actually completes her ostensible job on the ship). There were a lot of world-building moments where I wasn't sure if I was supposed to laugh or to take it seriously, and regardless of the seriousness, the stated motivations and belief systems rarely influenced actual behavior. There's frequent listing of ethnicities and religions and even scientific modes of inquiry and how the affect the person's behavior and beliefs, but aside from saying "This means so-and-so acted this way" they aren't carried out, and don't provide depth to the world. Sara is Balavati, for example, which means she is supposed to buck all authority, but she follows the chain of command for the most part - even becoming a co-commander on one mission - though she does so begrudgingly. If all of the quirky belief systems were carried out to their full depth it would have created a beautifully rich and unique and complex world, but it's mostly left to be one-off jokes or occasional hasty re-assertions that "So-and-so IS this way" (even if their actions or dialogue don't show it at all). The lack of depth and the ham-fisted over-explanation of the world is what makes me unsure what is caricature and what is serious. For example: on the main planet, knowledge is the main export, and knowledge is their main product, and while the characters say that copyright and proprietary information are important, their information gathering structure and their general relationship to knowledge is not any different than our own. That lack of translation from importance in small/isolated interactions to importance and change in the macro structure makes the huge emphasis on Sara having to pay for information like where a hotel is seem farcical.
As I mentioned before, the main preoccupation of this book is with how we know what we know, and how our methods of knowing limit what we can possibly know. The scientists on the ship are grouped by their scientific methods (see the paragraph above on lack of consistency of world-building though), one of the characters practices "intuitive science" where she tries to figure out new ways to learn through the senses humans have and ascertain what we can't learn through those senses, and the big plot point - the weird clumps of dark matter or dark energy or fold rain or whatever, the book isn't really clear on whether those things are related but I guess we're supposed to assume they are - is that there's some kind of force at work that we can't directly perceive. And there's "beminding," which basically means that we all instantiate in the ways that others perceive us to be. The themes are inconsistent, though; there are lot of conflicting, muddled messages about what these plot elements tell us that knowledge *is* and what reality *is* and what that means for us, and the story waffles between those messages given whatever plot element is dominant at the time in an aimless, haphazard way that doesn't build, convalesce, or create depth.
But on the bright side! It's incredibly inventive and strives for such a huge, layered world. There's a civilization of blind people who live deep in a cave, and their lifestyle and habits and habitat are so well thought out it's a pleasure to read. Their method of travel is also intriguing, though what's obvious to the reader takes a while for the book to acknowledge and I wish it had gone more into the implications of their method of travel for the physical structure of the world and the people, but overall it's pretty well thought-out. I liked the idea of the characters (though again we see very little character development at all, mostly just neutral narration that underutilizes the unique perspectives of the main characters) and Thora's history and the glimpses of the Twenty Planets civilization and government. There's a lot of surface in the novel, but the surface is pretty to look at and if I could have this be re-written to be just as pretty and intricate on the surface with depth to match, it would be one of the best SF books I've ever read. But sadly, it's not great, just good.
March 1, 2018
Audiobook
This book was just okay to me. I didn't really know where the plot was going. Who is the main protagonist? Is there a romance? What's next? I was pretty much confused through the whole thing.
The narrator Melanie Ewbank did a great job with all of the different characters' voices. 2-1/2 stars
This book was just okay to me. I didn't really know where the plot was going. Who is the main protagonist? Is there a romance? What's next? I was pretty much confused through the whole thing.
The narrator Melanie Ewbank did a great job with all of the different characters' voices. 2-1/2 stars
December 26, 2015
This is one of my favorite books of the year. It's also one of the most epistemological novels I've ever read. (Epistemology is the part of philosophy that deals with knowledge - What is it? How do you get it? Do we have any of it?) Knowledge is the central issue of Dark Orbit, specifically whether the senses and empirical scientific methodologies are giving us the full picture of the universe. It's no surprise that Plato is mentioned at least twice (p. 39, 141).
Our story begins far in the future. We're never told exactly how far, but it has to be at least a few thousand years. We first meet Sara (short for Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of knowledge and learning). Sara is a Waster, or a person who regularly makes interstellar trips via light beam (sort of like a long range version of Star Trek's transporter). This means that while she's disembodied information traveling at the speed of light, her planet-bound friends, colleagues, family, etc. are aging at a normal rate (this also brings up plenty of issues of personal identity from page one).
Sara gets a job on a mission to a newly discovered habitable planet, Iris, where she's supposed to keep an eye on one of the crew, Thora. Once they get there, there's a murder and a disappearance. Without giving any major spoilers from here on, I'll just say that one of the brilliant things about this book is the mirrored structure between a native Irisian learning from the crew and a member of the crew learning from the natives.
Iris is a strange planet, with far more gravity than what meets the eye should have. It turns out that there's a lot about Iris that's more than meets the eye, since the natives live in complete darkness and navigate their world without vision. The natives are human, but from an earlier interstellar diaspora, which means they conveniently enough speak an archaic form of the language spoken by the crew. A lot of discussion in the book revolves around whether a lack of vision is a liability or an asset, and whether vision really gives us the accurate picture of things we naïvely assume it does.
