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Sunflower Cycle
The Freeze-Frame Revolution
How do you stage a mutiny when you’re only awake one day in a million? How do you conspire when your tiny handful of potential allies changes with each job shift? How do you engage an enemy that never sleeps, that sees through your eyes and hears through your ears, and relentlessly, honestly, only wants what’s best for you? Trapped aboard the starship Eriophora, Sunday Ahzmundin is about to discover the components of any successful revolution: conspiracy, code—and unavoidable casualties.
Note from the publisher: The red letters in the print edition (and highlighted letters in the e-book) indicate special bonus content from the author.
Note from the publisher: The red letters in the print edition (and highlighted letters in the e-book) indicate special bonus content from the author.
190 pages, Paperback
First published June 12, 2018
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March 7, 2018
First of all, this novella is not meant to be read on its own. Could be regarded as a standalone, but you’ll feel like something is missing. And that’s because it’s part of a series of stories, entitled the Sunflower cycle, 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. It will not answer all your questions, but it will bring some light into this universe and its perpetual travelers.
Secondly, Peter Watts is not the usual sci-fi writer; he does not construct friendly or appealing worlds, nor does he stage culminating battles. Usual aliens are not part of this work. He weaves his stories around characters in, the least said, out of the ordinary situations.
His stories are not meant to make the reader have an easy time; they are meant to rise questions, ponder things and try to find answers which are not within reach most of the time. Reading all these four stories, you’ll get a better idea about this universe and it will leave wanting more of it. And looks like more will come.
This novella here is no exception. Sunday Ahzmundin was raised specifically for this mission, which is to build a web of wormholes gates throughout space, thus making interstellar travel more accessible. Eriophora (perfect name for what she does) is a gate-building relativistic ship, built inside an asteroid and controlled by an unusual AI, the Chimp.
Not much is happening; it’s the immensity of the scale and the apparent impossibility of the task which our characters are struggling to overcome. How do you plan a mutiny when you are awake just a few days every few thousands of years, at best? And then, there is a big chance when awake not to meet the same people you schemed with.
Therefore, if you like hard sci-fi, a scope as large as the universe, a time scale of billions of years, characters’ psychology and myriad of questions unanswered, you’re in for a treat. I, for one, am looking forward for more stories in this universe.
* all three available on the author’ site: http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts.htm
>>> ARC received thanks to Tachyon Publications via NetGalley <<<
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. It will not answer all your questions, but it will bring some light into this universe and its perpetual travelers.
Secondly, Peter Watts is not the usual sci-fi writer; he does not construct friendly or appealing worlds, nor does he stage culminating battles. Usual aliens are not part of this work. He weaves his stories around characters in, the least said, out of the ordinary situations.
His stories are not meant to make the reader have an easy time; they are meant to rise questions, ponder things and try to find answers which are not within reach most of the time. Reading all these four stories, you’ll get a better idea about this universe and it will leave wanting more of it. And looks like more will come.
This novella here is no exception. Sunday Ahzmundin was raised specifically for this mission, which is to build a web of wormholes gates throughout space, thus making interstellar travel more accessible. Eriophora (perfect name for what she does) is a gate-building relativistic ship, built inside an asteroid and controlled by an unusual AI, the Chimp.
Not much is happening; it’s the immensity of the scale and the apparent impossibility of the task which our characters are struggling to overcome. How do you plan a mutiny when you are awake just a few days every few thousands of years, at best? And then, there is a big chance when awake not to meet the same people you schemed with.
Therefore, if you like hard sci-fi, a scope as large as the universe, a time scale of billions of years, characters’ psychology and myriad of questions unanswered, you’re in for a treat. I, for one, am looking forward for more stories in this universe.
* all three available on the author’ site: http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts.htm
>>> ARC received thanks to Tachyon Publications via NetGalley <<<
September 11, 2022
How do you stage a rebellion under the all-seeing eye of technology when you’re awake only for a few days every few thousand years?
An unimaginably long haul through the galaxy in a spaceship that is making wormholes. A journey of 66 million years (and counting), most of which is spent in cryosleep while the ship is being autonomously steered by an AI, punctuated by brief periods of wakefulness when the ship needs human input, every few hundred thousand years.
(For comparison and appreciation of the timescales involved, count back 66 million years, and you’ll arrive at a T. Rex staring at the bright speck in the sky, unaware that it’s about to be cosmically broiled alive.) I mean, do you even know who you’re building all those wormholes for? Is there anything even left of humanity?
And an issue — well, one of many in a situation as mind-warping as this — is that, really, you’re just meat serving the machine and the mission millions of years old, meat that’s frozen most of the time, carefully designed to accept this way of things, and you’re alive just for as long as your cost/benefit ratio is above the red. You’re just meat, only occasionally needed, and you have no choice in this.
Revolutions have happened for lesser reasons than that.
————
Peter Watts writes brainy “hard” science fiction. And apparently he doesn’t believe in making it easy for his readers. He makes you work for it, doesn’t dumb it down, and expects you to think long and hard about challenging ideas. And he also doesn’t seem to suffer from terminal optimism, which is strangely refreshing. (Fellow pessimists, unite!)
He tackles the issue of human/AI relationship here, and the question of whether it’s even possible or whether it’s all pretense. The limitations of Artificial Stupidity, an AI - derisively referred to as the Chimp - designed to not be smarter than humans (since we all know the potential dangers of overly intelligent AI). Are we just anthropomorphizing something that is incapable of actual friendship; something that may or may not be able to dance? And often I feel like a chimp myself, reading his ideas and realizing that I lack a few neurons to fully *get* it. The funny thing is, I don’t mind at all feeling less intelligent than Watts.
And the things that Watts leaves unsaid are as important as the ones he tackles head on. The biggest one for me was — if this revolution succeeds, then what? What’s the plan? Keep on making wormholes, but without Chimp running the systems? In their situation, what’s even the meaning of free will?
In the time when most science fiction stories seem to require a few books and a few thousand pages to tell any story, it’s amazing how much Watts can pack into a story that clocks in under 200 pages. Concise and clever, it’s quite wonderful.
4.5 stars, rounding up. A nice end to a run of lackluster recent reads. And my favorite Watts book so far.
—————
Buddy read with carol., Phil, David, and Vivian.
——————
There are a few more short stories set in this universe. The proper reading order for these (different than publication order) with links to the stories on Peter Watts’ website:
- Hotshot
- The Freeze-Frame Revolution (this one)
- Giants (from Clarkesworld website)
- The Island
- Hitchhiker (unfinished)
——————
Also posted on my blog.
“How do you stage a mutiny when you’re only awake a few days in a century, when your tiny handful of coconspirators gets reshuffled every time they’re called on deck? How do you plot against an enemy that never sleeps, that has all those empty ages to grind its brute-force way down every avenue, stumble across every careless clue you might have left behind? An enemy with eyes that span your whole world, an enemy that can see through your eyes, hear through your ears in glorious hi-def first-person?”
An unimaginably long haul through the galaxy in a spaceship that is making wormholes. A journey of 66 million years (and counting), most of which is spent in cryosleep while the ship is being autonomously steered by an AI, punctuated by brief periods of wakefulness when the ship needs human input, every few hundred thousand years.
“Five hundred years is nothing,” Viktor said. “Call me in a few billion. Then we’ll talk.”
(For comparison and appreciation of the timescales involved, count back 66 million years, and you’ll arrive at a T. Rex staring at the bright speck in the sky, unaware that it’s about to be cosmically broiled alive.) I mean, do you even know who you’re building all those wormholes for? Is there anything even left of humanity?
“Sixty-six million years, by the old calendar. That’s how long we’ve been on the road. All the way back to the end of the Cretaceous.”
And an issue — well, one of many in a situation as mind-warping as this — is that, really, you’re just meat serving the machine and the mission millions of years old, meat that’s frozen most of the time, carefully designed to accept this way of things, and you’re alive just for as long as your cost/benefit ratio is above the red. You’re just meat, only occasionally needed, and you have no choice in this.
Revolutions have happened for lesser reasons than that.
————
Peter Watts writes brainy “hard” science fiction. And apparently he doesn’t believe in making it easy for his readers. He makes you work for it, doesn’t dumb it down, and expects you to think long and hard about challenging ideas. And he also doesn’t seem to suffer from terminal optimism, which is strangely refreshing. (Fellow pessimists, unite!)
He tackles the issue of human/AI relationship here, and the question of whether it’s even possible or whether it’s all pretense. The limitations of Artificial Stupidity, an AI - derisively referred to as the Chimp - designed to not be smarter than humans (since we all know the potential dangers of overly intelligent AI). Are we just anthropomorphizing something that is incapable of actual friendship; something that may or may not be able to dance? And often I feel like a chimp myself, reading his ideas and realizing that I lack a few neurons to fully *get* it. The funny thing is, I don’t mind at all feeling less intelligent than Watts.
And the things that Watts leaves unsaid are as important as the ones he tackles head on. The biggest one for me was — if this revolution succeeds, then what? What’s the plan? Keep on making wormholes, but without Chimp running the systems? In their situation, what’s even the meaning of free will?
In the time when most science fiction stories seem to require a few books and a few thousand pages to tell any story, it’s amazing how much Watts can pack into a story that clocks in under 200 pages. Concise and clever, it’s quite wonderful.
4.5 stars, rounding up. A nice end to a run of lackluster recent reads. And my favorite Watts book so far.
—————
Buddy read with carol., Phil, David, and Vivian.
——————
There are a few more short stories set in this universe. The proper reading order for these (different than publication order) with links to the stories on Peter Watts’ website:
- Hotshot
- The Freeze-Frame Revolution (this one)
- Giants (from Clarkesworld website)
- The Island
- Hitchhiker (unfinished)
——————
Also posted on my blog.
March 10, 2018
This is some classy hard-hard SF. :) Black hole/worm hole drive using new and real theories? Hell yeah.
But beyond that, I love the whole idea of short periods of wakefulness during a single trip that takes 65 million years.
Add a rebellion against IBM... I mean HAL... I mean CHIMP, without expecting anything to go quite the way that 2001 went, or even remotely like it, and we've got a really fascinating story.
Watts knows how to build really fascinating locations and situations... maybe better than almost any other writer. He never rests on a single awesome idea but adds to it and introduces even more interesting wrinkles such as watching an AI dance, or truly alien intelligences, or maybe just freaking out because the rest of humanity must necessarily be dead during the scope of your mission.
But add a complicated revolution among sleepers using old D&D manuals? Adding jarring notes during a musical composition?
Oh yeah, the devil is in the details. :)
I'm enjoying this novel(la according to the author) through Netgalley as an ARC, but this wonderful reviewer here: Claudia's Review has pointed out that this is not a standalone story. She's even provided a link to the author's website for the other stories (free to download) as well as the suggested reading order. Thank you!
I might be reading out of order, but I don't mind it all that much. Watts is a thinking man's hard-SF writer. I expect to be at least a little challenged and delighted. As anyone who has read Blindsight knows. :)
But beyond that, I love the whole idea of short periods of wakefulness during a single trip that takes 65 million years.
