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Learning the World
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| Author: |
Ken MacLeod |
| Publisher: |
Orbit, 2005 Tor, 2005 |
| Series: | |
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This book does not appear to be part of a series. If this is incorrect, and you know the name of the series to which it belongs, please let us know. |
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| Awards: |
2005 BSFA Nominated 2006 Campbell Nominated 2006 Clarke Nominated 2006 Hugo Nominated 2006 Locus SF Nominated |
| Lists: |
WWEnd Top Nominated Books of All-Time |
| Sub-Genre Tags: | Colonization Generation Ship Mutants |
| Member Rating: |
   (9 reads / 4 ratings)
|
Synopsis
Humanity has spread to every star within 500 light-years of its half-forgotten origin, coloring the sky with a haze of habitats. Societies rise and fall. Incautious experiments burn fast and fade. On the fringes, less modified humans get on with the job of settling a universe that has, so far, been empty of intelligent life.
The ancient starship But the Sky, My Lady! The Sky! is entering orbit around a promising new system after a four hundred year journey. For its long-lived inhabitants, the centuries have been busy. Now a younger generation is eager to settle the system. The ship is a seed-pod ready to burst.
Then they detect curious electromagnetic emissions from the system's Earth-like world. As the nature of the signals becomes clear, the choices facing the humans become stark.
On Ground, second world from the sun, a young astronomer searches for his system's outermost planet. A moving point of light thrills, then disappoints him. It's only a comet. His physicist colleague Orro takes time off from trying to invent a flying-machine to calculate the comet's trajectory. Something is very odd about that comet's path.
They are not the only ones for whom the world has changed.
"We are not living in the universe we thought we lived in yesterday. We have to start learning the world all over again."
Excerpt
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Learning the World in Blogs
- Tor.com / Science fiction and fantasy / Blog posts / OK, where do ...
Ken Macleodnow that's an interesting question. We once had a thread on rec.arts.sf.written about MacLeod reading order that went on for months. Start with the Fall Revolution books, and start them with... The Stone Canal. ...... I've read various MacLeod and very much like Learning the World - it's standalone and would be, I think, a great starting point. Very glad you mentioned Chris Moriarty - I did start with Spin State and would certainly recommend that and Spin ... - onegoodmove: What Does God Need With a Starship?
Actually you should read all of Ken Macleod's novels, if you haven't already. For example, Learning The World blew me away, and I'm sure you'd get a kick out of it too. user-pic. Author Profile Page Frenetic replied to Zaphod for ... - Review: Learning the World by Ken MacLeod
However, the first half of Learning the World is a lot like it, enough that I found the similarities distracting and a bit off-putting. MacLeod isn't stealing ideas or plot; the books do go very different places. But seeing a very, ... - Learning the World: a novel of first contact by Ken MacLeod ...
0 Responses to Learning the World: a novel of first contact by Ken MacLeod. Feed for this Entry Trackback Address. Leave a Comment. Leave a Reply. Click here to cancel reply. Name. E-mail. Website. Notify me of follow-up comments via ... - Why Learning the World? » Learning the World
Learning the world was a natural choice for the title. First it is a novel by one of my favorite authors, Ken MacLeod. MacLeod worked as a software developer in Glasgow before he quit his day job and became a full-time writer. ... - The Essential Posthuman Science Fiction Reading List
Learning the World, by Ken MacLeod MacLeod has made a (brilliant) career out of exploring posthuman society, especially the transition from human to posthuman. But in Learning The World, a gentle, strange far-future tale, he gives us a ... - The SF Site: A Conversation With Ken MacLeod
and plenty of material left to mine in the future implied in Learning the World, which I've already used as a setting for two short stories, one of which has been accepted for an anthology of New Space Opera edited by Gardner Dozois and ... - SF Signal: REVIEW: The Execution Channel by Ken Macleod
My previous Ken Macleod reading experiences haven't lived up to the hype surrounding Macleod as a writer. I tried reading his Engines of Light series, but wasn't interested in finishing. I read Learning the World, but was disappointed. ... - Recommendations--alien encounters? | Science Fiction Fans ...
karl Sagan's novel, Contact, is a great review of the political and religious reaction to confirmation of the existence of extraterrestrial life. The film is also well worth watching. Ken MacLeod's Learning the World is all about first ... - Little Brother » Learning the World
Like the work of former programmers such as Iain Banks or Ken MacLeod (whose science fiction novel Learning the World inspired me in naming this blog) his books share the cultural background and mindset of readers who grew up with ...