Some debates in contemporary philosophy of perception about different modalities of perception focus on whether our theories of perception have been too focused on vision as opposed to hearing, taste, smell, touch, etc. On that subject, Dark Matter gives a lot to consider. The Irisians seem to have developed ways of experiencing the world unknown to the crew, and perhaps it is the very fact that they aren't reliant on vision that has allowed them to do so.
Given the Plato connection it's somewhat ironic that the Irisians live in a cave, but - here's the twist - it's the Irisians that have something much closer to Plato's non-empirical direct knowledge of the Forms. Like Plato, the Irisians bring up epistemological questions of mysticism - could there be means of knowledge that are somewhat like perception, but not among the five senses? Is this just kooky, New Age fluff? Or are Plato and the Irisians on to something? As William James notes, whether you have to believe the mystics given what we currently know is one thing, but completely ruling them out is another, much harder thing to do.
For that matter, how can we be so confident that our normal means of sensory knowledge give us an accurate depiction of the real universe? Anyone familiar with philosophical skepticism and/or scientific understandings of how sensory perception works will realize that our naïve view that we see the world as it is at best problematic and and at worst deeply flawed and irrationally dogmatic. Much to my epistemological delight, Dark Orbit also raises this issue, especially about how crazy it is to think that vision presents us with a realistic model of the world.
I would love this novel just for the epistemological aspect alone. But I was also keen to read this because of the blurb from Ursula Le Guin. Gilman is no Le Guin when it comes to the prose (Gilman's style is much less nuanced), but as Big Ideas SF that gets you thinking on every page Gilman is in the same neighborhood (although Gilman's fondness for physics and wisecracking characters exceeds Le Guin's).
The book isn't perfect (for example, some of the threads of the plot seemed extraneous to me), but whatever faults it might have are erased for me by the brilliance of a novel that brings up such rich epistemological issues in such a cool science fiction setting.
See also my blog review: http://examinedworlds.blogspot.com/20...
Our story begins far in the future. We're never told exactly how far, but it has to be at least a few thousand years. We first meet Sara (short for Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of knowledge and learning). Sara is a Waster, or a person who regularly makes interstellar trips via light beam (sort of like a long range version of Star Trek's transporter). This means that while she's disembodied information traveling at the speed of light, her planet-bound friends, colleagues, family, etc. are aging at a normal rate (this also brings up plenty of issues of personal identity from page one).
Sara gets a job on a mission to a newly discovered habitable planet, Iris, where she's supposed to keep an eye on one of the crew, Thora. Once they get there, there's a murder and a disappearance. Without giving any major spoilers from here on, I'll just say that one of the brilliant things about this book is the mirrored structure between a native Irisian learning from the crew and a member of the crew learning from the natives.
Iris is a strange planet, with far more gravity than what meets the eye should have. It turns out that there's a lot about Iris that's more than meets the eye, since the natives live in complete darkness and navigate their world without vision. The natives are human, but from an earlier interstellar diaspora, which means they conveniently enough speak an archaic form of the language spoken by the crew. A lot of discussion in the book revolves around whether a lack of vision is a liability or an asset, and whether vision really gives us the accurate picture of things we naïvely assume it does.
Some debates in contemporary philosophy of perception about different modalities of perception focus on whether our theories of perception have been too focused on vision as opposed to hearing, taste, smell, touch, etc. On that subject, Dark Matter gives a lot to consider. The Irisians seem to have developed ways of experiencing the world unknown to the crew, and perhaps it is the very fact that they aren't reliant on vision that has allowed them to do so.
Given the Plato connection it's somewhat ironic that the Irisians live in a cave, but - here's the twist - it's the Irisians that have something much closer to Plato's non-empirical direct knowledge of the Forms. Like Plato, the Irisians bring up epistemological questions of mysticism - could there be means of knowledge that are somewhat like perception, but not among the five senses? Is this just kooky, New Age fluff? Or are Plato and the Irisians on to something? As William James notes, whether you have to believe the mystics given what we currently know is one thing, but completely ruling them out is another, much harder thing to do.
For that matter, how can we be so confident that our normal means of sensory knowledge give us an accurate depiction of the real universe? Anyone familiar with philosophical skepticism and/or scientific understandings of how sensory perception works will realize that our naïve view that we see the world as it is at best problematic and and at worst deeply flawed and irrationally dogmatic. Much to my epistemological delight, Dark Orbit also raises this issue, especially about how crazy it is to think that vision presents us with a realistic model of the world.
I would love this novel just for the epistemological aspect alone. But I was also keen to read this because of the blurb from Ursula Le Guin. Gilman is no Le Guin when it comes to the prose (Gilman's style is much less nuanced), but as Big Ideas SF that gets you thinking on every page Gilman is in the same neighborhood (although Gilman's fondness for physics and wisecracking characters exceeds Le Guin's).