Add a rebellion against IBM... I mean HAL... I mean CHIMP, without expecting anything to go quite the way that 2001 went, or even remotely like it, and we've got a really fascinating story.
Watts knows how to build really fascinating locations and situations... maybe better than almost any other writer. He never rests on a single awesome idea but adds to it and introduces even more interesting wrinkles such as watching an AI dance, or truly alien intelligences, or maybe just freaking out because the rest of humanity must necessarily be dead during the scope of your mission.
But add a complicated revolution among sleepers using old D&D manuals? Adding jarring notes during a musical composition?
Oh yeah, the devil is in the details. :)
I'm enjoying this novel(la according to the author) through Netgalley as an ARC, but this wonderful reviewer here: Claudia's Review has pointed out that this is not a standalone story. She's even provided a link to the author's website for the other stories (free to download) as well as the suggested reading order. Thank you!
I might be reading out of order, but I don't mind it all that much. Watts is a thinking man's hard-SF writer. I expect to be at least a little challenged and delighted. As anyone who has read Blindsight knows. :)
May 25, 2018
9 out of 10 at: https://1000yearplan.com/2018/05/25/t...
For sixty-five million years, the crew of the starship Eriophora has been building gates to facilitate faster space travel for human expansion. The ship is ruled by Chimp, a “dumb” AI built with a lower synapse count to keep it at relatively human-level intelligence, and every few thousand or million or so years a build crew is selected and awakened from among its 30,000-plus population to assist in the logistics of gate construction. Sunday Ahzmundin, the protagonist and narrator of Peter Watts’ new novella “The Freeze-Frame Revolution”, is Chimp’s favorite, and finds herself awakened more often than the average crewperson. She has come to see Chimp as a friend, has gotten to know more people from more of the various “tribes” that constitute the milieu of life on a ship whose mission will likely stretch as far as time itself. She’s also been around enough to see the seeds of mutiny grow, as people begin to question whether Chimp – whose capacity to rule over their lives is near-absolute – can even be trusted, and whether it really is as “dumb” as the mission’s progenitors claimed. But how can anyone stage a coup against an entity that knows where they are and what they are doing at all times, when they don’t even know who or how many of their allies will be awake at the same time, at intervals stretching several millennia or more?
The mordant tone of Sunday’s narration attests to a kind of casual acceptance of the crew’s eventual fate; for the first few dozen million years, most crewpersons held out hope that they would be recalled home, or that they would be allowed to retire and settle down on an earth-like planet somewhere – at this point it seems clear that they won’t stop building gates until the heat death of the universe. When we first meet Sunday, she is relating how she used to play a little mental game with herself, calculating what point in Earth’s history they would be if they were moving backward in time rather than forward. She gives up around the time Australopithecus thrived in Eastern Africa. Had her morbid exercise in hypothetical time travel continued, the point at which her story begins would land Eriophora at the end of the Mesozoic Era, when a mass extinction event wiped out the dinosaurs. In all that time they have only covered a fraction of the expanse of the Milky Way, and the only indication they have of any sentient life – much less human life – still existing in the universe outside of themselves is the occasional “gremlin” that pokes through a newly-built gate to take a shot at them.
The ratio of human years to mission years creates the kind of psychological imbalance that makes the desire for insurrection both understandable and inevitable – the most commonly utilized crew members are awake for little more than a decade or two while eons pass them by. Add to this the fact that the terms they use to (accurately) describe the conditions that define their existence are inherently dehumanizing: they were “programmed” for the mission from birth, crewpersons are “deprecated” when their skills are no longer considered useful, their coldsleep pods are called “coffins” and are stored in “crypts”. Their lives – spent mostly in a state of near-death – are reduced to their functionality, with Chimp as the sole arbiter of their value, which is measured only by their usefulness to the mission. The most striking thing about the scope of “The Freeze-Frame Revolution” is the way it makes the scale of the universe and the wonder of discovery feel like more of a prison than a liberating experience.
Watts falls within the lineage of classic hard SF writers who can make far-future science magic seem tangible, but his true gift lies in how personable he makes it feel. Heavy themes like alienation, the value of existence, and the nature of consciousness are woven into the brisk narrative with humor and pathos. Watts may be too smart to let a big idea pass by without picking it to pieces, but above all, “The Freeze-Frame Revolution” is fun to read.
Many thanks to Edelweiss and Tachyon Publications for the opportunity to read this ARC.
For sixty-five million years, the crew of the starship Eriophora has been building gates to facilitate faster space travel for human expansion. The ship is ruled by Chimp, a “dumb” AI built with a lower synapse count to keep it at relatively human-level intelligence, and every few thousand or million or so years a build crew is selected and awakened from among its 30,000-plus population to assist in the logistics of gate construction. Sunday Ahzmundin, the protagonist and narrator of Peter Watts’ new novella “The Freeze-Frame Revolution”, is Chimp’s favorite, and finds herself awakened more often than the average crewperson. She has come to see Chimp as a friend, has gotten to know more people from more of the various “tribes” that constitute the milieu of life on a ship whose mission will likely stretch as far as time itself. She’s also been around enough to see the seeds of mutiny grow, as people begin to question whether Chimp – whose capacity to rule over their lives is near-absolute – can even be trusted, and whether it really is as “dumb” as the mission’s progenitors claimed. But how can anyone stage a coup against an entity that knows where they are and what they are doing at all times, when they don’t even know who or how many of their allies will be awake at the same time, at intervals stretching several millennia or more?
The mordant tone of Sunday’s narration attests to a kind of casual acceptance of the crew’s eventual fate; for the first few dozen million years, most crewpersons held out hope that they would be recalled home, or that they would be allowed to retire and settle down on an earth-like planet somewhere – at this point it seems clear that they won’t stop building gates until the heat death of the universe. When we first meet Sunday, she is relating how she used to play a little mental game with herself, calculating what point in Earth’s history they would be if they were moving backward in time rather than forward. She gives up around the time Australopithecus thrived in Eastern Africa. Had her morbid exercise in hypothetical time travel continued, the point at which her story begins would land Eriophora at the end of the Mesozoic Era, when a mass extinction event wiped out the dinosaurs. In all that time they have only covered a fraction of the expanse of the Milky Way, and the only indication they have of any sentient life – much less human life – still existing in the universe outside of themselves is the occasional “gremlin” that pokes through a newly-built gate to take a shot at them.
The ratio of human years to mission years creates the kind of psychological imbalance that makes the desire for insurrection both understandable and inevitable – the most commonly utilized crew members are awake for little more than a decade or two while eons pass them by. Add to this the fact that the terms they use to (accurately) describe the conditions that define their existence are inherently dehumanizing: they were “programmed” for the mission from birth, crewpersons are “deprecated” when their skills are no longer considered useful, their coldsleep pods are called “coffins” and are stored in “crypts”. Their lives – spent mostly in a state of near-death – are reduced to their functionality, with Chimp as the sole arbiter of their value, which is measured only by their usefulness to the mission. The most striking thing about the scope of “The Freeze-Frame Revolution” is the way it makes the scale of the universe and the wonder of discovery feel like more of a prison than a liberating experience.
Watts falls within the lineage of classic hard SF writers who can make far-future science magic seem tangible, but his true gift lies in how personable he makes it feel. Heavy themes like alienation, the value of existence, and the nature of consciousness are woven into the brisk narrative with humor and pathos. Watts may be too smart to let a big idea pass by without picking it to pieces, but above all, “The Freeze-Frame Revolution” is fun to read.
Many thanks to Edelweiss and Tachyon Publications for the opportunity to read this ARC.
September 11, 2022
I really, really like Watts' writing, perhaps to an extent not represented by my reviews of individual books. On the surface, that might not make sense, but it comes down to is that sweet spot where ideas, writing, and science meet and Watts' generally ability to arrive near the zone. Freeze Frame is his most accessible book I've read to date (apparently, word count belies his claim of novella). While I'd highly recommend it to Watts fans as well as people who want to dip their toes into some hard sci-fi, for me it lands solidly third place behind Blindsight and Starfish. (To be clear, it's technically better than Starfish. I just like the underwater setting in that book).
Watts does not hand-hold, but I felt like there were more clues than I normally find to his writing. The characters are aboard an asteroid converted into a gate-building ship, on a long-term mission to build humanity gates around the Milky Way. We all know that AI is probably better than humans when it comes to accuracy and following orders, but humanity has a certain gift for problem-solving and lateral thinking that means that humans stored in cyrogenic stasis became part of the mission, to be awakened at long intervals or in case of unusual problems. But humans are prone to disobeying orders, so these were indoctrinated from a young age, and face a number of strategic depersonalization and strategies when awakened that keep them from forming strong human relationships.
"Built to revel in solitude, all those Pleistocene social circuits tamed and trimmed and winnowed down to nubs: born of the tribe, but built to leave it behind without so much as a backward glance."
Clever, clever, clever, and bound to do a number on the psyche. Surprisingly, Watts doesn't go too far into that aspect and concentrates more on the idea of the effects of short awakening, consciousness-raising, and revolution. He also rather sidesteps the why. Yes, it's a long novella. But if I was his editor--and clearly, I'm not--I might have shaved off some of the exposition--sorry non-sci-fi readers--and brought more dialogue into it. But that's never been Watts' strong suit. Neither is characterization. Granted, there's usually good reason for that, and as mentioned, these characters only get to be alive one day every five thousand years or so, so they don't get a whole lot of time for hobbies or personal growth. But if you are a character reader, this isn't going to be one of those Expanse-type ensemble casts where you grow to appreciate every member of the crew in different ways.
"Why'd you think I signed on in the first place... I want to see how it turns out."
"It."
"Everything. The universe. This--reality. This hologram, this model, whatever we're in. It had a start, it's got an endpoint, and the closer we get to it the clearer that becomes. If we just hang in there long enough we'll at least get to see the outlines."
"You want to know the purpose of existence."
"I want to know the destination of existence."
There's some very cool and scary ideas here, some underexplored. If it were me, I would have spent more on the psychology of
Also note--thankfully, for me--there are no real chimpanzees in this story. 'Chimp' is what the crew calls the AI. Whew. I loathe anthropomorphized apes.
"Seriously. How do we know when the mission's over?"
"Why would you want it to be over?" Vik wondered.
"When we receive the callback sequence," Chimp said. Which had made perfect sense back when we were young and freshly minted and shiny new."
**************************************************
There's a trio of short stories that accompany it, all available for free on his website.
Note, the paperwhite kindle obviously doesn't have the red letters that spell out the message that takes you to this updated postscript short story, of a sorts: https://rifters.com/Eriophora-Root-Ar...
Buddy read with Nataliya, Phil, David, and Vivian.
Watts does not hand-hold, but I felt like there were more clues than I normally find to his writing. The characters are aboard an asteroid converted into a gate-building ship, on a long-term mission to build humanity gates around the Milky Way. We all know that AI is probably better than humans when it comes to accuracy and following orders, but humanity has a certain gift for problem-solving and lateral thinking that means that humans stored in cyrogenic stasis became part of the mission, to be awakened at long intervals or in case of unusual problems. But humans are prone to disobeying orders, so these were indoctrinated from a young age, and face a number of strategic depersonalization and strategies when awakened that keep them from forming strong human relationships.
