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Sunflower Cycle #2

by Peter Watts

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Fiction, Novella, Space

25 pages, ebook

First published May 1, 2014

Reviews

[carol. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short story in the 'Sunflower Cycle,' this feels a little more like a fragment due to using full-on in media res, but I like it. The descriptions strongly recalled shades of Zelazny's story about deep-sea fishing on Venus, The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth.

It's very much old-school sci-fi, dropping you in and letting you figure it out, but my initial impression is that of a genetically engineered person is having life-long doubts about her mission as a long-range/long-life space-farer and wants one last shot at reconsidering. I'm intrigued enough that I'd like to read the rest of the Sunflower Cycle series. I feel like it could have used one more deep edit in two spots.

"Until someone comes up with a neuron that fires without being poked, we're all just— reacting."

Best advertisement ever:

"WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CONTENT OF THOSE THOUGHTS, OR FOR ANY POTENTIAL TRAUMA RESULTING THEREFROM.



"You never know how automatons might react to autonomy. We were not promised bliss, after all. I've seen rumors— never confirmed, and notably absent from IE's orientation uploads— of early tours in which unbound clients clawed their own faces off. These days, the company chooses to err on the side of caution. We'll experience our freedom in shackles.

Watts nutshelling Philosophy 101:

"I look deep inside for some spark of new insight, some difference between the Real Will I have now and the mere delusion that's afflicted every human since the model came out. How would I even know? Is there some LED in my parietal lobe, dark my whole life, that lights up when the leash comes off? Is any decision I make now more autonomous than one I might have made ten minutes ago?

https://rifters.com/real/shorts/Peter...

[Ian Payton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Update After Reading The Freeze-Frame Revolution

Reading Freeze-Frame Revolution puts Hotshot into a much clearer context - Hotshot is a key part of the back story of the main character, Sunday Ahzmundin, in Freeze-Frame Revolution. However, as a standalone short story, I still think it's lacking focus and resolution.

My original assumption that Hotshot answers questions I'd have after reading Freeze-Frame Revolution is also only partially true: the author spends two pages in the 2nd chapter of Freeze-Frame Revolution summarising Hotshot anyway. So the author clearly believes that the events in Hotshort are pertinent to the character development in Freeze-Frame Revolution, but should they be read in chronological order (as I did) or publication order?

I'm happy enough that I read Hotshot first, as I was familiar with Sunday and already had a sense of the mission that they were on when I came to read Freeze-Frame Revolution - but I don't think that that's necessary to enjoy or understand Freeze-Frame Revolution (although that's not a theory I can test, obviously). I've also read positive reviews of Hotshot from people who read Freeze-Frame Revolution first, and who are glad to be reading Sunday's back story.

So, I guess my answer is that it doesn't really matter. My personal opinion is that Hotshot would be better placed as a prologue in Freeze-Frame Revolution. The sense of hanging "so what?" would be resolved, and it would be to the benefit of both stories.

Upgraded from 2 stars to 3 stars. Still 2 stars for a standalone short story, but 4 stars as a prologue to Freeze-Frame Revolution.

Original Thoughts

I’m not sure what I’ve just read, so my star rating reflects my confusion and may be subject to change. I want to read The Freeze-Frame Revolution due to a positive review that I’ve seen on GR, but I saw that it’s part of a series (the Sunflower Cycle), and that this short story (33 pages) is chronologically the first in the series. And I’m a sucker for wanting to read series in an appropriate order. Advice on reading order on various forums and web sites is mixed, but “chronological order” is mentioned in several places, so seemed a reasonable approach.

But it’s just set-up. It shows the preparatory stages of a mission that will take the main character, Sunday Ahzmundin, across interstellar space to build gateways that future humans may ultimately travel through. Sunday has been the subject of genetic and psychological conditioning her entire life in preparation for this project, and there are some philosophical points about whether Sunday has free will in choosing to go ahead with the missions.

This short story almost certainly answers questions that I don’t yet have, and I may be grateful for it as I start to read The Freeze-Frame Revolution and other stories in the series. So much for “appropriate order”. I’ll revisit this review, and my star rating, once I’ve read the other books and have their context to help (and possibly some advice of my own about reading order).

Stand by.

[The Captain · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ahoy there me mateys! So last week I reviewed a novella by Peter Watts called the freeze frame revolution which I highly enjoyed. While writing that review, I learned that the novella was part of a series - the Sunflower series. There are three other stories and all are available for free on the author's website. So I decided to read this one - the second published but the first by chronology.