The book isn't perfect (for example, some of the threads of the plot seemed extraneous to me), but whatever faults it might have are erased for me by the brilliance of a novel that brings up such rich epistemological issues in such a cool science fiction setting.
See also my blog review: http://examinedworlds.blogspot.com/20...
July 16, 2016
3.5, actually.
Nice setting and interesting anthropological, philosophical and physical discussions. It got a little slow towards the end, hence the rating, but a nice read anyway.
Nice setting and interesting anthropological, philosophical and physical discussions. It got a little slow towards the end, hence the rating, but a nice read anyway.
September 11, 2018
At first this was choppy, very short episodes, actually saccades. And political intrigue, and the technique of introducing the reader to things she won't understand until later... I almost gave up. But then we got down to the planet and things are actually happening and it's very cool. Oliver Sacks would like it (he was a fan Star Trek after all).
The ending is inevitable, and ineffable.
3.5 stars rounded down because I will likely not remember much of it, nor do I want to read more by the author. However, if you're at all interested, I do recommend this. It's, well, it's not really what you probably think. And it's not what some of the prominent negative reviews say it is. It's just really nifty & smart.
"Consciousness is bounded and particular, but it reaches out to join awareness, like a grain of salt longs to join the brine."
"We look at the alien and see only ourselves."
The ending is inevitable, and ineffable.
3.5 stars rounded down because I will likely not remember much of it, nor do I want to read more by the author. However, if you're at all interested, I do recommend this. It's, well, it's not really what you probably think. And it's not what some of the prominent negative reviews say it is. It's just really nifty & smart.
"Consciousness is bounded and particular, but it reaches out to join awareness, like a grain of salt longs to join the brine."
"We look at the alien and see only ourselves."
February 11, 2016
Dark Orbit had a strong opening act, filled with distinctive characters, an interesting political system, and plenty of intrigue. The story seemed like it was shaping up to be an engrossing space opera filled with backstabbing, uneasy alliances, and a first-contact scenario...and then the characters land on the alien world, and Gilman immediately commits one of the cardinal sins of science fiction.
This book was published in 2015, so why are we still seeing scenarios where people are landing on unexplored, potentially dangerous alien worlds, and not wearing space suits? Yes, Iris (the strange planet that may have high concentrations of dark matter), seems to have an Earth-like atmosphere for some reason, but you know where else has an Earth-like atmosphere? The laboratories at the CDC. Just because an atmosphere is breathable, doesn't mean it's not swimming with things that can kill you. And this is only the first implication we get, that this is the absolute worst-trained landing party in modern sci-fi.
They soon head off toward a strange topographical feature that confounds their instruments and seems to reflect light, sound, etc. Instead of doing the sane, responsible thing, and maybe setting up camp on the outskirts to study the edge of this place, they just merrily forge right on in. And when it becomes apparent they've gotten lost, instead of being concerned, some of the characters actually joke about it, as if there's no chance they might be in any sort of danger!
I could go on, but the book doesn't exactly give me the opportunity to do so. Because shortly after venturing into this place, the plot gets put on hold for the next 100 pages, in favor of something that feels like a cross between Philosophy 101, and a lecture on science pedagogy for remedial students, as seen through the lens of Woodstock. That is, a bunch of existential musings on the nature of reality/perception, with an (un)healthy dose of the flower child treatment.
The story does eventually pick up again, but it almost feels simultaneously rushed and meandering. Rushed, because by that point, the book is more than half over, and it feels like it needs to get a lot done in the remaining pages, to make up for all the wheel-spinning. Meandering, because even after this point, it feels like all of the characters are essentially back to square one, having gone on this long journey with ultimately nothing to show for it.
Despite all this, I was torn between giving this 2 or 3 stars, simply because some of the characters ended up having more depth than they initially seemed. But then I got to thinking, eventually making a character more substance than the "evil military guy" trope is not something that should be cause for celebration--it should be expected. So, two stars. Dark Orbit was not really what I expected it to be.
This book was published in 2015, so why are we still seeing scenarios where people are landing on unexplored, potentially dangerous alien worlds, and not wearing space suits? Yes, Iris (the strange planet that may have high concentrations of dark matter), seems to have an Earth-like atmosphere for some reason, but you know where else has an Earth-like atmosphere? The laboratories at the CDC. Just because an atmosphere is breathable, doesn't mean it's not swimming with things that can kill you. And this is only the first implication we get, that this is the absolute worst-trained landing party in modern sci-fi.
They soon head off toward a strange topographical feature that confounds their instruments and seems to reflect light, sound, etc. Instead of doing the sane, responsible thing, and maybe setting up camp on the outskirts to study the edge of this place, they just merrily forge right on in. And when it becomes apparent they've gotten lost, instead of being concerned, some of the characters actually joke about it, as if there's no chance they might be in any sort of danger!