"Built to revel in solitude, all those Pleistocene social circuits tamed and trimmed and winnowed down to nubs: born of the tribe, but built to leave it behind without so much as a backward glance."
Clever, clever, clever, and bound to do a number on the psyche. Surprisingly, Watts doesn't go too far into that aspect and concentrates more on the idea of the effects of short awakening, consciousness-raising, and revolution. He also rather sidesteps the why. Yes, it's a long novella. But if I was his editor--and clearly, I'm not--I might have shaved off some of the exposition--sorry non-sci-fi readers--and brought more dialogue into it. But that's never been Watts' strong suit. Neither is characterization. Granted, there's usually good reason for that, and as mentioned, these characters only get to be alive one day every five thousand years or so, so they don't get a whole lot of time for hobbies or personal growth. But if you are a character reader, this isn't going to be one of those Expanse-type ensemble casts where you grow to appreciate every member of the crew in different ways.
"Why'd you think I signed on in the first place... I want to see how it turns out."
"It."
"Everything. The universe. This--reality. This hologram, this model, whatever we're in. It had a start, it's got an endpoint, and the closer we get to it the clearer that becomes. If we just hang in there long enough we'll at least get to see the outlines."
"You want to know the purpose of existence."
"I want to know the destination of existence."
There's some very cool and scary ideas here, some underexplored. If it were me, I would have spent more on the psychology of
Also note--thankfully, for me--there are no real chimpanzees in this story. 'Chimp' is what the crew calls the AI. Whew. I loathe anthropomorphized apes.
"Seriously. How do we know when the mission's over?"
"Why would you want it to be over?" Vik wondered.
"When we receive the callback sequence," Chimp said. Which had made perfect sense back when we were young and freshly minted and shiny new."
**************************************************
There's a trio of short stories that accompany it, all available for free on his website.
Note, the paperwhite kindle obviously doesn't have the red letters that spell out the message that takes you to this updated postscript short story, of a sorts: https://rifters.com/Eriophora-Root-Ar...
Buddy read with Nataliya, Phil, David, and Vivian.
February 15, 2019
I really wanted to like The Freeze-Frame Revolution more than I actually did, but in the end it was just too far into hard sci-fi territory for me.
The concept is clever -- a ship filled with 30 000 or so crew members is on a long-term mission to build wormhole bridges throughout the universe. And by long-term, I'm not kidding! We're talking 65 million years (so far!) here. Each crew member is kept in deep freeze most of the time, with brief few-day periods of being thawed to assist the ship's AI with more complicated builds. Which crew members are thawed each time varies, resulting in icy slumbers lasting hundreds or thousands of years at a time.
Except not everything is going as smoothly as the crew assumes. And how do you get to the bottom of the truth when you're only awake for a few days at a time, and the people you're awake with are constantly changing?
If you're a fan of hard sci-fi, then this book might appeal to you more than it did me. I didn't realize until I'd finished that this novella is part of a series, but I'm not sure if reading the other parts would have helped this to make more sense to me -- it took me a long time to figure out what the heck was going on, and even once I did, I felt very bogged down by all the tech description.
Thank you to NetGalley and Tachyon Publications for providing me with DRC of this book.
The concept is clever -- a ship filled with 30 000 or so crew members is on a long-term mission to build wormhole bridges throughout the universe. And by long-term, I'm not kidding! We're talking 65 million years (so far!) here. Each crew member is kept in deep freeze most of the time, with brief few-day periods of being thawed to assist the ship's AI with more complicated builds. Which crew members are thawed each time varies, resulting in icy slumbers lasting hundreds or thousands of years at a time.
Except not everything is going as smoothly as the crew assumes. And how do you get to the bottom of the truth when you're only awake for a few days at a time, and the people you're awake with are constantly changing?
If you're a fan of hard sci-fi, then this book might appeal to you more than it did me. I didn't realize until I'd finished that this novella is part of a series, but I'm not sure if reading the other parts would have helped this to make more sense to me -- it took me a long time to figure out what the heck was going on, and even once I did, I felt very bogged down by all the tech description.
Thank you to NetGalley and Tachyon Publications for providing me with DRC of this book.
November 29, 2021
I don’t write reviews.
And it seems that I still dislike hard sf after all these years… Watts wasn’t doing any favours with his world-building (or lack thereof). When I read, I’m instantly transported to that world. You know what I mean, right? The place where it all plays out - the imagination. And I don’t have to try; the pictures appear without thought. Maybe imagination is faster than the speed of thought, but I digress. Watts, dude, I struggled to get bare bones images from your story. Plus the ending was a mess I reread three times and still didn’t 1) get it or 2) understand why the narrative position shifted briefly. .
The characters were lacking things too. Motivation is a big one here. They knew they were shooting into the universe for millions of years and will maybe sorta get rescued perhaps, but a few tens of millions makes them START to question if they’re slaves? Training let them down? Or a mess-up in the crisper gene editing kit… How bad was the earth they were escaping? We never find out.
The spores, as they call themselves, are made for this mission. I couldn’t tell if they were literally created for this job or practiced and trained as much as possible. Yeah these spores “die” in crypt decks of coffins only to be revived as “meat mind” is sometimes needed to help the AI build gates in space no one (except unexplained giant angry gremlins visit). They are resurrected for a week or so every few millennia. They degrade themselves further by calling themselves meat. Such fucking gorgeous postmodernism.
These shallow souls are lost on all counts. Imprisoned until the death of the galaxy, building for humans who don’t exist, used as objects by an AI who can let them die any time they don’t meet spec standards. They all fuck each other, but don’t have friendships or love. We’re told how the ship equips them with tons of sex toys and virtual experiences. They spend time together in VR or banging yet still can’t say “this is my friend” when asked. Then they seem to have music appreciation and gaming circles, and I think oh my they’re people, but no those are mostly used to cover their mutiny plan. (For “meat” they sure don’t live like “meat.” No real experiences).
And they have a crew mate who uses weird pronouns. Why? I mean who is this person? Could be an interesting story, right? Nope, burnt again by Watts. We only know name and hir/se pronouns. Are you fishing with random gender-babble virtue signaling? Me thinks so. Things are done for pretty clear reasons.
Oh let’s not forget AI Chimp! He’s stupid but sensitive. He’s exponentially growing! Wait no. He’s limited. He keeps secrets. He’s autonomous. No, no, he’s following the originally encrypted super well-planned (by humans) orders. But but…. His human friends! Thank god we’ve finally reached our perfect singularity. My only comfort is that AI will never really work the way psychos want it to.
And it seems that I still dislike hard sf after all these years… Watts wasn’t doing any favours with his world-building (or lack thereof). When I read, I’m instantly transported to that world. You know what I mean, right? The place where it all plays out - the imagination. And I don’t have to try; the pictures appear without thought. Maybe imagination is faster than the speed of thought, but I digress. Watts, dude, I struggled to get bare bones images from your story. Plus the ending was a mess I reread three times and still didn’t 1) get it or 2) understand why the narrative position shifted briefly. .
The characters were lacking things too. Motivation is a big one here. They knew they were shooting into the universe for millions of years and will maybe sorta get rescued perhaps, but a few tens of millions makes them START to question if they’re slaves? Training let them down? Or a mess-up in the crisper gene editing kit… How bad was the earth they were escaping? We never find out.
The spores, as they call themselves, are made for this mission. I couldn’t tell if they were literally created for this job or practiced and trained as much as possible. Yeah these spores “die” in crypt decks of coffins only to be revived as “meat mind” is sometimes needed to help the AI build gates in space no one (except unexplained giant angry gremlins visit). They are resurrected for a week or so every few millennia. They degrade themselves further by calling themselves meat. Such fucking gorgeous postmodernism.
These shallow souls are lost on all counts. Imprisoned until the death of the galaxy, building for humans who don’t exist, used as objects by an AI who can let them die any time they don’t meet spec standards. They all fuck each other, but don’t have friendships or love. We’re told how the ship equips them with tons of sex toys and virtual experiences. They spend time together in VR or banging yet still can’t say “this is my friend” when asked. Then they seem to have music appreciation and gaming circles, and I think oh my they’re people, but no those are mostly used to cover their mutiny plan. (For “meat” they sure don’t live like “meat.” No real experiences).
And they have a crew mate who uses weird pronouns. Why? I mean who is this person? Could be an interesting story, right? Nope, burnt again by Watts. We only know name and hir/se pronouns. Are you fishing with random gender-babble virtue signaling? Me thinks so. Things are done for pretty clear reasons.
Oh let’s not forget AI Chimp! He’s stupid but sensitive. He’s exponentially growing! Wait no. He’s limited. He keeps secrets. He’s autonomous. No, no, he’s following the originally encrypted super well-planned (by humans) orders. But but…. His human friends! Thank god we’ve finally reached our perfect singularity. My only comfort is that AI will never really work the way psychos want it to.
June 12, 2018
GRAB IT! NOW!
I just can't begin to tell you how much I loved this book. And I know for a fact I will be reading it again, and perhaps soon. There are just so many reasons why I could recommend it to you! It’s a book for the true scifi fan that manages to be refreshing and new, at the same time retaining all the benefits of being basically hard scifi.
It also raises tough questions about natural versus artificial intelligence and their relationships. Which is the true, the real one? Is the other one just a sequence of pre-planned actions? Or does it actually have a mind? Perhaps even a soul? Is it living?
Come and read the rest of the reasons why I loved this book in my full review on my blog here.
I thank Tachyon Publications for giving me a free copy of the book in exchange to my honest opinion. Receiving the book for free does not affect my opinion.
Read Post On My Blog | My Bookstagram | Bookish Twitter
Come and read the rest of the reasons why I loved this book in my full review on my blog here.
I thank Tachyon Publications for giving me a free copy of the book in exchange to my honest opinion. Receiving the book for free does not affect my opinion.
Read Post On My Blog | My Bookstagram | Bookish Twitter
June 6, 2018
4.5 rounded up to 5 (Rating is for the entire Sunflower Cycle series so far)
I’ve held off reviewing this for some time now. Once I finished reading it, I just couldn’t fully wrap my head around what I had just read. In attempting to understand the story better, I went and looked at some other reviews of people who enjoyed the story to hopefully gather some details I may have missed. I’m so glad I did that because I found this great review by Claudia - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show..., where she explains this is part of a larger set of stories called the Sunflower Cycle. Turned out there were 3 other stories in that world and they all kind of go together. Based on Claudia’s recommendation, I went and read the other 3, in the order she advised (Hotshot, The Freeze-Frame Revolution, The Island, and Giants), to get a better sense of the story and the world as a whole that Peter Watts created.
The Freeze-Frame Revolution is essentially about a seriously long-term revolution going on aboard the spaceship, Eriophora. The job of the crew, also known as spores, and the on-board AI, whom everyone refers to as “Chimp”, is to build a web of wormholesque gates throughought space in a spiral moving outwards from Earth and out into the great beyond of unknown space. This way humans can hopefully succeed at interstellar travel and find another home as Earth’s resources are greatly depleted and humanity will not survive if they don’t find another planet.