This story also deals with Sunday Ahzmundin, the protagonist from the freeze frame revolution. At 23 pages it is a short foray into the circumstances of the Spores. I won't even touch on the plot because I can't explain it well and since it's so short I don't want to give spoilers. Just know that I did love this brief excursion. The physics of it all went above me head as usual but I did get the gist.

Personally I be glad to have read them in the order I did. I got a longer story in the freeze frame revolution and truly grew to love Sunday. So then going back in time while knowing some of her future was fun.

I will certainly be readin' the island next. Keep a weathered eye out! Arrr!

Side note: Claudia @ goodreads' review (which is excellent) is what told me about the publication of the Sunflower series. As she says:

". . . it’s part of a series of stories, entitled the Sunflowercycle, which includes three more short ones (so far).*

Publication order is: The Island (2009) - Winner of Hugo Award for Best Novelette in 2010, Hotshot (2014), Giants (2014) and The Freeze-Frame Revolution (June 2018).
Now, after reading all, my advice is they are to be read in this order: Hotshot, The Freeze-Frame Revolution, The Island, Giants . . .

* all three available on the author’[s] site: http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts.htm"

Check out me other reviews at https://thecaptainsquartersblog.wordp...

[chvang · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hotshot is about Sunday (ha! I just got the joke), who was engineered and trained and groomed to crew a ship whose mission is planned to outlast the heat death of the universe. Her life has been so constrained (even her parents were engineered and trained and groomed and her life planned out 30 years before her birth) that she wonders if she has any free will (either that or there is an in-story scientific breakthrough that proves the universe is deterministic?). On the eve of her mission, she goes on a spiritual journey/vision quest to figure out whether she actually has a choice or if she is simply a product of her birth, training, and tightly scheduled environment.

I love it. It is character-driven while still retaining the sort of big idea found in the best science fiction.

You can find a .pdf file for free on the author's website:

https://rifters.com/real/shorts.htm

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some amazing backstory on Sunday Ahzmundin, the protagonist from The Freeze-Frame Revolution, as well as the gate seeding program itself, the subject of Watts' outstanding Sunflower Cycle series. Glimpses of childhood reveal Sunday's inherent rebellious nature, setting her apart from the thousands of others bred and raised since birth to crew the seed ship, seemingly on a voluntary basis. She undertakes a pilgrimage of sorts, embarking on a risky journey to the sun's corona to seek some type of revelation and discover the true nature of her free will. Watts' writing is masterful, mixing profound scientific knowledge with such vivid prose that it simply makes my jaw drop.

[Cathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

“You do understand: It has to be your choice.
They never stopped telling me I was free to back out. They told me while they were still wrangling asteroids out past Mars; told me again as they chewed through those rocks like steel termites, bored out caverns and tunnels, layered in forests and holds and life- support systems rated for a longer operational lifespan than the sun itself.“

Hm. Not sure yet what to make of it or if I will continue with this. Testing free will, before going on a destined journey into space, far far away. It was a little confusing at first, but not bad. It‘s possible it needs the context of the other stories for it all to come together.

Publication order: The Island (2009) - Winner of Hugo Award for Best Novelette in 2010 -, Hotshot (2014), Giants (2014) and The Freeze-Frame Revolution (June 2018).

Recommended reading order: Hotshot, The Freeze-Frame Revolution , The Island, Giants.

Peter Watts‘ free short stories, including this one: https://rifters.com/real/shorts.htm

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short prequel to The Freeze-Frame Revolution, which I was gonna read next (sort of started last night, but completely forgot about by morning, so...) but I feel like this wore out my brain and maybe I need something dumb, or just to go to sleep.

[Francisco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Peter Watts has managed (again) to amaze me in a whirlwind of ideas that blew my mind (again). Not for every taste, but for me it's been another excellent chapter in the Sunflower Cycle. Again, the idea of identity pervades all the story and makes you stop and think about yourself, the planet you live in and the things that are being done to it. Will it be too late now? Or are we still on time?

[Mundy Reimer · Rating 3 out of 5]

As much as I adore Watts' other books Blindsight and Echopraxia, I gotta say that this story was just so-so. I ended up taking the advice of one of the previous reviewers, @TheCaptain and started this series of short stories in non-publication order (which is apparently chronological order story-wise), which makes this the first story in the bunch.