I could go on, but the book doesn't exactly give me the opportunity to do so. Because shortly after venturing into this place, the plot gets put on hold for the next 100 pages, in favor of something that feels like a cross between Philosophy 101, and a lecture on science pedagogy for remedial students, as seen through the lens of Woodstock. That is, a bunch of existential musings on the nature of reality/perception, with an (un)healthy dose of the flower child treatment.
The story does eventually pick up again, but it almost feels simultaneously rushed and meandering. Rushed, because by that point, the book is more than half over, and it feels like it needs to get a lot done in the remaining pages, to make up for all the wheel-spinning. Meandering, because even after this point, it feels like all of the characters are essentially back to square one, having gone on this long journey with ultimately nothing to show for it.
Despite all this, I was torn between giving this 2 or 3 stars, simply because some of the characters ended up having more depth than they initially seemed. But then I got to thinking, eventually making a character more substance than the "evil military guy" trope is not something that should be cause for celebration--it should be expected. So, two stars. Dark Orbit was not really what I expected it to be.
September 29, 2015
Remember those terrible kitten experiments you read about in intro psychology where they deprived the poor dears of light at infancy to see the impact it would have on their development? Remember how such kittens were permanently blind? Remember the conclusions people drew about the nature of seeing (relies more on the brain than on radiation)? Couple that to a long, philosophical discussion about the something inane like "redness" (cue obnoxious analytical philosopher: "under what conditions is red most red-like?" and "is an object still red if it's grey in low lighting?" "How does the brain know that an object is a unitary thing if it always looks different at different angles?" "How does the brain sort out relative versus actual size (when something is close versus far away)?" etc and so forth). Think about how easy we are to fool with optical illusions and the limitations of sight (yet our total dependence on it).
Now we're at a place where we can meet Gilman's fascinating society of blind-from-birth humans who navigate the world by sound, touch, and smell. Imagine what sorts of cultural norms would arise in such a society, compared to our intensely visually focused one. That's how cool this book is.
Oh, and it's also a first contact/space opera story, with characters known as "wasters" who are always out of time due to the fact that they travel long distances in space and stay young, but their friends and family age while they travel.
The final piece of the story questions the total reliability of objectivity insofar as it explores the fact that there could (and really, should) be some sensory realms that we have not evolved to experience (because we don't need them to survive) and so there are whole swathes of the universe we don't experience. I have always loved this idea, and to see it put into play in the context of fiction is just awesome. A very philosophically satisfying and imaginative book.
Now we're at a place where we can meet Gilman's fascinating society of blind-from-birth humans who navigate the world by sound, touch, and smell. Imagine what sorts of cultural norms would arise in such a society, compared to our intensely visually focused one. That's how cool this book is.
Oh, and it's also a first contact/space opera story, with characters known as "wasters" who are always out of time due to the fact that they travel long distances in space and stay young, but their friends and family age while they travel.
The final piece of the story questions the total reliability of objectivity insofar as it explores the fact that there could (and really, should) be some sensory realms that we have not evolved to experience (because we don't need them to survive) and so there are whole swathes of the universe we don't experience. I have always loved this idea, and to see it put into play in the context of fiction is just awesome. A very philosophically satisfying and imaginative book.
December 20, 2015
...The year 2015 is a good one for science fiction. Despite the fact that a handful of angry fans almost succeed in wrecking the genre's best known award, the number of books that challenge the genre's boundaries, that push the reader to think, and that allow them to experience cultures, frameworks of thought and lifestyles unfamiliar to them has never been greater. Gilman's novel does not take this development to extremes, one could say this approach to science fiction is fairly traditional. What it does do is make the reader think about where their own viewpoints fit in a whole larger than we could possibly perceive. In a world where debates become increasingly polarized and many parties seem to feel theirs is an absolute truth, that is a very necessary thing indeed.
Full Random Comments review
Full Random Comments review
April 23, 2015
The two human worlds depicted in this book (the Twenty Planets and life on Iris) are both so alien, and so well done; one of the more satisfying and real feeling novels of First Contact I've read in a while. No matter which plotline I was on I wanted to get back to the other, and in addition to being a fantastically gripping story it made me think about vision and perception and reality in a really deep and sometimes scary way.
August 2, 2015
This novel will really make you think about why we evolved this way. And I think Le Guin must be proud by the way science-fiction evolved, because Dark Orbit has the same "selfish genes" as The Left Hand of Darkness.
September 14, 2016
Escher
This has been on my radar awhile and have actually been waiting for it to go on sale on Amazon. The more I read the reviews and after reading the sample I decided to go for it (full price and all). I have not been disappointed!
Science fiction, when done right, deals with concepts that are different than our current reality. "What if?" questions. But not just "the weirder the better", these concepts need to be made to seem possible. And if your really lucky you get strong interesting characters to help you imagine these concepts. Well Dark Matter is science fiction that is done right.