At this point in the Sunflower Cycle story arch, they have been travelling for essentially millions of years as they jump through space. Every spore onboard has been raised specifically for this mission, and because they need to be alive in case anything happens, the onboard AI runs the day-to-day of the ship, and each spore is only awake for about a week at a time out of a thousand years.
Some on the ship are starting to question the mission, as well as the intentions of the AI. Thus, we have mutiny aboard the ship as the people decide they want to overthrow the onboard AI. But staging a coup is a little difficult when you’re only awake for a week out of a thousand years at a time, and typically not awake with the same people. Musical scores and D&D manuals assist the main character, Sunday, and her fellow friends and crewmates as they plan a coup a millennia in the making.
I’m so glad that I went and read the other 3 stories before deciding on a final rating and review for this book. Peter Watts has created an exceptionally strange, surreal, but wholly sci-fi world that totally drew me in and had me wanting more. If you decide to go into this adventure know you will never get all your questions answered, and some things will never be fully explained. He also doesn’t write easy to read sci-fi. If you like your sci-fi to be well explained and fluid, you’re looking in the wrong corner. If you like hard-core sci-fi on a massive scale with lots of psychology and character-centered plot, you need this, and the other 3 companion stories available for free on the author’s website: http://www.rifters.com/real/author.htm.
I’ve already started blog stalking Peter Watts to add more of his stories to my Kindle.
Received via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
I’ve held off reviewing this for some time now. Once I finished reading it, I just couldn’t fully wrap my head around what I had just read. In attempting to understand the story better, I went and looked at some other reviews of people who enjoyed the story to hopefully gather some details I may have missed. I’m so glad I did that because I found this great review by Claudia - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show..., where she explains this is part of a larger set of stories called the Sunflower Cycle. Turned out there were 3 other stories in that world and they all kind of go together. Based on Claudia’s recommendation, I went and read the other 3, in the order she advised (Hotshot, The Freeze-Frame Revolution, The Island, and Giants), to get a better sense of the story and the world as a whole that Peter Watts created.
The Freeze-Frame Revolution is essentially about a seriously long-term revolution going on aboard the spaceship, Eriophora. The job of the crew, also known as spores, and the on-board AI, whom everyone refers to as “Chimp”, is to build a web of wormholesque gates throughought space in a spiral moving outwards from Earth and out into the great beyond of unknown space. This way humans can hopefully succeed at interstellar travel and find another home as Earth’s resources are greatly depleted and humanity will not survive if they don’t find another planet.
At this point in the Sunflower Cycle story arch, they have been travelling for essentially millions of years as they jump through space. Every spore onboard has been raised specifically for this mission, and because they need to be alive in case anything happens, the onboard AI runs the day-to-day of the ship, and each spore is only awake for about a week at a time out of a thousand years.
Some on the ship are starting to question the mission, as well as the intentions of the AI. Thus, we have mutiny aboard the ship as the people decide they want to overthrow the onboard AI. But staging a coup is a little difficult when you’re only awake for a week out of a thousand years at a time, and typically not awake with the same people. Musical scores and D&D manuals assist the main character, Sunday, and her fellow friends and crewmates as they plan a coup a millennia in the making.
I’m so glad that I went and read the other 3 stories before deciding on a final rating and review for this book. Peter Watts has created an exceptionally strange, surreal, but wholly sci-fi world that totally drew me in and had me wanting more. If you decide to go into this adventure know you will never get all your questions answered, and some things will never be fully explained. He also doesn’t write easy to read sci-fi. If you like your sci-fi to be well explained and fluid, you’re looking in the wrong corner. If you like hard-core sci-fi on a massive scale with lots of psychology and character-centered plot, you need this, and the other 3 companion stories available for free on the author’s website: http://www.rifters.com/real/author.htm.
I’ve already started blog stalking Peter Watts to add more of his stories to my Kindle.
Received via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
September 8, 2022
Lets start off by saying Watts in an intriguing writer, but one that tends to galvanize his readers one way or another. The Freeze-Frame Revolution is founded on a great premise, has moments of brilliance, but ends with rather a whimper than a bang. Earth a few centuries from now is almost a complete wasteland, destroyed by humanity (e.g., a rather typical Wattsian dystopia), but meanwhile has developed some astonishing technology. The UN decided (as a homage to humanity, as a gift to future alien species?) to build a massive spaceship that produces gates to wormholes, and for the spaceship to travel around the galaxy placing such wormholes in suitable star systems. This is nifty. The usual scifi trope is for humanity to find alien artifacts left behind by some 'builder' species or something; this time it is humanity leaving the artifacts!
Knowing that this will be a long mission, the UN 'built' (e.g, genengineered/trained) a 'meat' crew of 30,000 people who would largely be kept in cyrosleep until they are needed to assist the AI (called Chimp) every few thousand years or so. Chimp was kept deliberately somewhat 'dumb' with the mandate to complete the mission at any cost; why not make him 'smarter'? The mission designers were worried that if Chimp was really smart, he might one day abandon the mission for whatever AIs do for fun. Hence, the need for 'meatbrains' with the lateral thinking to come up with solutions to problems that would arise occasionally.
After the initial setup, Watts takes us 60 million years into the future, with the ship already having circled the galaxy a few times (while it creates wormholes, it itself does not travel FTL), creating who knows how many gates. This is when some of the crew, including our main protagonist Sunday, start to wonder if the mission will ever be over, and start to plot ways to end the mission. Revolution when random crew members only interact a few days every few thousand years or so sounds difficult, but this is compounded by the all pervasive monitors Chimp has throughout the ship. I loved this part-- the ingenious ways Sunday and the other ringleaders managed to make plans over 1000s of years of random awakenings! Watts had me hooked for sure!
The denouement, however, had me scratching my head. I will put the rest behind a spoiler tag, but I felt that Watts used up his good ideas in the revolution planning and just threw in the towel for a wrap up. Also, the nifty red letters in the text do spell out a message, which is on the one had part of the revolutionary plot, on the other a link to another story on Watts' webpage that raised more questions than answers.
Finally, a few comments on the characters themselves and their predicament. Sunday was the only character fleshed out in even marginal detail, but one so programed/indoctrinated to the mission that she came to the revolution later than the ringleaders. Were the others not as well built as her? What changed to make the custom crew decide to rebel? Watts does toss in a few boogie aliens that come through the gates after they are build, one even firing something at the ship, but would trigger rebellion? I guess so.
In the end, I am rather mixed on this one. I found it totally engrossing while reading it (except perhaps the end), but the more I thought about it afterwards, the more things started to bug, like an itch you cannot scratch. When I finished it, I thought 4+ stars all the way, but after a few days reflection, I was thinking maybe 3, so I will go with 3.5 stars, rounding up for the initial experience.
This was a buddy read with Carol, Nataliya and David on Chaos Oasis-- check out their reviews! I think we all might agree that YMMV!!!
Knowing that this will be a long mission, the UN 'built' (e.g, genengineered/trained) a 'meat' crew of 30,000 people who would largely be kept in cyrosleep until they are needed to assist the AI (called Chimp) every few thousand years or so. Chimp was kept deliberately somewhat 'dumb' with the mandate to complete the mission at any cost; why not make him 'smarter'? The mission designers were worried that if Chimp was really smart, he might one day abandon the mission for whatever AIs do for fun. Hence, the need for 'meatbrains' with the lateral thinking to come up with solutions to problems that would arise occasionally.
After the initial setup, Watts takes us 60 million years into the future, with the ship already having circled the galaxy a few times (while it creates wormholes, it itself does not travel FTL), creating who knows how many gates. This is when some of the crew, including our main protagonist Sunday, start to wonder if the mission will ever be over, and start to plot ways to end the mission. Revolution when random crew members only interact a few days every few thousand years or so sounds difficult, but this is compounded by the all pervasive monitors Chimp has throughout the ship. I loved this part-- the ingenious ways Sunday and the other ringleaders managed to make plans over 1000s of years of random awakenings! Watts had me hooked for sure!
The denouement, however, had me scratching my head. I will put the rest behind a spoiler tag, but I felt that Watts used up his good ideas in the revolution planning and just threw in the towel for a wrap up. Also, the nifty red letters in the text do spell out a message, which is on the one had part of the revolutionary plot, on the other a link to another story on Watts' webpage that raised more questions than answers.
Finally, a few comments on the characters themselves and their predicament. Sunday was the only character fleshed out in even marginal detail, but one so programed/indoctrinated to the mission that she came to the revolution later than the ringleaders. Were the others not as well built as her? What changed to make the custom crew decide to rebel? Watts does toss in a few boogie aliens that come through the gates after they are build, one even firing something at the ship, but would trigger rebellion? I guess so.
In the end, I am rather mixed on this one. I found it totally engrossing while reading it (except perhaps the end), but the more I thought about it afterwards, the more things started to bug, like an itch you cannot scratch. When I finished it, I thought 4+ stars all the way, but after a few days reflection, I was thinking maybe 3, so I will go with 3.5 stars, rounding up for the initial experience.
This was a buddy read with Carol, Nataliya and David on Chaos Oasis-- check out their reviews! I think we all might agree that YMMV!!!
June 12, 2018
Ahoy there me mateys! I received this sci-fi eARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. So here be me honest musings . . .
This book was a bit of a stretch for me given that it is more hard sci-fi and physics is not me friend. At all. But I have always heard wonderful things about this author and the premise was too awesome not to give it a shot. And I be very glad I did.
So basically this story is told from the perspective of Sunday Ahzmundin. She is a human crew member aboard a ship named the Eriophora which is on the mission to create wormhole gates across the universe. The crew expected their task to end and to be called back to rejoin the rest of humanity. Except they are still onboard over 60 million years later. So what is really going on?
AI runs this ship and at the heart of the story is the relationship between Sunday and the AI who they call Chimp. Ye see the crew is only taken out of stasis when the AI thinks they are necessary to the mission. This usually is a handful of days at a time every 10,000 years or so. And of course there is a rotation so only a small handful of anywhere from 1 to 15 get thawed out at a time. Some of the humans want to revolt against the AI and the mission given the circumstances. Should Sunday join them? And if so how can a hostile takeover succeed under the conditions imposed by Chimp?
I absolutely adored this (longer) novella. I thought the premise, writing, characters, and ship were awesome. Sunday's inner conflict was fascinating as was her reasons behind the choices she makes. I gobbled this up and was completely engrossed. The only flaw was that the ending happened and I just don't get it. Despite multiple readings. Those couple pages confused the heck out of me. But I thought that perhaps I just missed some crucial point. Well perhaps I did.
Side note: Claudia @ goodreads' review (which is excellent) did explain just a wee bit. As she says:
"First of all, this novella is not meant to be read on its own. Could be regarded as a standalone, but you’ll feel like something is missing. And that’s because 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. It will not answer all your questions, but it will bring some light into this universe and its perpetual travelers . . .
* all three available on the author’[s] site: http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts.htm"
So while the crazy ending hurt me brain and made me feel like I was missing something, I loved the story and circumstances enough to go back and read the other stories. I even think I will follow Claudia's readin' order. So seriously even if physics intimidates yer noggin', do give this story a chance. I certainly don't regret a thing!
