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All the Stars Are Suns #2
Raven's Rook
Long awaited sequel to All The Stars Are Suns.
The crew of Challenger nearly perish upon arrival at the star system around Jinwu... but manage to survive and establish a pseudo-neolithic colony of humans and enhanced intelligent crows.
The crew of Challenger nearly perish upon arrival at the star system around Jinwu... but manage to survive and establish a pseudo-neolithic colony of humans and enhanced intelligent crows.
260 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 13, 2020
1 person is currently reading
7 people want to read
About the author
Seaby Brown
4 books33 followersSeaby Brown is an internationally recognized leader, entrepreneur, executive, and technologist / inventor in the flat panel display and microelectronic industries. She is a regularly invited speaker at international conferences, industry symposia, and universities. She has held engineering and managerial posts in leading semiconductor firms as well as start-up ventures. She has founded several technology companies and led industry research consortia programs. Seaby has over a hundred US patents issued, with more pending. She was awarded the Otto Schade Prize for her work in color displays, particularly PenTile subpixel rendering. In her forty year career, she has served in nearly every capacity from secretary to CEO / Chairman of the Board.
As well as writing science fiction novels, Seaby contributed a chapter to a technology textbook and a business book.
Seaby grew up in Silicon Valley (Sunnyvale and Los Altos, California) where she was imbued with the entrepreneurial and innovative spirit. She has two daughters, Elizabeth and Cassandra, both now grown. She and her husband, Jeff, live in Santa Rosa, California, where they are restoring the historic Comstock House.
When not puttering in her half acre garden or finger picking out folk tunes on her mountain dulimer, Seaby can be found at the local airport where she is a flight instructor (CFI, CFII, MEI). Seaby owns and flies a Piper Cherokee and a Piper Aztec she uses to travel across America.
As well as writing science fiction novels, Seaby contributed a chapter to a technology textbook and a business book.
Seaby grew up in Silicon Valley (Sunnyvale and Los Altos, California) where she was imbued with the entrepreneurial and innovative spirit. She has two daughters, Elizabeth and Cassandra, both now grown. She and her husband, Jeff, live in Santa Rosa, California, where they are restoring the historic Comstock House.
When not puttering in her half acre garden or finger picking out folk tunes on her mountain dulimer, Seaby can be found at the local airport where she is a flight instructor (CFI, CFII, MEI). Seaby owns and flies a Piper Cherokee and a Piper Aztec she uses to travel across America.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 10, 2021
Brown's first book, _All the Stars are Suns_, concerned corporate (and other) intrigue around the creation of strong AI and of STL starships.
_Raven's Rook_, her second, is technically a sequel, but demands no prior knowledge of that one. Set thousands of years later, it begins with a tautly-paced prologe, in which the AIs running one such starship struggle to save it, as it is struck by a piece of space rock shortly before it enters a new star's heliopause, intending not long after to brake around the star's gravity.
The main story takes up thousands of years later. The AIs have terraformed one of three worlds, Terranova, and are working on two others - Selenova and Oceania. All three orbit Changxi, a gas giant. Terranova was the first world ready for the introduction of plant and animal life, and over time, the AIs have introduced a full and genetically-engineered ecology before introducing humans and large, sapient crows. Both have been "gifted" with a symbiont that allows a limited telepathy, and access to a great deal of information, which they can also manipulate. (They call this spellworking.) The dense, relatiely oxygen-poor atmosphere of Terranova makes starting fires difficult, so humans have to develop their technology without it.
Which they do. As the story starts, they are in what the AIs think of as a Neolithic state, with a number of clever inventions making it very advanced indeed for "neolithic". Dustin has grown up in a village whose main trade good is crystal, which he has been raised to mine. Dustin is a dreamer, who spends a lot of time reading books his symbiont provides, from children's stories like _The Velveteen Rabbit_ to textbooks on any subject he can think of. (This is true for all humans and, presumably, crows, whose society touches that of humans in many places.
Interestingly, the AIs placed sentient crows on Terranova not only as a companion species for humans, but to provide a definitevly not-human people, in the hopes that it would prevent the development of serious racial/social prejudices among the humans. It seems, for the purposes of the story at least, to work; there are rivalries, but the only serious hatreds are _personal_.)
Now here's the problem: I can't tell you much more about the story without serious spoilers. A lot of stuff _happens_, most of it surprises of one sort and another, seeming almost random at first. These various events come together at the book's first climax, leading to a disaster that Dustin barely survives but crippled in a very specific way.
The events of the story - which, incidentaly, involve a few inventions the AIs do not expect to happen for generations - create problems for the AIs, and especially for Constance, the AI charged with studying the progression of society on Terranova and predicting where it is leading, so that appropriate interventions can be made: a sort of limited "psychohistory". But too many unexpected elements are introduced at the same time and Constance's models are thrown into chaos.