An interesting form of travel has developed in this far off future society of humanity. Our molecules are broken down and mixed with light particles and sent through space at the speed of light. Our particle arrive at a predetermined destination 58 light years away (or however long your trip takes). Then your molecules are reassembled and you are as good as new, not having aged but for the short, "relative" time that you experienced on the trip. The rest of the world has experienced the 58 years. Pretty cool, right? A subculture has developed among scientists and explorers that routinely make these trips.
Our story takes place on a distant planet that was discovered by a scout ship. The world seems inhabitable by humans. But there is the presents of Dark Matter, which is still very much a mystery. Gravity and light doesn't seem to play by the rules we are used too.
What is discovered on this planet challenges our concepts of conciseness and time and space. The characters living this story are engaging and real. There is an underlying mystery in the plot that keeps things moving.
This was an enjoyable, "mind expanding" read. While it deals with some of the more challenging ideas in physics it is not too technical nor would I classify this as hard science fiction. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
This has been on my radar awhile and have actually been waiting for it to go on sale on Amazon. The more I read the reviews and after reading the sample I decided to go for it (full price and all). I have not been disappointed!
Science fiction, when done right, deals with concepts that are different than our current reality. "What if?" questions. But not just "the weirder the better", these concepts need to be made to seem possible. And if your really lucky you get strong interesting characters to help you imagine these concepts. Well Dark Matter is science fiction that is done right.
An interesting form of travel has developed in this far off future society of humanity. Our molecules are broken down and mixed with light particles and sent through space at the speed of light. Our particle arrive at a predetermined destination 58 light years away (or however long your trip takes). Then your molecules are reassembled and you are as good as new, not having aged but for the short, "relative" time that you experienced on the trip. The rest of the world has experienced the 58 years. Pretty cool, right? A subculture has developed among scientists and explorers that routinely make these trips.
Our story takes place on a distant planet that was discovered by a scout ship. The world seems inhabitable by humans. But there is the presents of Dark Matter, which is still very much a mystery. Gravity and light doesn't seem to play by the rules we are used too.
What is discovered on this planet challenges our concepts of conciseness and time and space. The characters living this story are engaging and real. There is an underlying mystery in the plot that keeps things moving.
This was an enjoyable, "mind expanding" read. While it deals with some of the more challenging ideas in physics it is not too technical nor would I classify this as hard science fiction. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
January 27, 2016
Please read the full review on Weighing A Pig Doesn't Fatten It
I just want to forget this book. Yet this review has 2107 words. I want to apologize for that in advance. If you don’t want a fairly detailed analysis (plot holes, etc.), you can just skip to the 2.5 last paragraphs.
This fourth entry in the Twenty Planet universe started promising, and I enjoyed the first 100 pages a lot, but after about 1/3rd it turned into a giant mess. Really, a giant, giant mess. Then again, maybe I have read too much Wittgenstein and Rorty and Kant and theory of mind to be impressed by the epistemological profundities this book wears so proud on its sleeves. The problem with Dark Orbit is that it tries to offer a scientific take on magic, but ultimately falls flat on its face because it’s so muddled itself. I have no problem with mystics: I’m intrigued by all kinds of mysticism. But what I can’t stand is authors who don’t think things through.
(...)
I just want to forget this book. Yet this review has 2107 words. I want to apologize for that in advance. If you don’t want a fairly detailed analysis (plot holes, etc.), you can just skip to the 2.5 last paragraphs.
This fourth entry in the Twenty Planet universe started promising, and I enjoyed the first 100 pages a lot, but after about 1/3rd it turned into a giant mess. Really, a giant, giant mess. Then again, maybe I have read too much Wittgenstein and Rorty and Kant and theory of mind to be impressed by the epistemological profundities this book wears so proud on its sleeves. The problem with Dark Orbit is that it tries to offer a scientific take on magic, but ultimately falls flat on its face because it’s so muddled itself. I have no problem with mystics: I’m intrigued by all kinds of mysticism. But what I can’t stand is authors who don’t think things through.
(...)
December 2, 2016
This is a fun, quick read with some interesting ideas. Focuses around a scientific expedition to a newly discovered planet in an area of space displaying some odd gravitational and dimensional phenomena. I was very interested in the way the author had to describe a new planet and culture. I enjoyed the themes and ideas embedded in the story, the ethics of first contact with new cultures and appropriation of culture and cultural knowledge. There are two point of view characters who we switch between for the narration. I usually enjoy this structure but I found one character gave far too much description and information and the other nowhere near enough.
Hope there is a sequel planned because I feel some things were definitely left open.
Hope there is a sequel planned because I feel some things were definitely left open.
August 3, 2015
I still can't quite decide how I feel about this book. When I saw the cover and how short it was, I thought it would be horrible. I will say that it definitely wasn't horrible, but I can't really say it was awesome. The ending was too rushed for sure.
March 12, 2019
Let me say up front: I loved this book, and it was definitely a five star read for me. I had not heard of Carolyn Gilman before, and encountered her book through an online book club I belong to. Why did I like it? For starters, it is one of a tiny handful of books I have read which offers an explanation for instantaneous communication along with sub-light-speed travel - almost everyone simply assumes this without explanation as a plot device.