The story is only 23 pages and introduces the background of the main protagonist going forward, but other than that I didn't get much out of it that seemed novel or salient enough for me to write a substantial analysis about. I think I may just need more context information regarding the rest of the stories in the series tbh. With that said, the whole free-will vs. superdeterminism thing seems to provide a nice fertile bed for the next couple of stories. If anything, the speculation around the idea that the evolution of a system and how the interactions between causal parts end up layering constraints upon constraints that "lock up" a system into perfect order and harmony is also something I discuss in my review and analysis of Frank Herbert's original Dune. Other than that, the writing style is really good and obviously so Peter Watts-esque, if you know what I mean 🤓 For those that don't, it's basically chock-full of science jargon written in a very in-your-face + casually-dropped manner, while simultaneously being beautifully poetic.

Anyway, with that said, I'm going to continue onwards and see if *The Freeze-Frame Revolution* puts this into better context and excites me🤞

[Matthew Ochal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this guy focuses on a lot of stuff that not really important or interesting without having read the freeze frame revolution first. Alas, perhaps i read again in the future once ive done so. For now onto the third short story. Then maybe i hit up freeze frame revolution

[Travis · Rating 5 out of 5]

"So much potential lost there, so many gates slammed shut in a single picosecond. The laws of physics congeal and countless degrees of freedom disappear forever. The future is a straitjacket: every flip of an electron cinches the straps a little more, every decision to go here instead of there culls the remaining options."

This is the kind of writing you're in for. Tight, beautiful words unspooling in wondrous, philosophical coils. It doesn't read in a linear manner, and is one part of the Sunflower Cycle, but whoa. The whole story is worth the read just for the types of gems above.

Onward and upward to read the rest of the Sunflower Cycle!

[Cameron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great short story in the same densely imaginative and informative style as Peter Watts' other writings. Aside from providing an awe-inspiring vision of a possible future, it grapples with the question of free will in some depth despite its short length. I'm excited to read the other stories in the Sunflower universe.

If you wish to read this story, it's free on his website, rifters.com.

[netjeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

A densely packed hard SF short story that pushed all the right buttons for me. I had to go to wikipedia several times, which is something that I liked. For example, the story had a brief reference to "Smolin cosmology", which led me wikipedia and physicist Lee Smolin's theory of cosmological natural selection.

[Nicole (bookwyrm) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating story. It's a little confusing, but it is also the second in the set and I read it first, so that might have something to do with my confusion. (It also might be intentional, given the clarity of the ending.) Still, this is a neat concept and I want to more in the world to see where it goes.

[Nooilforpacifists · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tremendous short story. Don’t have a clue where this fits into the “Sunflower Cycle,” but I’m game for more.

This was available for free on the author’s website.

[Kynan · Rating 3 out of 5]

TL;DR: The first, by internal chronology, of the Sunflower Cycle and well worth the time to read! If you're a hard-scifi fan then you should read this tiny story (only 22 pages, and freely available at https://rifters.com/real/shorts/Peter...) as an intro to The Freeze-Frame Revolution which is awesome! Do yourself a favour 🙂

TL: I'm writing this review after having just finished Giants because I couldn't bring myself to stop reading this (mini-?)-series long enough to update Goodreads. Which is annoying, I always regret losing my perspective (or lack thereof) on a book in a series.

Anyway, I enjoyed this story at the time, and I came to enjoy it more after I'd read the other stories. Here, we are introduced to Ms. Sunday Ahzmundin and her friend Kai. Fellow trainees for...some kind of long-term mission that is slowly revealed in a non-chronological set of vignettes and asides as something epically long-term!

At it's core, this is a story about free-will. And pessimism. And cool potential future science! Free-will is the main point though and how it works in humans but also just how useful a general artificial intelligence might really not be:

You build something smarter than a person, it's pretty much guaranteed to go off and do its own thing as soon as you boot it up. And there's no way to know in advance what that might be.

Sunday and Kai, and many others, have been carefully gene-engineered, bred and cognitively accelerated (mental age corresponds to ~2x physical age) to carry out a long running task of running a string of nonrelativistic wormholes throughout the universe on the Eriophora, if they want to.

I think that 50% of the magic of this story is the choppy-changey reveal of the plot, and 50% is in Mr Watts' ability to concisely and sometimes even abruptly construct a sentence, and indeed a story. There's a bunch of terminology referenced that is integral to the story but doesn't require immediate understand, providing plenty of follow-up reading opportunities (unless you're already an astrophysicist or something I guess - I certainly didn't know what "Kerr-Newman" referred to before I looked it up) or brief detours to Wikipedia for enlightenment and enhanced enjoyment.

This is the threshold to a fantastic series of short-stories (by internal chronology) and I enjoyed every minute of it. You should definitely check it out if you're a hard-scifi fan.