So lastly . . .
Thank you Tachyon Publications!
Check out me other reviews at https://thecaptainsquartersblog.wordp...
This book was a bit of a stretch for me given that it is more hard sci-fi and physics is not me friend. At all. But I have always heard wonderful things about this author and the premise was too awesome not to give it a shot. And I be very glad I did.
So basically this story is told from the perspective of Sunday Ahzmundin. She is a human crew member aboard a ship named the Eriophora which is on the mission to create wormhole gates across the universe. The crew expected their task to end and to be called back to rejoin the rest of humanity. Except they are still onboard over 60 million years later. So what is really going on?
AI runs this ship and at the heart of the story is the relationship between Sunday and the AI who they call Chimp. Ye see the crew is only taken out of stasis when the AI thinks they are necessary to the mission. This usually is a handful of days at a time every 10,000 years or so. And of course there is a rotation so only a small handful of anywhere from 1 to 15 get thawed out at a time. Some of the humans want to revolt against the AI and the mission given the circumstances. Should Sunday join them? And if so how can a hostile takeover succeed under the conditions imposed by Chimp?
I absolutely adored this (longer) novella. I thought the premise, writing, characters, and ship were awesome. Sunday's inner conflict was fascinating as was her reasons behind the choices she makes. I gobbled this up and was completely engrossed. The only flaw was that the ending happened and I just don't get it. Despite multiple readings. Those couple pages confused the heck out of me. But I thought that perhaps I just missed some crucial point. Well perhaps I did.
Side note: Claudia @ goodreads' review (which is excellent) did explain just a wee bit. As she says:
"First of all, this novella is not meant to be read on its own. Could be regarded as a standalone, but you’ll feel like something is missing. And that’s because 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. It will not answer all your questions, but it will bring some light into this universe and its perpetual travelers . . .
* all three available on the author’[s] site: http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts.htm"
So while the crazy ending hurt me brain and made me feel like I was missing something, I loved the story and circumstances enough to go back and read the other stories. I even think I will follow Claudia's readin' order. So seriously even if physics intimidates yer noggin', do give this story a chance. I certainly don't regret a thing!
So lastly . . .
Thank you Tachyon Publications!
Check out me other reviews at https://thecaptainsquartersblog.wordp...
February 18, 2019
This hard SF novella is eligible for Hugo, Nebula and Locus Award in 2019. This is a part of Sunflower cycle but can be read as a standalone.
In order to spread the mankind across the galaxy, a special kind of ship was created: an asteroid 10 km in diameter with an artificial black hole and the energy and propulsion. This is not as crazy as it sounds, the idea was actually presented in this article by two physicists from 2009. This ship moves at relativistic speeds (10-20% of speed of light) across the galaxy to link it with wormhole generated instant transit network. This works the following way: when the ship approached the site to build a new gate (maybe a lightyear away or so), it sends ahead a fleet of von Neumann machines, which collect materials and build the gate. Then the ship passes through the construct, igniting it.
Enormity of space means that ship travels literally for eons. Most of its 30`000 strong crew is in hibernation for most of the route, woken up for a few days in millennium or even a million years. The actual command is in the hands of AI, called Chimp by humans. It is intentionally not very wise, for no one can control a being more intelligent than them.
This novella spans 65 million years, in almost Kafka’s wall equivalent, were gates are built and built even if no one ever tries to connect via them to builders. The protagonist is Sunday Ahzmundin, a woman, who likes to talk to Chimp and who become its pet/confidant/friend, even if AI’s decisions are getting strange verging on homicidal. This is a story about the rebellion against the Big Brother, but the situation is way more nuanced.
It is not a fast read. However if you want to read an intelligent SF with unusual ideas, here it is. Nominate it for Awards if you can!
The book also has an Easter Egg for careful readers.
In order to spread the mankind across the galaxy, a special kind of ship was created: an asteroid 10 km in diameter with an artificial black hole and the energy and propulsion. This is not as crazy as it sounds, the idea was actually presented in this article by two physicists from 2009. This ship moves at relativistic speeds (10-20% of speed of light) across the galaxy to link it with wormhole generated instant transit network. This works the following way: when the ship approached the site to build a new gate (maybe a lightyear away or so), it sends ahead a fleet of von Neumann machines, which collect materials and build the gate. Then the ship passes through the construct, igniting it.
Enormity of space means that ship travels literally for eons. Most of its 30`000 strong crew is in hibernation for most of the route, woken up for a few days in millennium or even a million years. The actual command is in the hands of AI, called Chimp by humans. It is intentionally not very wise, for no one can control a being more intelligent than them.
This novella spans 65 million years, in almost Kafka’s wall equivalent, were gates are built and built even if no one ever tries to connect via them to builders. The protagonist is Sunday Ahzmundin, a woman, who likes to talk to Chimp and who become its pet/confidant/friend, even if AI’s decisions are getting strange verging on homicidal. This is a story about the rebellion against the Big Brother, but the situation is way more nuanced.
It is not a fast read. However if you want to read an intelligent SF with unusual ideas, here it is. Nominate it for Awards if you can!
The book also has an Easter Egg for careful readers.
February 3, 2019
This book has a very intriguing premise, and it was a good read, but it didn't quite live up to all of it's potential. (I feel like i say that a lot, but I guess that's often how I feel about the books I give three stars).
The spaceship Eriophora, controlled by an AI called Chimp, has roamed the galaxy for 65 million years (!) building wormhole gates so travelers can get around. The ship also has 30 000 human workers aboard, sleeping away the time between builds (and only a few of them are awakened for each build). We are told, through main character Sunday's flashbacks, that Earth was not a good place to be when they left, and she was glad to get away. Other than that, not much is known about humanity's past or present (if there is one).
Sunday and the other humans on board are genetically modified. They where bred to be the perfect crew, and Chimp's priority is to build the gates throughout the galaxy, and does not value human life for it's own sake. Humans are worker ants. If they are no longer useful, they will be cast aside.
But when the mission has no end point - no recall is ever received from Earth, the "meat" on board starts to question the point of the mission - it has been so long, does humanity even exist anymore? Is anybody at all using the gates? In 65 million years, humans would either have evolved into something else, or gone extinct. And so starts a slow attempt of mutiny, a little bit at a time, over the millennia, every time a handful of them are awake for a short time to build a gate.
This is considered a hard sci-fi, and there were a lot of technical terms I didn't understand (or care about), but for me, that was not a problem. I skimmed through those parts and didn't feel like I missed out on anything plot related.
The story is not action-oriented, and there is no big reveal or clear solution at the end. Usually I don't mind that. Some times I prefer it. But this story ended in a somewhat messy, confusing and unsatisfying way. I would have liked to know just a tiny bit more.
I had other problems with it too. 65 million years is just too long. It's pointlessly long. We where not told how long their mission where supposed to be, but even if it where only one million years, it would be too long. What's the point of building wormhole gates if it takes that long? No one with any sense would plan that far ahead. If a mission will not bear any fruit in the conceivable future, not for thousands of generations, what's the point?
So the time scale doesn't make any sense, and it doesn't help that the author repeatedly tells us how much time has passed between each time Sunday wakes up - this is not plot-relevant, it's just to give us a feeling of the immense time frame. "It was 500 years later." "When I awoke after a couple millennia" etc. This is repeated and repeated until it just seems silly and tedious.
The characters are for the most part interesting, but it's only three of them we get to know a little. For such a character driven story, the characters aren't really as well developed as they should be. Neither is the philosophical aspect. The premise gives a lot of opportunity to investigate what it means to be human, how small we are in the vastness of space, how to best live your life. But none of these are more than mentioned now and then, and mostly to emphasize the enormous time frame, which is in itself pointless. The most interesting part of the story was the human-AI interaction. The mutineers obviously disagree with the AI's view of the meaning of existence (to continue on with the mission, for eternity or until a (presumably extinct) earth civilization calls it off). But what is the alternative for the mutineers? That's never explored, other than that they want freedom from Chimp, who they also need to survive. No habitable planets are ever mentioned, and the ship can only sustain a small group of awakened humans at any given time.
This is not a standalone story, but I am not familiar with the other books, and reading this on it's own still worked fine for me. Maybe what I perceived as weak points, would not have appeared as such if I where familiar with this universe already.
The spaceship Eriophora, controlled by an AI called Chimp, has roamed the galaxy for 65 million years (!) building wormhole gates so travelers can get around. The ship also has 30 000 human workers aboard, sleeping away the time between builds (and only a few of them are awakened for each build). We are told, through main character Sunday's flashbacks, that Earth was not a good place to be when they left, and she was glad to get away. Other than that, not much is known about humanity's past or present (if there is one).
Sunday and the other humans on board are genetically modified. They where bred to be the perfect crew, and Chimp's priority is to build the gates throughout the galaxy, and does not value human life for it's own sake. Humans are worker ants. If they are no longer useful, they will be cast aside.
But when the mission has no end point - no recall is ever received from Earth, the "meat" on board starts to question the point of the mission - it has been so long, does humanity even exist anymore? Is anybody at all using the gates? In 65 million years, humans would either have evolved into something else, or gone extinct. And so starts a slow attempt of mutiny, a little bit at a time, over the millennia, every time a handful of them are awake for a short time to build a gate.
This is considered a hard sci-fi, and there were a lot of technical terms I didn't understand (or care about), but for me, that was not a problem. I skimmed through those parts and didn't feel like I missed out on anything plot related.
The story is not action-oriented, and there is no big reveal or clear solution at the end. Usually I don't mind that. Some times I prefer it. But this story ended in a somewhat messy, confusing and unsatisfying way. I would have liked to know just a tiny bit more.
I had other problems with it too. 65 million years is just too long. It's pointlessly long. We where not told how long their mission where supposed to be, but even if it where only one million years, it would be too long. What's the point of building wormhole gates if it takes that long? No one with any sense would plan that far ahead. If a mission will not bear any fruit in the conceivable future, not for thousands of generations, what's the point?
So the time scale doesn't make any sense, and it doesn't help that the author repeatedly tells us how much time has passed between each time Sunday wakes up - this is not plot-relevant, it's just to give us a feeling of the immense time frame. "It was 500 years later." "When I awoke after a couple millennia" etc. This is repeated and repeated until it just seems silly and tedious.
The characters are for the most part interesting, but it's only three of them we get to know a little. For such a character driven story, the characters aren't really as well developed as they should be. Neither is the philosophical aspect. The premise gives a lot of opportunity to investigate what it means to be human, how small we are in the vastness of space, how to best live your life. But none of these are more than mentioned now and then, and mostly to emphasize the enormous time frame, which is in itself pointless. The most interesting part of the story was the human-AI interaction. The mutineers obviously disagree with the AI's view of the meaning of existence (to continue on with the mission, for eternity or until a (presumably extinct) earth civilization calls it off). But what is the alternative for the mutineers? That's never explored, other than that they want freedom from Chimp, who they also need to survive. No habitable planets are ever mentioned, and the ship can only sustain a small group of awakened humans at any given time.