But my enjoyment of the book goes way beyond appreciation of a minor plot point. What I really enjoyed was the many ways in which events in the real world were mirrored on interpersonal or relational levels. So the darkness of the title emerges in many ways - certainly as literal darkness inhabited by a fascinating group of people, but also as relational darkness between individuals and groups, or as moral darkness invading a culture or a person. Themes of light and dark fill the book, and the different contexts in which they appear reflect each other.
Also, the book does not attempt to resolve all of its several dilemmas. Most of the major characters are forced to handle situations in ways which are at odds with their own wishes, backgrounds, or society's expectations. A simple reading of this suggests that each has been forced to deny something of themselves in order to get out of a difficult situation. But equally, each of these could alternately be read as showing the person coming into their true potential despite prior history, being liberated by events into new facets of life.
Finally, there was a recurring sense that the events and people in the book's focus were part of a much larger world. For example, the various scientists in the group cluster into several camps, some of which sound to a contemporary reader more like religion or philosophy than "regular" science. But these camps are simply part of the rich backcloth, and are left as teasing reminders that the world is much bigger and more diverse than the specific events described. The story certainly has its own very satisfying closure, but it also hints at bigger issues, and other stories that might be told. Whether Carolyn ever intends to write these subsequent stories is beside the point - her created universe extends far beyond the pages of Dark Orbit, teasing the reader with glimpses of many other possible tales.
On a science level, I felt that the quantum mechanical aspects of the book - especially to do with communication - were handled well. Dark matter, however, felt like a handy buzzword to bring the idea of darkness into the book, without really getting to grips with what we know of it. This didn't diminish my enjoyment of the book, since the science was used simply as a backcloth to a fascinating story, not as an end in itself.
I suspect that not everyone will like the book. Some people might find its ambiguities and open-endedness to be frustrating, and others might prefer the philosophical themes to be more buried. But I found it an excellent book, and am very happy to have discovered it.
But my enjoyment of the book goes way beyond appreciation of a minor plot point. What I really enjoyed was the many ways in which events in the real world were mirrored on interpersonal or relational levels. So the darkness of the title emerges in many ways - certainly as literal darkness inhabited by a fascinating group of people, but also as relational darkness between individuals and groups, or as moral darkness invading a culture or a person. Themes of light and dark fill the book, and the different contexts in which they appear reflect each other.
Also, the book does not attempt to resolve all of its several dilemmas. Most of the major characters are forced to handle situations in ways which are at odds with their own wishes, backgrounds, or society's expectations. A simple reading of this suggests that each has been forced to deny something of themselves in order to get out of a difficult situation. But equally, each of these could alternately be read as showing the person coming into their true potential despite prior history, being liberated by events into new facets of life.
Finally, there was a recurring sense that the events and people in the book's focus were part of a much larger world. For example, the various scientists in the group cluster into several camps, some of which sound to a contemporary reader more like religion or philosophy than "regular" science. But these camps are simply part of the rich backcloth, and are left as teasing reminders that the world is much bigger and more diverse than the specific events described. The story certainly has its own very satisfying closure, but it also hints at bigger issues, and other stories that might be told. Whether Carolyn ever intends to write these subsequent stories is beside the point - her created universe extends far beyond the pages of Dark Orbit, teasing the reader with glimpses of many other possible tales.
On a science level, I felt that the quantum mechanical aspects of the book - especially to do with communication - were handled well. Dark matter, however, felt like a handy buzzword to bring the idea of darkness into the book, without really getting to grips with what we know of it. This didn't diminish my enjoyment of the book, since the science was used simply as a backcloth to a fascinating story, not as an end in itself.
I suspect that not everyone will like the book. Some people might find its ambiguities and open-endedness to be frustrating, and others might prefer the philosophical themes to be more buried. But I found it an excellent book, and am very happy to have discovered it.
January 1, 2019
Dany and I seem to agree there needed to be more words in this book, though hopefully not more racist and ableist ones...
August 12, 2015
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book in a tor.com sweepstakes. This has in no way affected my review.
I had essentially no expectations going into this book–which is unusual for me, these days. Most everything I pick up is either by an author I already know and trust, or upon the recommendation of a large number of friends. My TBR pile is just too big to allow for much else. But I had a review copy of this one, and one of my goals for this year was to start reviewing the books I win in sweepstakes–or why else enter them? So, I read this one.
And I was very pleasantly surprised. The book combines a number of very exciting, interesting elements that I did not expect, and it makes for a quite interesting read. Much of it has some very intriguing scientific basis, and I thoroughly enjoyed the creativity it showed.
The first cool idea is that of the wasters, which grows naturally from the teleportation in the book. The teleportation accepts the limits of lightspeed–but still allows for transportation to seem instantaneous to the user. In essence, to travel 9 light-years away, you also have to travel 9 light-years into the future–and there’s no going back. The explorers of the society have been dubbed wasters, those who travel so often that politics, families, etc. all have little meaning to them. Our main POV character, Sara, is a waster, and the jumps in time that she goes through give her a really cool background–and bring up some questions I’d honestly never asked myself.