[Ruggero Bettinardi · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

this 23-pages short story sets before the asteroid-spaceship "Eriophora" ships out for a one-way ride to the end of time.

If you (plan to) read "The Freeze Frame Revolution" + "The Island", you may want to read also this, as it gives some minimal background about the mission and about Sunday Ahzmundin's past, filling some lacking details in the others stories of the "Sunflower cycle" - you know, Peter Watts rarely presents the reader with all the details, instead he let her/him discover them her/himself - when possible.

The (absence/irrelevance) of Free Will is a central theme, and Watts exposed this through in his unique "blitzkrieg" writing style which concentrates high-end concepts in sharp sarcastic, merciless and bleak bullets that punch you in the face: "[...] you never know how an automaton will react to autonomy". Chapeau.

This being said, I found the writing too solipsistic: details never spelled out but taken for granted and the abuse of technical jargon makes reading not always easy nor pleasant. Sometimes looks like Watts was writing this story for no other audience than himself, which is a real shame, him being one of the most brilliant and original authors of hard SF currently at work.

[Steve LaForest]

This is a review of the short story "The Things", by Peter Watts.

I have inserted this review here because I could not Goodreads does not have an entry for "The Things", and this spot will at least but the review alongside short fiction by Peter Watts.

I'm afraid that I found Gardner Dozois' wonderful introduction (In the Year's Best Science Fiction: 28th Annual collection (2011) much more wonderful that the actual story. This story is a rewrite / extension / tribute to the classic original The Thing by John W. Campbell. After I read this story, I re-read the original, and found I liked the original better.

But don't give up on Peter Watts.

I rated the story "C", which would translate to a Goodreads score of 2 stars. A score of 1 1/2 stars would actually fit better, but half stars are not permitted.

He's good. He's imaginative, And he's even Canadian!

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have got this sunflower series in the wrong order for sure. This is such a short novella, and dense in terms of the hard sci fi. The main thing I learnt was the warning as the spaceship is about to launch via the power of the sun to get up to an eventual 20% of the speed of light. The crew get a warning U ARE ABOUT TO EMBARK UPON A JOURNEY LEADING TO A COGNITIVE AUTONOMY THAT YOU HAVE NEVER EXPERIENCED BEFORE. WHILE SOME CLIENTS HAVE DESCRIBED THEIR SUNDIVES AS ECSTATIC, RELIGIOUS, AND PROFOUNDLY FULFILLING, INDUSTRIAL ENLIGHTENMENT INC. CAN NOT GUARANTEE A PLEASANT EXPERIENCE. These guys will be sleeping for thousand of years.... What if you went under and you had a bad "trip" that lasted an eternity. Very Promethian!

[Ajam · Rating 3 out of 5]

3★
My first watts and am fairly impressed.
The prose does feel quite masturbatory at times esp whenever he delivers the scientific mubo-jumbo but to someone who likes prog, being masturbatory is not much of an issue if the story delivers. This one does.
Onto, The Freeze-Frame Revolution next.

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recommended reading for anyone wanting to read #The Freeze-Frame Revolution... This story provided a needed introduction to a future world where a tribe in of humans have been raised to live in space ships like spores.... And Sunday, the lead character is constantly exploring whether there is such thing as free will.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The sun dive is an interesting idea, but already mentioned in Freeze Frame. Not much new is explored in terms of that idea. It was interesting to get more on Sunday's background, which is hinted at in Freeze Frame, but it wasn't clear to me how it all fit together.

[Jerfus]

It's a good thing I know this is part of a series because, on its own, it didn't give me any clear ideas... I'm used to feeling too dumb to *get*. Watts' books but this time I truly didn't understand much.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read but the free will themes were either nonsense or over my head. I kind of felt like it was a similar idea to shock therapy or ketamine therapy, but it wasn't clear to me why it had to be the Sun? Just because of the relative obliterating strength of the magnetic fields?

[Dragutin Nisic · Rating 4 out of 5]

great short story, intro into my next TBR book..cant wait

[Princessjay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sunday's story, just prior to her becoming crew to the Eriophora.

[chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Left on its own, Humanity sucks its thumb and stagnates in its own shit; faced with The Other, it builds portals to infinity.

[Dainis Mazkaļķis · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5

Ļoti īss, tā ka neko daudz jau nepateiksi, bet ir savi momenti. Kā atsevišķu stāstu lasīt gan nav lielas jēgas

[C. Steinmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

+Giants. Some early, some late adfitions. Nice, but not essential...

[Lola · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prequel to Freezeframe Revolution, available for free from Watt’s website https://www.rifters.com/real/shorts.htm