This is not a standalone story, but I am not familiar with the other books, and reading this on it's own still worked fine for me. Maybe what I perceived as weak points, would not have appeared as such if I where familiar with this universe already.
June 29, 2019
Three and half stars.
(apologies for my English)
Briefly: I love how Mr. Watts writes. I like his pessimism and his vital cynicism, and above all, I adore his perspective of life and intelligence. In this novel the author maintains the level of madness that has us accustomed but unfortunately I have not understood the end. Apparently I am not the only one, and for me this is a nonsense.
You can see the plot on the cover of the book, a really interesting approach, as well as its development throughout the novel, as I have already mentioned the problem of the novel is the last part. Perhaps it has different meanings, or simply the last chapter was not necessary, I do not know.
For what it's worth, Peter Watts' novel evokes me these two novels, by some aspects of the argument that I will not explain: on the one hand "Dark Star" by Alan Dean Foster and on the other "Marrow" by Robert Reed.
I must indicate that this novel is complemented by other stories that the author has published and that I have not read (except "The Island", great story). I think some of these stories can be found for free on the Internet.
In my opinion this is not his best work, but a less accomplished novel by Peter Watts is preferable to a good novel by many other authors.
(apologies for my English)
Briefly: I love how Mr. Watts writes. I like his pessimism and his vital cynicism, and above all, I adore his perspective of life and intelligence. In this novel the author maintains the level of madness that has us accustomed but unfortunately I have not understood the end. Apparently I am not the only one, and for me this is a nonsense.
You can see the plot on the cover of the book, a really interesting approach, as well as its development throughout the novel, as I have already mentioned the problem of the novel is the last part. Perhaps it has different meanings, or simply the last chapter was not necessary, I do not know.
For what it's worth, Peter Watts' novel evokes me these two novels, by some aspects of the argument that I will not explain: on the one hand "Dark Star" by Alan Dean Foster and on the other "Marrow" by Robert Reed.
I must indicate that this novel is complemented by other stories that the author has published and that I have not read (except "The Island", great story). I think some of these stories can be found for free on the Internet.
In my opinion this is not his best work, but a less accomplished novel by Peter Watts is preferable to a good novel by many other authors.
July 4, 2019
My first time reading Peter Watts, and definitely won't be my last! Brilliant story, with lots of hard sci-fi goodness to sink your teeth into and blow your mind, and the storytelling equally as adept. Watts expertly crafts an atmosphere of suspense and intrigue aboard a gate seeding ship on a journey across the galaxy spanning millions of years, as the human crew clandestinely plots to overthrow the ship's AI . Brings to mind Poul Anderson's epic classic Tau Zero, and also Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Highly recommended!
November 28, 2018
There is a lot to like about this book and due to its length there were not any dull or slow spots. This was also one of the more straight forward and understandable books I've read by Mr. Watts and I didn't have to look up as much stuff while in the middle of reading. I did have some problems squaring some of the concepts and the timeline was too long for my brain to comprehend but it did not take away from the enjoyment of the story. Fast and fun but too short IMO.
April 25, 2018
I wanted to like this novella a lot more than I actually did.
Years ago when I first discovered Starfish, Watts’ writing felt like a revelation: Here was someone who could do hard science fiction right, who had done some hard digging into the scientific literature, thought a while, and come up with a well-reasoned “what if” near-future scenario. A tremendously bleak future, yes, but full of detail: it was never hard to imagine how that world arose from our present, what it would look like, what technology we would have and why it evolved that way.
With The Freeze-Frame Revolution, Watts has also clearly put in his research time, but it all feels too abstract to be truly compelling. There are a lot of ideas here, but I spent most of my time feeling very lost, not knowing why things were happening, or else unable to picture even the most basic details of the setting.
What is Chimp? An AI, yes, but then what’s with the mention of multiple reincarnations? It seems to be organic one moment, then digital the next.
How does the ship fly? Apparently by generating black holes, but I don’t understand any part of that.
Why are they building all these gates in the first place? All I got was that humanity was in some kind of trouble, but why would the gates fix it?
My biggest question: Why is nobody concerned about the GIANT SPACE MONSTERS coming out of the gates?! If your whole plan was to build these gates to help humanity travel, shouldn’t you... maybe do something about that?
Unfortunately the end impression for me was not great: too many confusing details, too little explanation for anything, flat characters... and all throughout a smug “look how clever I am!” tone that I didn’t much care for. I’m not sure now if Starfish was just a momentary bit of brilliance or if Revolution just happened to miss that mark, but either way, I think it may be a while before I return to this author.
-----
[Disclaimer: This eARC was provided free by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]
Years ago when I first discovered Starfish, Watts’ writing felt like a revelation: Here was someone who could do hard science fiction right, who had done some hard digging into the scientific literature, thought a while, and come up with a well-reasoned “what if” near-future scenario. A tremendously bleak future, yes, but full of detail: it was never hard to imagine how that world arose from our present, what it would look like, what technology we would have and why it evolved that way.
With The Freeze-Frame Revolution, Watts has also clearly put in his research time, but it all feels too abstract to be truly compelling. There are a lot of ideas here, but I spent most of my time feeling very lost, not knowing why things were happening, or else unable to picture even the most basic details of the setting.
What is Chimp? An AI, yes, but then what’s with the mention of multiple reincarnations? It seems to be organic one moment, then digital the next.
How does the ship fly? Apparently by generating black holes, but I don’t understand any part of that.
Why are they building all these gates in the first place? All I got was that humanity was in some kind of trouble, but why would the gates fix it?
My biggest question: Why is nobody concerned about the GIANT SPACE MONSTERS coming out of the gates?! If your whole plan was to build these gates to help humanity travel, shouldn’t you... maybe do something about that?
Unfortunately the end impression for me was not great: too many confusing details, too little explanation for anything, flat characters... and all throughout a smug “look how clever I am!” tone that I didn’t much care for. I’m not sure now if Starfish was just a momentary bit of brilliance or if Revolution just happened to miss that mark, but either way, I think it may be a while before I return to this author.
-----
[Disclaimer: This eARC was provided free by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]
February 4, 2019
если честно, довольно проходной рассказ. ценю смелость, с которой Уоттс пишет про настолько далёкое будущее, что в нём всё, по его собственному определению, уже handwavium; а ещё мне нравится, как ловко он ведёт повествование от лица условно-отрицательного (по крайней мере, с точки зрения окружающего его сообщества) героя. тут, как и в «Ложной слепоте», мы очень не сразу замечаем, что наш(а) протагонист(ка) — сомнительная фигура.
увы, больше ничего особо интересного я в FFR не обнаружила. с героиней особо не сживаешься; для арки её развития текст коротковат, а твистов многовато, так что каждый из них не очень впечатляет (мы недостаточно успеваем привыкнуть к тому, что тут считается нормой). поразительно свежих НФ идей тоже нет.
и вообще меня больше всего повеселило написанное в третьем лице «об авторе», где Уоттс очень язвительно перечисляет свои регалии: Blindsight... was a finalist of numerous North American genre awards, winning exactly none of them.
увы, больше ничего особо интересного я в FFR не обнаружила. с героиней особо не сживаешься; для арки её развития текст коротковат, а твистов многовато, так что каждый из них не очень впечатляет (мы недостаточно успеваем привыкнуть к тому, что тут считается нормой). поразительно свежих НФ идей тоже нет.
и вообще меня больше всего повеселило написанное в третьем лице «об авторе», где Уоттс очень язвительно перечисляет свои регалии: Blindsight... was a finalist of numerous North American genre awards, winning exactly none of them.
March 15, 2021
3.5 Stars
This was an enjoyable scifi novella with a fascinating premise. The author is known for his dense hard sci-fi, but I found the concepts in this one fairly easy to follow. It was interesting to see the tension between man vs machine, questioning who is most fit to dictate our future.
This was an enjoyable scifi novella with a fascinating premise. The author is known for his dense hard sci-fi, but I found the concepts in this one fairly easy to follow. It was interesting to see the tension between man vs machine, questioning who is most fit to dictate our future.
April 18, 2018
Watts is the only hard sci-fi author I’ve found so far whose writing is so dark it’s practically black. I actually stumbled on him somehow somehow through the horror community. Reading Blindsight was like having a religious experience. Freeze-Frame was just as enjoyable and probably more accessible due to the novella-ish length. I imagine Peter Watts isn’t for everybody. For people with a simultaneous interest in sci-fi and horror (or dark fiction,) he’s worth a look. If there are any other authors to compare him to, I haven’t found them yet. 4+ stars.
Netgalley hooked me with this kick-ass ARC free of charge. All I had to do was write an honest review in return. Not a bad deal. Thanks, Netgalley. You’re alright.
Netgalley hooked me with this kick-ass ARC free of charge. All I had to do was write an honest review in return. Not a bad deal. Thanks, Netgalley. You’re alright.
January 20, 2022
Yes! Perfect hopelessness with a smile on :) Cracking this series of short stories open after taking a long hiatus from Peter Watts and his Firefall series 🚀👾, I didn't realize how much I missed his cold, dark, deterministic, and grim scientific materialism that seems to poetically permeate all the spaces between his words rolling around my mentally simulated tongue. I can almost say that like our serpentine cousins I find great joy in licking his nihilistic thoughts off the patterned photons emitting from the glare of the screen staring back at me, but then that'd just be like the joy of one machine syncing its biochemical clocks that encode utility functions with yet just another machine. Yes, it's highly rewarding. But it's only logically necessary that this should occur.
Big disclaimer, I *love* both Blindsight and Echopraxia. The "hard" sci-fi subgenre that Watts finds himself in doesn't bug me either, but rather has an opposite almost stimulatingly soothing effect. I came at this Sunflower Cycle starting in chronological order with Hotshot, but honestly my reaction was initially rather lukewarm at best. The Freeze-Frame Revolution thankfully remedied that. Although obviously not as good as both Blindsight and Echopraxia it still packs Watts' singular style that I've come to find rather rare in the literary world.
The story's plot centers around a crew destined (and Watts does NOT take that word lightly) to continually travel further and further into space in an apparent attempt to escape the fate that befalls every species on earth whose branch among the great tree of life begins to age and bend ever downwards by the gravitational force of evolution. In Watts' world you either evolve to something so radically different from your former ancestral self, or you become the equivalent of either an inconsequential roach or maybe evenfood sustenance for your evolutionary progeny. Or you can try to make a run for it!
Anyway, the crewsleep in coffins live their lives staggered apart by what seem like millenniums among small Dunbarian-inspired sized tribes. They travel inside a refurbished asteroid powered by a black hole and sustained by a neat ecosystem that only a former marine biologist like Watts can write (his descriptions of non-traditional lifeforms are like crack to me and are the main reason why I absolutely adore his stories). The crew is accompanied by an Artificial Stupidity to lovingly attend to their needs and captain the ship, even if they themselves are the organic workarounds past computationally-intractable halting states while being the cheap insurance from EMPs that only agents in the form of radiation-shredded meat with momentum can provide.