But that’s just a small part of it, and almost brushed aside just as a piece of world-building. The real story here is about an accidental first contact with s species of blind humans in a location 54 light-years away from the closest civilization, all set on a planet dangerously near completely undecipherable clumps of dark matter, covered (among other things) with strange multi-dimensional forests that are truly mind-boggling.
The world-building–or perhaps I should say worlds-building–here is superb, but it never gets in the way of the story, and the story is brilliant. I can’t say too much about it without spoiling things, but I will say that it plays to the strong points of science fiction while always being, at its core, a story about the characters, the main group of which are extremely well sketched out.
If I had any complaints with the book, they would be with the ending. Before then, it seemed that things might have a scientific explanation, but some of the character actions and abilities shown near the end verge on magic, which I was not expecting from the science fiction setting. Then again, it’s not like we’ve never had a story where the main character saves the day by shooting torpedoes down an impossible shaft that nobody else can hit by using a mysterious magical power at the end of a science fiction story, so… Your mileage may vary. Just be aware that if you’re looking for pure hard-sf, you will be a little disappointed.
And while I’m on the subject, the science fiction that is mentioned here is really cool. Parts of the novel felt like The Three-Body Problem–except they were exciting the whole time.
The book works very well as a stand-alone, and I did not realize until I was doing some research after reading that it’s not the only book that Gilman has written in this universe–and I’m definitely going to be picking up the other one, and reading it when I can fit it in my schedule.
In summary, Dark Orbit was a complete surprise–and a delightful one, with some really cool science-based world-building, great characters, and a plot that kept me interested the entire time. Even if the ending wasn’t perfectly what I was expecting, the novel as a whole was a thoroughly enjoyable experience, and I give it a hearty four of five stars.
Review originally from my blog here.
I had essentially no expectations going into this book–which is unusual for me, these days. Most everything I pick up is either by an author I already know and trust, or upon the recommendation of a large number of friends. My TBR pile is just too big to allow for much else. But I had a review copy of this one, and one of my goals for this year was to start reviewing the books I win in sweepstakes–or why else enter them? So, I read this one.
And I was very pleasantly surprised. The book combines a number of very exciting, interesting elements that I did not expect, and it makes for a quite interesting read. Much of it has some very intriguing scientific basis, and I thoroughly enjoyed the creativity it showed.
The first cool idea is that of the wasters, which grows naturally from the teleportation in the book. The teleportation accepts the limits of lightspeed–but still allows for transportation to seem instantaneous to the user. In essence, to travel 9 light-years away, you also have to travel 9 light-years into the future–and there’s no going back. The explorers of the society have been dubbed wasters, those who travel so often that politics, families, etc. all have little meaning to them. Our main POV character, Sara, is a waster, and the jumps in time that she goes through give her a really cool background–and bring up some questions I’d honestly never asked myself.
But that’s just a small part of it, and almost brushed aside just as a piece of world-building. The real story here is about an accidental first contact with s species of blind humans in a location 54 light-years away from the closest civilization, all set on a planet dangerously near completely undecipherable clumps of dark matter, covered (among other things) with strange multi-dimensional forests that are truly mind-boggling.
The world-building–or perhaps I should say worlds-building–here is superb, but it never gets in the way of the story, and the story is brilliant. I can’t say too much about it without spoiling things, but I will say that it plays to the strong points of science fiction while always being, at its core, a story about the characters, the main group of which are extremely well sketched out.
If I had any complaints with the book, they would be with the ending. Before then, it seemed that things might have a scientific explanation, but some of the character actions and abilities shown near the end verge on magic, which I was not expecting from the science fiction setting. Then again, it’s not like we’ve never had a story where the main character saves the day by shooting torpedoes down an impossible shaft that nobody else can hit by using a mysterious magical power at the end of a science fiction story, so… Your mileage may vary. Just be aware that if you’re looking for pure hard-sf, you will be a little disappointed.
And while I’m on the subject, the science fiction that is mentioned here is really cool. Parts of the novel felt like The Three-Body Problem–except they were exciting the whole time.
The book works very well as a stand-alone, and I did not realize until I was doing some research after reading that it’s not the only book that Gilman has written in this universe–and I’m definitely going to be picking up the other one, and reading it when I can fit it in my schedule.
In summary, Dark Orbit was a complete surprise–and a delightful one, with some really cool science-based world-building, great characters, and a plot that kept me interested the entire time. Even if the ending wasn’t perfectly what I was expecting, the novel as a whole was a thoroughly enjoyable experience, and I give it a hearty four of five stars.
Review originally from my blog here.
February 17, 2018
This is an interesting juxtaposition of styles encapsulated in a single book. The story follows two main characters, Sara Ellicot and Thora Lassiter.
