Science Fiction: The Short Stuff discussion

Terminator: Hard Science Fiction on a World That Never Turns by Alan Voss is a hard science fiction novelette about survival in a tough environment told with great scientific rigor. The protagonist is Governor Yuki Tanabe, who leads 2,000 colonists from the generation ship Shackleton to a new home on the planet Ross 128 b. The main challenge is that the planet is tidally locked—meaning one side always faces its star and the other is in darkness—kind of like Mercury here in our solar system. The "habitable zone" is a violent, permanent wind tunnel because of the extreme temperature gradients. The novelette is described as grounded in real physics, similar in feel to The Martian or Aurora, focusing on engineering solutions to desperate survival issues.

Let's start reading this yesterday, if not sooner.

I finished this last night and liked it. It is definitely in the hard science wing of SF, not usually my favorite. Correspondingly, the relationships among the characters are not there for their own sake, but to fuel plot developments. Still, it's a gritty, realistic tale of survival on a challenging world where the enemy is that world's nature. The story is about as good as it can be given the limitations the plot sets for itself. Recommended especially for lovers of hard SF and environmental thriller readers.