Now having read oh so many fictional and non-fictional pieces around the general theme of Consciousness, I usually roll my eyes at the recycled tropes that get regurgitated in Sisyphean assembly-line fashion, but Watts seems to always massage my brain in the right way. Thinking about it, it might be because he himself is a hybrid species of both Science and Poetry, but certain phrases he crafts just seize me so, like his "ghosts of Engineers past" which is reminiscent to me of something like Bishop Berkeley's famous and my favorite "ghosts of departed quantities" satirical quote in The Analyst: A Discourse Addressed to the Infidel Mathematician regarding criticism of the as-of-then nascent theory of Fluxions and Fluents, or what students of math just drably call "Calculus" today.
So going back to those thematic elements of Consciousness that only a Metzinger-saturated Watts would steep himself in, let's talk about his mentioning of the Law of Variety. The term 'Variety' comes from a niche little community centered around the historical field of Cybernetics and more specifically around the work of one of the field's pioneer species and a mathematically-inclined psychiatrist, W. Ross Ashby. You can think of the term 'Variety' to mean the number of states that a system can exist in, which is almost analogous to the modern-day term of 'Information' or if we are taking the long-running average, then we can use the term (Shannon) 'Entropy' (I mean, Ashby was in contact with the famous Claude Shannon after all 🤷♀️).
Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety or The Adequacy Principle roughly states that a regulator must be able to at least represent that which it regulates, or in Ashby's words "only variety destroys variety" or "only variety absorbs variety". You can think of a 'regulator' as a type of glorified homeostatic device like your thermostat, in that it tries to keep one's local environment stable in the face of fluctuations (he invented the Homeostat). Ashby is basically positing that to be a regulator one must be greater than or equal to in complexity than that which is being regulated (if curious for more, I personally write about the 'coupling' or contact between systems of different complexity and how one will enslave or subsume the other at my blog here).
Anyway, all of this is relevant to Watts' story because it ultimately speculates how a system like this spaceship and all of its crew can maintain its goal cruising ever outward past the stars and across thousands and thousands of years perhaps indefinitely to the potential heat death of the universe while strictly keeping to its core mission without altering course. To do this, one must regulate all the potential interactions and conflicts (like a mutiny!) that can arise with the presence of a complex network of humans and a ship. And apparently, the original engineers and those in charge of the mission at the outset designed an Artificial Intelligence to do just that. Except they then promptly lobotomized and handicapped it to be stupider than humans so as to not developed goals and motivations of its own. And the important thing to note is that after all these thousands and thousands of years it didn't. So what's the problem? You can either study Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety, study biological complexity theory, or read Watts' story to find out! As he says, "The simple can't prophecy the complex...".
"Everything moved with complex precision, each device a moving part of some elaborate whole: as if the components of an intricate clockwork had come apart in zero-gee, yet continued to move in correct and proper relation to one another. It was precise and deterministic and I suppose there was a kind of grace to it. But it was—sterile. It was exactly what you’d expect from an algorithm parsing —used to watch you dance— without any real understanding of what dancing is, what it means, without any recollection of the time when it breathed life and wonder into a thousand glittering facets of self. A time when, just maybe, it had some kind of soul. This was not that. This was a collection of lifeless objects jiggling on threads, and it almost broke my heart to realize what else it was..."
And lastly, for those that read this novella and don't notice...THERE'S A HIDDEN MESSAGE ENCODED IN THE TEXT!!! It's subtle and you might be forgiven for thinking it's just bad e-reader/kindle formating, but it'll lead you to extra short stories that flesh out more of the situation. Super cool!
Oh, and on another note, if I ever weirdly find myself in some management or leadership type position (assuming my inner Peter Principled self happens to not realize this and shoot me on the spot 😅), I'll have to keep the following line in my back pocket in case it ever comes in handy:
“You’ve been an asset for the vast majority of this mission...Not everyone’s going to perform to specs a hundred percent of the time. I can’t blame you because you happened to draw the short straw this time around...It doesn’t make sense to discard valuable mission elements if they can be repaired.”
Very fucking clever indeed 🙃🔧🤖🔫
Big disclaimer, I *love* both Blindsight and Echopraxia. The "hard" sci-fi subgenre that Watts finds himself in doesn't bug me either, but rather has an opposite almost stimulatingly soothing effect. I came at this Sunflower Cycle starting in chronological order with Hotshot, but honestly my reaction was initially rather lukewarm at best. The Freeze-Frame Revolution thankfully remedied that. Although obviously not as good as both Blindsight and Echopraxia it still packs Watts' singular style that I've come to find rather rare in the literary world.
The story's plot centers around a crew destined (and Watts does NOT take that word lightly) to continually travel further and further into space in an apparent attempt to escape the fate that befalls every species on earth whose branch among the great tree of life begins to age and bend ever downwards by the gravitational force of evolution. In Watts' world you either evolve to something so radically different from your former ancestral self, or you become the equivalent of either an inconsequential roach or maybe even
Anyway, the crew
Now having read oh so many fictional and non-fictional pieces around the general theme of Consciousness, I usually roll my eyes at the recycled tropes that get regurgitated in Sisyphean assembly-line fashion, but Watts seems to always massage my brain in the right way. Thinking about it, it might be because he himself is a hybrid species of both Science and Poetry, but certain phrases he crafts just seize me so, like his "ghosts of Engineers past" which is reminiscent to me of something like Bishop Berkeley's famous and my favorite "ghosts of departed quantities" satirical quote in The Analyst: A Discourse Addressed to the Infidel Mathematician regarding criticism of the as-of-then nascent theory of Fluxions and Fluents, or what students of math just drably call "Calculus" today.
So going back to those thematic elements of Consciousness that only a Metzinger-saturated Watts would steep himself in, let's talk about his mentioning of the Law of Variety. The term 'Variety' comes from a niche little community centered around the historical field of Cybernetics and more specifically around the work of one of the field's pioneer species and a mathematically-inclined psychiatrist, W. Ross Ashby. You can think of the term 'Variety' to mean the number of states that a system can exist in, which is almost analogous to the modern-day term of 'Information' or if we are taking the long-running average, then we can use the term (Shannon) 'Entropy' (I mean, Ashby was in contact with the famous Claude Shannon after all 🤷♀️).
Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety or The Adequacy Principle roughly states that a regulator must be able to at least represent that which it regulates, or in Ashby's words "only variety destroys variety" or "only variety absorbs variety". You can think of a 'regulator' as a type of glorified homeostatic device like your thermostat, in that it tries to keep one's local environment stable in the face of fluctuations (he invented the Homeostat). Ashby is basically positing that to be a regulator one must be greater than or equal to in complexity than that which is being regulated (if curious for more, I personally write about the 'coupling' or contact between systems of different complexity and how one will enslave or subsume the other at my blog here).
Anyway, all of this is relevant to Watts' story because it ultimately speculates how a system like this spaceship and all of its crew can maintain its goal cruising ever outward past the stars and across thousands and thousands of years perhaps indefinitely to the potential heat death of the universe while strictly keeping to its core mission without altering course. To do this, one must regulate all the potential interactions and conflicts (like a mutiny!) that can arise with the presence of a complex network of humans and a ship. And apparently, the original engineers and those in charge of the mission at the outset designed an Artificial Intelligence to do just that. Except they then promptly lobotomized and handicapped it to be stupider than humans so as to not developed goals and motivations of its own. And the important thing to note is that after all these thousands and thousands of years it didn't. So what's the problem? You can either study Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety, study biological complexity theory, or read Watts' story to find out! As he says, "The simple can't prophecy the complex...".
"Everything moved with complex precision, each device a moving part of some elaborate whole: as if the components of an intricate clockwork had come apart in zero-gee, yet continued to move in correct and proper relation to one another. It was precise and deterministic and I suppose there was a kind of grace to it. But it was—sterile. It was exactly what you’d expect from an algorithm parsing —used to watch you dance— without any real understanding of what dancing is, what it means, without any recollection of the time when it breathed life and wonder into a thousand glittering facets of self. A time when, just maybe, it had some kind of soul. This was not that. This was a collection of lifeless objects jiggling on threads, and it almost broke my heart to realize what else it was..."
And lastly, for those that read this novella and don't notice...THERE'S A HIDDEN MESSAGE ENCODED IN THE TEXT!!! It's subtle and you might be forgiven for thinking it's just bad e-reader/kindle formating, but it'll lead you to extra short stories that flesh out more of the situation. Super cool!
Oh, and on another note, if I ever weirdly find myself in some management or leadership type position (assuming my inner Peter Principled self happens to not realize this and shoot me on the spot 😅), I'll have to keep the following line in my back pocket in case it ever comes in handy:
“You’ve been an asset for the vast majority of this mission...Not everyone’s going to perform to specs a hundred percent of the time. I can’t blame you because you happened to draw the short straw this time around...It doesn’t make sense to discard valuable mission elements if they can be repaired.”
Very fucking clever indeed 🙃🔧🤖🔫
July 6, 2018
You can find the full review and all the fancy and/or randomness that accompanies it at It Starts at Midnight
4.5*
I had been super curious about this book since I first read its synopsis on Netgalley. But then I was kind of afraid that it might be a bit too "science-y" for my brain to handle. I needn't have worried, though! I decided to go for it and request after reading Evelina's review because she basically abated my fears while making me even more excited for the book. What I'm saying is, if you're on the fence, check out her review!
And now, I will tell you why I loved it! First, the concept is incredible, and the book delivers. It's hard to even wrap one's head around the thought of being alive in space for millions of years, really. But in a good way, because it's so very thought provoking. It made me think about time in a whole new way, and of course had me questioning whether I could ever do the things that Sunday's had to do.
In addition, it's full of action and adventure, and contains a lot of really diverse and well fleshed out characters. The fact that this comes in at under 200 pages makes it an even more impressive feat, since I genuinely cared about the fates of not just the main character, but side characters as well. And, thanks to The Captain's review , I found out that there are more stories set in this world! Of which I shall be devouring immediately, obviously. The only problem I'd had really is that I wanted more of this world and well... problem solved!
Bottom Line: If you love a sci-fi that makes you really think, but is also full of action, this is one you won't want to miss!
4.5*
I had been super curious about this book since I first read its synopsis on Netgalley. But then I was kind of afraid that it might be a bit too "science-y" for my brain to handle. I needn't have worried, though! I decided to go for it and request after reading Evelina's review because she basically abated my fears while making me even more excited for the book. What I'm saying is, if you're on the fence, check out her review!
And now, I will tell you why I loved it! First, the concept is incredible, and the book delivers. It's hard to even wrap one's head around the thought of being alive in space for millions of years, really. But in a good way, because it's so very thought provoking. It made me think about time in a whole new way, and of course had me questioning whether I could ever do the things that Sunday's had to do.
In addition, it's full of action and adventure, and contains a lot of really diverse and well fleshed out characters. The fact that this comes in at under 200 pages makes it an even more impressive feat, since I genuinely cared about the fates of not just the main character, but side characters as well. And, thanks to The Captain's review , I found out that there are more stories set in this world! Of which I shall be devouring immediately, obviously. The only problem I'd had really is that I wanted more of this world and well... problem solved!
Bottom Line: If you love a sci-fi that makes you really think, but is also full of action, this is one you won't want to miss!
March 13, 2020
A rebellion against the AI controlling the entirety of your spaceships and even of your living and breathing being. Oh, and you're only awake every few hundred or thousands of millennium and only for as long as your nemesis feel like chatting up with you. The blurb was so awesome I just had to buy it, my only regret was that since it is only a novella, I won't be able to indulge in all the convoluted details the author would surely invent if given more pages.
Actually I was a bit disappointed because the first half of the novella is more about background stuffs, Sunday, the crews, the ships, why the hell are these people/ship laying rail tracks across galaxies with no end ever to speak of, instead of cooking up super convoluted insidious multi layered trap and schemes to overthrow the Artificial Stupidity. But this is simply Watts' kind of book, and if you love his style, you gotta love this one too :)
Actually I was a bit disappointed because the first half of the novella is more about background stuffs, Sunday, the crews, the ships, why the hell are these people/ship laying rail tracks across galaxies with no end ever to speak of, instead of cooking up super convoluted insidious multi layered trap and schemes to overthrow the Artificial Stupidity. But this is simply Watts' kind of book, and if you love his style, you gotta love this one too :)
May 28, 2018
This new novella by Peter Watts is part of a series of stories he has been writing, on and off, for some time now. The series seems to be called Sunflowers. The other stories to date (Hotshot, The Island, and Giants) are available for free download from the author's website: .
The basic idea is this: a group of human beings live and work on a spaceship that is circling the galaxy, at a substantial fraction of light speed, in order to create wormholes - so that future spaceships from Earth will be able to move from star system to star system quickly and easily. The thousands of people on the ship spend most of their time in cryogenic suspension, without aging, as the ship takes millions of years to traverse the galaxy. An onboard artificial intelligence runs things, and only awakens a few of the human beings or brief periods when it encounters situations that are too difficult for it to deal with by itself (mostly when they actually need to install a wormhole).
It quickly becomes absurd: the narrator, Sunny, has only had a few years in toto alive, awake, and ageing, while the ship as a whole has been traveling for something like 55 million years. Nobody knows what has happened on Earth in that vast stretch of time, nor even whether human beings (or their evolutionarily changed descendents) still exist.
Each story explores a different aspect of this dilemma. The Freeze Frame Revolution deals with the relations between the crew and the AI (which they call The Chimp, because of its supposedly limited intelligence - which has been deliberately limited so that it will not come off as superior to the living human beings aboard). Crew members have reason to believe that The Chimp has been lying to them and manipulating them, and they want to put a stop to it. This entails plotting to take over the ship from the AI - the conspiracy takes millennia of actual time to unfold, because nobody is awake for more than a week or so at a time, and only a small portion of the crew is awake at any particular time - they need to send messages to one another which endure over the long hibernation period, and which the AI is unable to read (or even to be aware of the existence of). It is difficult, but they manage to do it -up to a point. The novella is a somber one, because it deals with a situation in which ostensibly free people do not actually have much of a choice, or much room to maneuver, and where the challenge of dealing with the essentially nonhuman intelligence like the AI is a difficult and perhaps impossible one. The book, like all of Watts' fiction, is intense, intellectually intriguing, and very skeptical about long-range human prospects.
The basic idea is this: a group of human beings live and work on a spaceship that is circling the galaxy, at a substantial fraction of light speed, in order to create wormholes - so that future spaceships from Earth will be able to move from star system to star system quickly and easily. The thousands of people on the ship spend most of their time in cryogenic suspension, without aging, as the ship takes millions of years to traverse the galaxy. An onboard artificial intelligence runs things, and only awakens a few of the human beings or brief periods when it encounters situations that are too difficult for it to deal with by itself (mostly when they actually need to install a wormhole).
It quickly becomes absurd: the narrator, Sunny, has only had a few years in toto alive, awake, and ageing, while the ship as a whole has been traveling for something like 55 million years. Nobody knows what has happened on Earth in that vast stretch of time, nor even whether human beings (or their evolutionarily changed descendents) still exist.
Each story explores a different aspect of this dilemma. The Freeze Frame Revolution deals with the relations between the crew and the AI (which they call The Chimp, because of its supposedly limited intelligence - which has been deliberately limited so that it will not come off as superior to the living human beings aboard). Crew members have reason to believe that The Chimp has been lying to them and manipulating them, and they want to put a stop to it. This entails plotting to take over the ship from the AI - the conspiracy takes millennia of actual time to unfold, because nobody is awake for more than a week or so at a time, and only a small portion of the crew is awake at any particular time - they need to send messages to one another which endure over the long hibernation period, and which the AI is unable to read (or even to be aware of the existence of). It is difficult, but they manage to do it -up to a point. The novella is a somber one, because it deals with a situation in which ostensibly free people do not actually have much of a choice, or much room to maneuver, and where the challenge of dealing with the essentially nonhuman intelligence like the AI is a difficult and perhaps impossible one. The book, like all of Watts' fiction, is intense, intellectually intriguing, and very skeptical about long-range human prospects.
June 28, 2022
The Eriophora is a generation ship with 30,000 in cold sleep, its mission to circle around the galaxy building jump gates for its architects back on Earth. The people doing the work are thawed out, one "tribe" at a time, to live for a few days or months before being frozen again for millennia. They live a subjective human lifetime, while tens of thousands of years pass in the universe around them. They will never live to see the end of their mission, or the fruits of their labors enjoyed by the engineers who sent them.
This is a story as much about psychology and cognition as it is about starships. When Sunday realizes, really realizes, what it means to be expendable, to be meat frozen in space serving the ends of people she'll never meet, she joins a revolution among her fellow crewmembers. A revolution planned carefully, in brief periods of wakefulness between centuries of sleep. Their adversary is the ship's AI, the "Chimp."
Peter Watts writes hard SF and his AIs are based on current understandings of artificial intelligence. The Chimp is sentient but not really "alive," and Watts very convincingly describes the behavior and performance of a computer that can act "alive" and simulate a personality, even appear to have insight and the ability to learn, and yet is really just millions of chips flipping logic gates in a vast neural net. Sunday is often caught in this paradox. She remembers the Chimp being "born" and has a hard time not anthropomorphizing it. She sympathizes with it, then hates it, and realizes that hating a machine is as futile as sympathizing with it, which doesn't stop her from having human reactions to it. All while it tries to manage and placate her.
The "revolution" is clever if not very scrutable: what's their plan if they do take down the Chimp? What will they do with their enormous starship filled with thousands of people in cold-sleep? Of course things do not go according to plan, and Sunday's postscript reveals the twist.
Watts is a brainy author for readers who like their sci-fi hard and pessimistic.
This is a story as much about psychology and cognition as it is about starships. When Sunday realizes, really realizes, what it means to be expendable, to be meat frozen in space serving the ends of people she'll never meet, she joins a revolution among her fellow crewmembers. A revolution planned carefully, in brief periods of wakefulness between centuries of sleep. Their adversary is the ship's AI, the "Chimp."
Peter Watts writes hard SF and his AIs are based on current understandings of artificial intelligence. The Chimp is sentient but not really "alive," and Watts very convincingly describes the behavior and performance of a computer that can act "alive" and simulate a personality, even appear to have insight and the ability to learn, and yet is really just millions of chips flipping logic gates in a vast neural net. Sunday is often caught in this paradox. She remembers the Chimp being "born" and has a hard time not anthropomorphizing it. She sympathizes with it, then hates it, and realizes that hating a machine is as futile as sympathizing with it, which doesn't stop her from having human reactions to it. All while it tries to manage and placate her.
The "revolution" is clever if not very scrutable: what's their plan if they do take down the Chimp? What will they do with their enormous starship filled with thousands of people in cold-sleep? Of course things do not go according to plan, and Sunday's postscript reveals the twist.
Watts is a brainy author for readers who like their sci-fi hard and pessimistic.
September 29, 2018
Hard scifi reminiscent of classics like A Space Odyssey. If you like books about AIs on a spaceship, this one's for you.
I love the concept of a ship of hundreds of crew only being awoken to work a few weeks or months every century or millennia to save on resources, and then having a few people who may not even been woken up together try to stage a mutiny for escape against an AI that's away every second of the way.
What I especially enjoyed is Sunday finding out about music club where each club meeting spans centuries because of the whole being awake in shifts every couple hundred years.
I don't read hard scifi very much because often they are loaded technical terms and lengthy technical explanations, which really bogs me down and distracts me from the story because I'm constantly trying to make sense of everything. This is slightly more friendly for me, and in my opinion a good gateway book into hard scifi.
I love the concept of a ship of hundreds of crew only being awoken to work a few weeks or months every century or millennia to save on resources, and then having a few people who may not even been woken up together try to stage a mutiny for escape against an AI that's away every second of the way.
What I especially enjoyed is Sunday finding out about music club where each club meeting spans centuries because of the whole being awake in shifts every couple hundred years.
I don't read hard scifi very much because often they are loaded technical terms and lengthy technical explanations, which really bogs me down and distracts me from the story because I'm constantly trying to make sense of everything. This is slightly more friendly for me, and in my opinion a good gateway book into hard scifi.
June 1, 2019
I found this less challenging than my previous forays into the author's work and less thought-provoking: it's a great concept, wrapped in fairly hard SF trappings (Watts may call it handwavium, but frankly they're meaningless to me even when there's a laundry list of citations to back them up).
The result was okay, but ultimately had missing something for me - too much sense of a clockwork plot ticking out, rather than an organic revolution driven by people with feelings, maybe. It's telling that the bits I found most engaging were
The result was okay, but ultimately had missing something for me - too much sense of a clockwork plot ticking out, rather than an organic revolution driven by people with feelings, maybe. It's telling that the bits I found most engaging were
April 4, 2020
I have some difficulty reviewing this book, its premise is that all of humanity is an spaceship that is being driven by a super AI, this AI only wakes enough humans to fix what needs fixing and then puts them back to sleep for thousand of years when it doesn't need them. the cycle repeats but not always the same people are woken up. Where this book lost me was when it introduced too many characters that wanted to rebel but didn't know why. The plot could have been executed better I believe. I would label this book a Fluff sci-fi read.
June 22, 2018
Full review on my podcast, SFBRP episode #370.
Also read the other short stories with the same characters in the same world, in this order:
Hotshot
The Freeze-Frame Revolution
The Island
Giants
The short stories are available to download/read on the author's website: http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts.htm
Also read the other short stories with the same characters in the same world, in this order:
Hotshot
The Freeze-Frame Revolution
The Island
Giants
The short stories are available to download/read on the author's website: http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts.htm
July 4, 2018
5 Stars
The Freeze-Frame Revolution by Peter Watts is a highly imaginative far futured space romp that is one enjoyable ride. The concepts covered here are top notch and not hard to follow at all. The sheer time frame covered makes this book a cool read.
Peter Watts is one of my favorite authors.
A great read.
The Freeze-Frame Revolution by Peter Watts is a highly imaginative far futured space romp that is one enjoyable ride. The concepts covered here are top notch and not hard to follow at all. The sheer time frame covered makes this book a cool read.
Peter Watts is one of my favorite authors.
A great read.
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