Sara's tale is your standard space drama told in third person omniscient with a reasonable smattering of wild science based loosely on actual quantum observations and theories. I am one who adheres to a strict rule on the science in science fiction. "No matter how unlikely, as long as the science is not impossible, then it is acceptable." The author pushes the limits on this, but in the end I relented as to meeting my criteria. I'm not a fan of omniscient as it takes you out of the character too often and I never really got to emote with Sara.
Thora's tale is told in first person and often as notes in a personal log. Her sections tended to have a literary feel to it with a fair amount of navel gazing. As a result, the first half of the story dragged, despite the book being only 303 pages. Again, the log entry aspect of her sections removed me from emoting with her.
There are a number of lesser characters, but the only one I enjoyed was Moth, one of the denizens of the planet, whose role dropped at the end. As a result, I never cared for what happened to the characters.
As to the main story, I found the concept unique and interesting. It's what carried me through as a reader. I liked the science, the politics, the intrigue, the settings and enough surprises to keep you involved. One thing about the author, she is an excellent wordsmith, though I did have one exception was her use of the word "bemind". Her application did not fit with what I believe is the proper definition. Unfortunately, this word is used vociferously throughout the novel.
I give this novel 3.5 stars, but since the system requires me to round off, it wasn't good enough for 4 stars so am left in allocating only 3 stars.
Sara's tale is your standard space drama told in third person omniscient with a reasonable smattering of wild science based loosely on actual quantum observations and theories. I am one who adheres to a strict rule on the science in science fiction. "No matter how unlikely, as long as the science is not impossible, then it is acceptable." The author pushes the limits on this, but in the end I relented as to meeting my criteria. I'm not a fan of omniscient as it takes you out of the character too often and I never really got to emote with Sara.
Thora's tale is told in first person and often as notes in a personal log. Her sections tended to have a literary feel to it with a fair amount of navel gazing. As a result, the first half of the story dragged, despite the book being only 303 pages. Again, the log entry aspect of her sections removed me from emoting with her.
There are a number of lesser characters, but the only one I enjoyed was Moth, one of the denizens of the planet, whose role dropped at the end. As a result, I never cared for what happened to the characters.
As to the main story, I found the concept unique and interesting. It's what carried me through as a reader. I liked the science, the politics, the intrigue, the settings and enough surprises to keep you involved. One thing about the author, she is an excellent wordsmith, though I did have one exception was her use of the word "bemind". Her application did not fit with what I believe is the proper definition. Unfortunately, this word is used vociferously throughout the novel.
I give this novel 3.5 stars, but since the system requires me to round off, it wasn't good enough for 4 stars so am left in allocating only 3 stars.
March 22, 2017
This book was slow and boring. The characters weren't really enjoyable, the plot went nowhere, and it was so busy trying to sound philosophical it forgot to actually tell a story. Add in some truly pointless feminism, conflict culminating in a handshake, religious bashing that goes nowhere, and we have a story about nothing. The whole thing was pointless. It also basically ended with, "and everyone died" because they now have to jump 58 years into the future.
How far behind the times would every scientist be if they were removed from the loop for 58 years? Their degrees and knowledge would be so far out of date it wouldn't even be funny. It'd be like someone coming out of college in 2017 having mastered a typewriter. The entire premise that creates the plot of the story simply doesn't make sense. Information progresses so rapidly in our world that by the time you reach your fourth year in college, the stuff from your first two years is out of date. These people travel for 58 years. Nothing they knew is even relevant anymore, and the people they all knew as experts are all dead.
Oh, and then we have the murder. Don't even get me started on the murder.
Giant, glaring, plot holes aside. The names were incredibly distracting. Everyone, except for three (?) characters, have a goofy name. Like the author just smashed the keyboard and went with whatever popped up. None of the beginning matters, none of the ending matters. Our characters were truly not needed to solve any problems.
Finally, we spend forever mentioning the same stupid scientific principle. This wasn't science-fiction. It was more philosophy-fiction. Similar to most of the great "scientists" our world is worshiping right now; this book confuses science and philosophy.
How far behind the times would every scientist be if they were removed from the loop for 58 years? Their degrees and knowledge would be so far out of date it wouldn't even be funny. It'd be like someone coming out of college in 2017 having mastered a typewriter. The entire premise that creates the plot of the story simply doesn't make sense. Information progresses so rapidly in our world that by the time you reach your fourth year in college, the stuff from your first two years is out of date. These people travel for 58 years. Nothing they knew is even relevant anymore, and the people they all knew as experts are all dead.
Oh, and then we have the murder. Don't even get me started on the murder.
Giant, glaring, plot holes aside. The names were incredibly distracting. Everyone, except for three (?) characters, have a goofy name. Like the author just smashed the keyboard and went with whatever popped up. None of the beginning matters, none of the ending matters. Our characters were truly not needed to solve any problems.
Finally, we spend forever mentioning the same stupid scientific principle. This wasn't science-fiction. It was more philosophy-fiction. Similar to most of the great "scientists" our world is worshiping right now; this book confuses science and philosophy.
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