All is resolved, in the end, happily enough, and an epilogue jumps forward another bunch of millenia.
The writing is crisp and clean, and I think Brown is the most skilled purveyor of exposition-without-drawing-the-reader-out-of-the-story I've encountered since Robert Heinlein died. My only real complaint is that the proofreading on this book is bad - bad enough to jarme out of the story in a few places.
_Raven's Rook_, her second, is technically a sequel, but demands no prior knowledge of that one. Set thousands of years later, it begins with a tautly-paced prologe, in which the AIs running one such starship struggle to save it, as it is struck by a piece of space rock shortly before it enters a new star's heliopause, intending not long after to brake around the star's gravity.
The main story takes up thousands of years later. The AIs have terraformed one of three worlds, Terranova, and are working on two others - Selenova and Oceania. All three orbit Changxi, a gas giant. Terranova was the first world ready for the introduction of plant and animal life, and over time, the AIs have introduced a full and genetically-engineered ecology before introducing humans and large, sapient crows. Both have been "gifted" with a symbiont that allows a limited telepathy, and access to a great deal of information, which they can also manipulate. (They call this spellworking.) The dense, relatiely oxygen-poor atmosphere of Terranova makes starting fires difficult, so humans have to develop their technology without it.
Which they do. As the story starts, they are in what the AIs think of as a Neolithic state, with a number of clever inventions making it very advanced indeed for "neolithic". Dustin has grown up in a village whose main trade good is crystal, which he has been raised to mine. Dustin is a dreamer, who spends a lot of time reading books his symbiont provides, from children's stories like _The Velveteen Rabbit_ to textbooks on any subject he can think of. (This is true for all humans and, presumably, crows, whose society touches that of humans in many places.
Interestingly, the AIs placed sentient crows on Terranova not only as a companion species for humans, but to provide a definitevly not-human people, in the hopes that it would prevent the development of serious racial/social prejudices among the humans. It seems, for the purposes of the story at least, to work; there are rivalries, but the only serious hatreds are _personal_.)
Now here's the problem: I can't tell you much more about the story without serious spoilers. A lot of stuff _happens_, most of it surprises of one sort and another, seeming almost random at first. These various events come together at the book's first climax, leading to a disaster that Dustin barely survives but crippled in a very specific way.
The events of the story - which, incidentaly, involve a few inventions the AIs do not expect to happen for generations - create problems for the AIs, and especially for Constance, the AI charged with studying the progression of society on Terranova and predicting where it is leading, so that appropriate interventions can be made: a sort of limited "psychohistory". But too many unexpected elements are introduced at the same time and Constance's models are thrown into chaos.
All is resolved, in the end, happily enough, and an epilogue jumps forward another bunch of millenia.
The writing is crisp and clean, and I think Brown is the most skilled purveyor of exposition-without-drawing-the-reader-out-of-the-story I've encountered since Robert Heinlein died. My only real complaint is that the proofreading on this book is bad - bad enough to jarme out of the story in a few places.
November 29, 2020
Seaby Brown's perspective of mankind's distant future is one that I enjoy watching manifest. This is a universe of feasible and fascinating evolutions - sentient crows and an evolved "internet" that are so deeply embedded in the characters whose lives we get to witness, that they do not even see their own uniqueness. And yet, in who they are, we can easily see ourselves - turning every page to help see them safely home.
January 27, 2021
I loved this one as much as the first in the series. The characters became my good friends.
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November 26, 2020I'm the author... so this isn't a "review" exactly, more like a glimpse into what I personally think of my own work. Frankly, I think this book is better than my first, All The Stars Are Suns. It is a classic sequel, taking up where the first left off. But you don't really have to read the first to understand or enjoy the second.
This second book is about Terranova, humanities first terraformed world in another star system. It's a coming of age story, both for a young man and for a culture.
As in the first book, the 'science fiction' is what I believe really can happen. There are no Phake Physic(tm) plot elements. All the basic science we know today is strictly adhered to. If things are different than our world today, it is because, as an inventor, I am imagining where our technology is going and letting that be my guide. The society I describe is the one the one that I would have liked to have visited. I hope that you will enjoy visiting it in reading the book.
This second book is about Terranova, humanities first terraformed world in another star system. It's a coming of age story, both for a young man and for a culture.
As in the first book, the 'science fiction' is what I believe really can happen. There are no Phake Physic(tm) plot elements. All the basic science we know today is strictly adhered to. If things are different than our world today, it is because, as an inventor, I am imagining where our technology is going and letting that be my guide. The society I describe is the one the one that I would have liked to have visited. I hope that you will enjoy visiting it in reading the book.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews