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Machine: A White Space Novel (2) Hardcover – October 20, 2020
Meet Doctor Jens.
She hasn’t had a decent cup of coffee in fifteen years. Her workday begins when she jumps out of perfectly good space ships and continues with developing treatments for sick alien species she’s never seen before. She loves her life. Even without the coffee.
But Dr. Jens is about to discover an astonishing mystery: two ships, one ancient and one new, locked in a deadly embrace. The crew is suffering from an unknown ailment and the shipmind is trapped in an inadequate body, much of her memory pared away.
Unfortunately, Dr. Jens can’t resist a mystery and she begins doing some digging. She has no idea that she’s about to discover horrifying and life-changing truths.
Written in Elizabeth Bear’s signature “rollicking, suspenseful, and sentimental” (Publishers Weekly) style, Machine is a fresh and electrifying space opera that you won’t be able to put down.
- Print length496 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherS&S/Saga Press
- Publication dateOctober 20, 2020
- Dimensions6 x 1.6 x 9 inches
- ISBN-101534403019
- ISBN-13978-1534403017
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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
I STOOD IN THE DOOR AND looked down.
Down wasn’t the right word, exactly. But it also wasn’t exactly the wrong word. All directions were down from the airlock where I stood, and almost all of them were an infinitely long fall.
I wasn’t only staring into bottomless space. I was aiming: aiming at a target that wheeled sickeningly less than a klick away. My own perch was also revolving around a central core, simulating a half a g or so, just to keep things interesting.
I was standing in the airlock door because I was going to jump.
Just as soon as I got my bearings and my timing.
I don’t get to be afraid now. I get to be afraid before and I get to be afraid after. But I don’t get to be afraid during.
There’s no room during for being afraid. So I have to fold the fear up. Tuck it out of sight and get on with all the important things I am doing.
In this case, saving lives and making history. In that order of priority and the reverse order of chronology.
I hoped to be saving lives, anyway, if I got lucky and there were still some lives on the other side of my jump to save.
Across that gulf of vacuum lay the ancient ship we pursued. It wasn’t far, by space travel standards. A few hundred meters, and it seemed like less, because Big Rock Candy Mountain was thousands of meters in diameter.
I say “ship.” But what I was looking at was an enormous wheel whipping around its hub as if rolling through space. It was a station orbiting no primary; an endless scroll of hull unreeling—subjectively speaking, because on my own ship I felt like I was standing still—in a spring-curl spiral twisting around us.
Not a smooth hull, but a rocky and pockmarked one. One punctured by micrometeors and crumpled by sheer stresses. With bits of structure projecting from the surface at varied angles and its cerulean and gold paint frayed by unfiltered ultraviolet and abraded by space dust.
Big Rock Candy Mountain was old.
About six hundred ans old, to be as precise as I could without running a lot of fussy conversions in my head. She’d come from Terra in the pre-white-drive era, and over the centians she had built up tremendous velocity.
She was zipping along at a solid fraction of the speed of light, out here in the dark places between the stars, much farther from home than she could have possibly been, her course no longer anything like the original plot retrieved by Core archinformists.
Maybe she’d gotten lost, or an impact that had caused some of the damage to her hull had knocked her off course. Or maybe the people who had outfitted her had lied about where they planned to go. The era of Terra’s history that had spawned sublight interstellar exploration and the generation ships had not been one of trust and peaceful cooperation between peoples. More one of desperate gambles and bloody-nailed survival.
Only one generation ship had ever reached a destination as far as history was aware, and that hadn’t ended well. We were here because this one had sent out a distress signal, and a Synarche ship, tracing it, had found her. And sent out a data packet requesting assistance on Big Rock Candy Mountain’s behalf.
The Synarche ship had not been in contact since, which was disconcerting. And its locator beacon, and Big Rock Candy Mountain’s distress signal, were still beeping away down there. And so we were here: to see if we could rescue anybody. If there was anybody left to rescue.
It didn’t look promising. The ship behind us was another ambulance, but the one after that contained a team of archaeologists and archinformists, and I had an unsettling premonition that there was going to be a lot more useful work for them to do than for us. I wasn’t sure exactly how far behind us they were, but I expected we were on our own for at least five to ten diar. The rescue could not afford to wait for backup.
There could be people alive in there. We had to proceed as if there were, until we had proven otherwise. But they’d done nothing to acknowledge our approach, and they had not responded to hails on the same frequencies as their distress beacon.
I couldn’t have preconceptions, because I couldn’t afford to miss anyone who might be alive. Nevertheless, contemplating the vast ruin before me made me feel sad. Worse, it was that creeping, satisfying sadness you get when you look on a ruin: at something long destroyed, something lost that isn’t your problem.
My own ship, Synarche Medical Vessel I Race To Seek the Living, was an ambulance associated with Core General. She had spent nearly a standard month with her modern engines burning fuel recklessly to match velocity with Big Rock Candy Mountain. Sally—as we called her—was fast, maneuverable, and had outsize sublight engines for her mass. She also had an Alcubierre-White drive for FTL travel, though since it didn’t impart any actual velocity to the ship, it couldn’t be used to chase down quarry in normal space. We’d had to slingshot the big gravity well at our origin point in the Core to accelerate, then conserve momentum through the transition in order to catch the speeding generation ship.
I say “slingshot” like it was a routine maneuver. In reality, there’s nothing quite like staring into the most enormous black hole in the galaxy, then flying right down its gullet like a gnat with attitude. (Inasmuch as anybody can stare into an actual black hole with their actual eyes unless they belong to one of the exotic species that can visualize X-rays or radio waves.)
So we’d already had one adventure leaving the Core, and now here we were. We weren’t docking with Big Rock Candy Mountain. We had no information about the structural integrity of this antique hulk, but common sense suggested it would be fragile. Unbalancing it, subjecting it to the stresses of docking—both were terrible ideas. We’d have to use one of our adaptable docking collars anyway, because the idea that our hardware and theirs would be compatible was laughable.
That’s why I was jumping.
It was not as dangerous as it probably seems. I’m Sally’s rescue specialist: getting people out of dangerous situations is my job, and I do this sort of thing frequently.
The insertion can be dicey, though.
My hardsuit had jets, so I had maneuverability. And everything in space is moving incredibly fast anyway, so what matters is the relative velocity. If you and I are moving at the same speed in the same direction and there’s nothing else around us, we’re functionally not moving.
Space has a whole lot of nothing. If I jumped at the right time, and corrected for Sally’s rotation, all I had to do was match velocity with the wheel and snug down onto it.
It was still breathtaking to stand inside that open airlock and look down. Sally had the processing power to hold a position over, or rather outside, Big Rock Candy Mountain basically forever. But Big Rock Candy Mountain was spinning, and one or two of her enormous central cables had snapped over the centians, so her spin had developed a wobble.
She was also wobbling for a more disturbing reason. There was a ship docked to the outside of her ring. One with white drives—a modern ship. A fast packet crewed by methane breathers: the one that had relayed the distress signal. Its—his, I checked my fox—name was Synarche Packet Vessel I Bring Tidings From Afar. Why in the Well he had docked with an ox ship, what he was still doing coupled to it, and why he wasn’t answering hails was a series of mysteries for which there was no answer in Sally’s databases.
And Sally, being a rescue vessel, has extremely comprehensive databases.
“Sally,” I asked my faceplate, “how’s our telemetry?”
“Pretty good, Llyn,” the shipmind answered. “We’ve matched velocity and vector, and we’re stable. Can’t do much about that spin.”
Good to know I wasn’t the only one worried about it.
“I’m in the door,” I said, which she already knew. But you’re supposed to maintain a verbal narrative. For the flight recorders and in case anything goes wrong and your crewmates don’t notice what you’re doing. It also lets them keep an eye on your checklists so nothing gets forgotten. Safety first. “Where’s Tsosie?”
His voice came through. “At the other door. Ready to go on your word, Llyn.”
He was the ambulance’s commander and senior trauma specialist, but I was the rescue specialist and this was my op. Rhym, our flight surgeon, outranked both of us as far as Core General seniority was concerned, but right now I was in charge of them, too. If we had to go to surgery, Rhym would become the authority figure.
It wouldn’t have made sense in a military outfit, so it had taken a while for me to get used to the way command shifted between team members. But it made sense for Sally.
“In three,” I said, and that many moments later we were sailing across the space between Sally and Big Rock Candy Mountain. As I stabilized, the apparent spiral of the generation ship smoothed out into a wheel so unnervingly that I wanted to slap a topologist.
Tsosie and I would have been a matched set, but Tsosie was trailing the sled that contained rescue supplies, portable airlocks, a laser cutting torch, and autostretchers. I had four drones limpeted onto my back beside the air tanks.
You can send back for stuff. But that takes time. Time isn’t always something you have when responding to an incident. We’re told to adapt, improvise, overcome. Perform the mission.
That part is not so different from what I did in the Judiciary. You do the thing that gets the correct result—within legal and ethical limits—and you fill out the paperwork later.
I like my job.
Sally fed me the telemetry through senso. Both Tsosie and I had jumped well. We used our jets to add v, so it seemed as if Sally were dropping behind while the turning wheel underneath us slowed. Soon, we were stationary relative to the surface, using our jets only to continue to course-correct into the curve of the ship’s habitation ring as we began to close the distance to it. We needed to get low, relatively speaking, because Sally would be coming around again soon.
“That looks like a decent spot,” Tsosie said, picking it out for me in the senso feed.
I studied the highlighted patch. It was flat and there were grab loops. I couldn’t see an airlock hatch, but some of the handholds and what I assumed were tether safeties led toward the interior surface of the wheel. You get a good sense of ship design in my business. I’d put airlocks there, where you wouldn’t have to deal with centripetal force on the way out or in.
“Let’s go around the corner,” I said. As soon as we touched the ship, the spin would start trying to throw us off. This was easier.
Tsosie followed my lead.
The inside surface of the wheel reminded me of the plated underbelly of some kind of legless lizardmorph. It was slightly concave, and though the concavity was a little uneven due to the broken cables, I assumed it had been intentional. Anything that made running around on the outside of your ship a little less profoundly hazardous was good. You never know when you’ll need to go outside and fix a lightsail or something, and space is awfully big.
Lose track of your ship for a few moments and you might never find it again.
We touched down lightly. Our mag boots latched onto the hull, and suddenly we were standing comfortably under about a third of a g.
Tsosie looked over and grinned at me through the faceplate. “Smooth.” He crouched down. “Do you know what I hate?” he continued, running his gauntlets over the hull.
“Do I care what you hate?” I asked.
“I hate it when you take a shit, right? And at the end of it there’s this little hard nodule—no, splinter, this little hard splinter of poo, all by its lonesome. And, you know, there’s no bowel movement behind it to push it out. It’s stranded there in your sphincter, and you can feel it but there’s nothing civilized you can do to get it out.”
“This conversation is being recorded.”
He shrugged.
“You could eat a carrot.” I lowered my head over the readouts on the backs of my hardsuit gloves.
“A what?”
“Carrot,” I said. “A sugary, edible root.”
“What’s that supposed to do, push it out the other end?”
“Nah,” I said. Then, “Well, sort of. If you’re experiencing hard little pellet feces, you’re constipated because you’re either dehydrated, or because you’re not getting enough fiber. Or both. Carrots have water and fiber. Eat carrots and you’ll get nice clean poops. If we lived on a planet, I’d tell you about apples—”
“What’s an apple?”
“What you eat every dia to keep the doctor away,” I said. “At least if your problem is an impacted bowel. Of course, if we kept doctors away, neither one of us would have anybody to talk to.… Oh, look. There’s the airlock.”
I walked toward it, boots clomping with each step. I could hear it through the contact with the hull and the atmosphere inside my hardsuit.
Tsosie followed. “Are you okay, Jens? You look kinda grayish.”
It was taking a fair amount of concentration not to wobble as I walked. “Food is not sitting so well.”
Tsosie grinned at me. He didn’t turn his faceplate toward me, but I could feel it through the senso. “I guess the potty talk isn’t helping.”
“I’m wearing too many ayatanas.” I had half a dozen recorded memory packets from various individuals loaded into my fox: drawing on their expertise for any clues about how to communicate with or help either the ancient humans that might be inside Big Rock Candy Mountain, or the methane-breathing systers aboard the docked, modern ship.
It was a plausible excuse for walking funny, anyway.
The airlock was a manual one, dogged with a wheel. The wheel was stiff with age and lack of maintenance, but I wear an exo for medical reasons. Between me, the exo, and the hardsuit’s servos I got the thing to grind free without having to throw myself on Tsosie’s mercy. I like to do things for myself, because I haven’t always been able to.
It makes me appreciate the small things. Such as being able to turn a sticky wheel.
“Deploying bubble,” Tsosie said.
I gave the wheel a turn or two, but didn’t undog it completely until Tsosie had set the bubble up, adhering the rim to Big Rock Candy Mountain’s hull. It wasn’t a full airlock. Once it was installed the only way out was to cut the membrane. But we had no way to gauge whether the airlock behind the hatch was pressurized, or even intact. Or if the interior door was open. We could explosively decompress part of the generation ship, if we weren’t careful.
There was a thing that might be a pressure gauge. The crystal over it was cracked, and if you squinted past the cracks the needle inside lay flat against one peg. If I was reading the archaic numerals right the needle rested on the depressurized side. That was a good sign for avoiding explosive decompression, if it was accurate: nothing inside to decompress.
It might be a bad sign for anybody inside the generation ship, though.
Sensible airlock design provided for a safety interlock such that one could not open both hatches at the same time. You probably wouldn’t be surprised by how often people—even modern rightminded people, even nonhuman people—fail to do what’s sensible. I wasn’t prepared to assume that unrightminded folks from the distant past—desperate enough to light out for stars even their great-grandchildren would never see, while flying the spacefaring equivalent of a very large, leaky rowboat—would be notably cautious individuals.
I checked Tsosie’s work on the bubble, which was as meticulous as ever. I was having a bad pain dia, so I tuned a little to control it. Not too much, though. Being dopey feels gross, and depressing your reflexes is a terrible idea when you’re entering a rescue zone.
Okay, maybe the ayatanas weren’t the only reason I was looking a little gray.
While I was adjusting, Tsosie finished opening the hatch. No air puffed out. It looked like the gauge was working after all. Or was maybe accidentally correct. There was a ladder inside the aperture. He climbed down and I followed, closing the hatch behind me.
“We’re in,” I told Sally. “Looks like an airlock should.”
The second hatch was off to my right as I stepped off the ladder. The space was large enough for six space-suited humans—or two humans and a large piece of equipment—and utterly barren. The bulkheads were a dingy beige, the paint scuffed with bumps and rubs. The ship had stayed functional and in use for some time after launch, then. But either the ship, the management, or the crew had not been functional enough for meticulous maintenance to be the norm.
I wondered how many generations had managed to live and die here. I wondered again if there were still people on board. I wondered if they had triggered the distress beacon, and if so, when.
What leads you to put a beacon on a ship that never plans on encountering another of its kind?
I knew less time had elapsed on this ship than for those of us who stayed home and joined the Synarche. Big Rock Candy Mountain was moving so fast after centians of acceleration that she had attained relativistic speeds. Every standard second we spent here was one point three standard seconds out in the rest of the universe.
Not a big difference, if you only stayed a week. It would mean roughly two extra diar going by in the outside galaxy. But over the course of half a millennian, the time dilation added up.
The pressure gauge in the inside hatch was more legible. It read .83, and since it maxed out at 1, I guessed that meant Terran atmospheres.
Tsosie and I took turns spraying each other’s hardsuits with decontam. We were the same species as the people who built this creaking, ancient vessel, but—in the thrilling eventuality that any were still alive—we and they were six hundred ans separated. Our microbes would eat their immune systems for lunch, and vice versa. It would be an enormous tragedy to reconnect with a lost branch of humanity only to start a pandemic and kill everybody on both sides.
So we wouldn’t do that.
“What we could learn from this place,” Tsosie breathed.
He let the pressure equalize, and suddenly I could hear the creaks and groans of the ancient ship around me. Strained metal and some distant thumps that sounded like the ring of machinery. No voices, and nothing that sounded like voices.
I thought I had been keeping my hopes down, but my spirits still fell. I wasn’t feeling particularly good about our chances of finding survivors. We had not been subtle about our approach—it doesn’t do to sneak up on people—and if anyone was still driving this thing, surely they would have answered our hails. Radio was radio. Or they would have come to meet us at the airlock, or at least sent a bot.
Artificial intelligences dated back to before the Eschaton, and Sally’s data library suggested that most of the generation ships had shipminds of a sort. Wheelminds? I didn’t even know what nomenclature you’d use for a ship this big.
Nobody spoke to us, even when I said the ship’s name out loud, amplifying it through my hardsuit speaker, and requested permission to enter.
Well, maybe somebody was on the other side of the hatch.
Tsosie tipped his head and dipped his shoulder, the broadly expressive gestures of somebody used to communicating through a hardsuit. “Here goes nothing.”
“Give it your best,” I said, and watched him lean on the hatch wheel.
Tsosie swung the hatch wide, and—nothing happened.
Nothing besides a brief puff of equalizing air, that is. I hadn’t really expected a welcome party, but it would have been a nice surprise.
“Huh,” he said, peering around the hatch. “Well, that’s interesting.”
That’s not a reassuring thing to hear when you’ve just broken into a space ship older than your species’s membership in civilization. I leaned sideways to peer over his shoulder.
The entire corridor was filled with what seemed at first to be a strange sort of honeycomb or spiderweb. The illumination was working—not something I would have counted on, after all this time. Let’s hear it for good old-fashioned fusion reactors.
Because the ship spun like a station to simulate gravity, we were standing on the bulkhead that faced the outside of the wheel. Big Rock Candy Mountain was enormous, and I could see quite far down the corridor before the curve of the ship bent out of sight in the distance. The whole space seemed filled with… building toys?
Something very similar, anyway, to the sort of peg-and-keeper sets that children of many species with manual dexterity are normally given as they begin to develop curiosity and the ability to use their fingers independently. If they happen to have fingers. These seemed to be printed or extruded in polymer and plated in what I took to be a conductive material of a shimmering, holographic metal. The whole structure created a mesh of interlocking hexagons that entirely filled the passageway.
“Structural reinforcement?” I asked, making sure we still had a connection back to our ship.
“It might be,” Sally agreed. I could feel her relaying Tsosie’s feed—and my feed—to the other four members of the crew. Loese, our new pilot; Hhayazh, a flight nurse; Rhym, the flight surgeon; and Camphvis, the other flight nurse.
It seemed like we were all equally mystified. We’d sent two out of the three Terrans in the crew (Loese was the other one) on this trip out of caution. We couldn’t expect any survivors aboard Big Rock Candy Mountain to have ever encountered a nonhuman sentience. And Hhayazh, in particular, is the sort of twiggy, bristle-covered, black-carapaced insectoid sentience that gives groundlubbers the shrieking jimjams.
Nobody was going to have the shrieking jimjams on my watch if I could possibly help it.
These structures didn’t seem sinister. They refracted light in bright, human colors. Not all primary—purple and orange and green made appearances—but all true and saturated. Kid colors, accentuating their resemblance to toys.
“There’s too many colors for it to be a DNA model,” Tsosie said. “Unless the same amino acids are wearing different dresses.”
I reached past him, and poked the nearest peg with my finger, causing him to gasp and grab my wrist an instant too late to stop me.
Poor life choices got me into this line of work: What can I say?
I didn’t really expect it to react. But I guess I should say that I poked at the nearest peg with my finger, because the whole structure peeled away from my hardsuit before I touched it and rippled with a series of whick-whick-whicking sounds into a folded configuration against the walls of the corridor. It left more than enough room for Tsosie and me to walk side by side.
“If we go in there it’s going to reassemble itself right through our bodies, isn’t it?” Tsosie asked.
“Maybe it’s shy.” I stepped past him, out into the corridor. He let go of my wrist as soon as I started to move. It had been a warning gesture, not a real attempt to restrain me.
Not that he could have. I was the one on the crew with the law enforcement background. And the adaptive exoskeleton under my hardsuit, giving me boosted reflexes and strength.
I paused briefly, and the tinkertoys didn’t nail me into place like a shrike’s victim. That was a good sign. I reached out again, and they peeled away from me again.
“Seems safe,” I said.
Tsosie made a little choking noise. But he followed me, boots clomping only a little. We were both, I noticed, making an effort to walk softly. It’s always hard when you first get back under grav—or simulated grav—not to crash around like one of the elephantine high-gravity systers in a proverbial china shop. The toys continued to peel apart ahead of us, and sealed themselves back up behind. “Maybe they are structural reinforcement.”
“Microbots,” Tsosie said, bending closer to inspect some of them. “Only big.”
“Where do you get the raw material to make this many… microbots? After six hundred ans in space, anyway?”
“Excellent question,” Sally said. “Keep exploring.”
Product details
- Publisher : S&S/Saga Press (October 20, 2020)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 496 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1534403019
- ISBN-13 : 978-1534403017
- Item Weight : 1.45 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 1.6 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,709,259 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #5,402 in Alien Invasion Science Fiction
- #16,794 in Space Operas
- #27,456 in Science Fiction Adventures
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
ELIZABETH BEAR was the recipient of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2005. She has won two Hugo Awards for her short fiction, a Sturgeon Award, and the Locus Award for Best First Novel. Bear lives in Brookfield, Massachusetts.
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Customers find the book compelling and interesting. They appreciate the relatable characters and their internal reflections. The journeys are fascinating and meaningful, opening new doors. Readers appreciate the philosophic depth and sociopolitical commentary that runs through the story. They find the world-building rewarding, inspiring, and hopeful. The presentation is well-done, thoughtful, and neat.
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Customers find the book engaging with relatable characters and a compelling story. They appreciate the writing quality and consider it an enjoyable read. The book is described as an interesting follow-up to the first book, with only a few similarities to the shared plot elements.
"...Well worth reading. I'm waiting for the next book publishers, bring it on!" Read more
"...if you expect it to keep going like the first part, but is interesting in its own right if you are ready for the sudden change, and willing to..." Read more
"...I loved all the different types of "people/aliens"; the story was extremely engaging, and I loved the main character." Read more
"...like, I will say simply that I found this book to be a long, boring disappointment that I had to force myself to read to the bitter end...." Read more
Customers enjoy the book's adventure. They find the journeys fascinating and meaningful. The story opens new doors and adventures, with relatable characters and open stories that allow differences between aliens to show how people differ. Readers appreciate the author's imagination and world-building skills.
"...is now cursed with chronic pain as well, Machine had one of the most relatable and well-done portrayals of someone in chronic pain that I’ve seen in..." Read more
"This was an excellent, "new age" sci-fi book. I loved it!..." Read more
"...That said, Bear has a great imagination, and is good at world building...." Read more
"...I loved reading this story and I hope that this particular series continues." Read more
Customers find the characters relatable and engaging. They appreciate the internal reflections and external utterances of the main characters. The hospital is filled with an assortment of alien characters, many with amusing traits. The plot has non-violent but compelling encounters between actors as part of interesting intrigue.
"...And her characters are so deeply LIKABLE. I never found myself screaming at them in exasperation...." Read more
"...of "people/aliens"; the story was extremely engaging, and I loved the main character." Read more
"...I do not like it. There is too much diving into the response of the character. There is just too much hanging at the end left unresolved...." Read more
"...The hospital is filled with a huge assortment of alien characters, many with amusing traits. Almost all of them seem to get along...." Read more
Customers find the book has a strong sociopolitical commentary that runs through it. They appreciate the thoughtful explorations into what it means to be human. The story conveys mystery and tension well, with chunks of commentary and reflection. Readers also mention the book is a great Sci-Fi tale with interesting near-future concepts and practical ethical philosophy.
"...That being said, we did get some pretty good discussion out of this, which is my primary metric for if a book makes a good Book Club book...." Read more
"...She also is quite good at action sequences, and can convey mystery and tension quite well...." Read more
"...there is some fascinating characters, amazing aliens, and medical mysteries that abound...." Read more
"...I don't like the main character. She was whiny and had far too much emotional baggage, far too many issues...." Read more
Customers find the book engaging with its world-building, alien creatures, and tech inventions. They appreciate the compelling storytelling and meaningful journeys that leave them feeling hopeful. The story holds their interest until the end with fast-paced action and speculative world-building.
"...The world Ms. Bear has created is so hopeful, and yet real (full of flaws folks). And her characters are so deeply LIKABLE...." Read more
"...She’s happy within it, and taken care of by it, and lives a fulfilling life. And yet, as readers, we start to see giant cracks in her narration...." Read more
"...That said, Bear has a great imagination, and is good at world building...." Read more
"...The world building, the character development, and the plot flow were all seamless. I was totally emotionally invested in the outcome...." Read more
Customers appreciate the book's presentation. They find it well-presented, thoughtfully crafted, and creative. The world is described as neat, cool, and creative. Readers also mention that the book has an expansive detail level.
"...It’s really cool, and really creepy! That being said, the plot of the 2nd part of the novel is really thin...." Read more
"...It looks more modern and the person it holds is, in some ways, far less damaged than the other Terrans...." Read more
"Just a fantastic read and neat world here" Read more
"...This novel is a good mystery, well-presented. The sci-fi that is imagined required no great leaps of faith to follow...." Read more
Customers enjoy the alien species in the book. They find the world-building rewarding, with interesting creatures and tech inventions. The characters are fascinating and the story is engaging.
"...I loved all the different types of "people/aliens"; the story was extremely engaging, and I loved the main character." Read more
"...I will say that there is some fascinating characters, amazing aliens, and medical mysteries that abound...." Read more
"...Rewarding world building, alien creatures, tech inventions, character development, internal reflection / external utterances of the main characters,..." Read more
"...to anyone who enjoys space opera, cultural extrapolation, great sapient aliens and AI’s, convincing world building, fast paced story telling, and of..." Read more
Customers enjoy the writing quality. They find the book well-written, though some parts are too long. The narration is praised.
"...Sigh. The first novel in the series, Ancestral Night was marvelously read by Nneka Okoye, who conveyed Haimey Dz's confused memories and made me..." Read more
"...in her story. The book is well written but has a few too many lengthy navel gazing pages...." Read more
"...I think this is in part because our narrator is unreliable when it comes to her society, and so has blindspots that she doesn’t see, but look like..." Read more
"Loved this story. Writing was just incredible. A joy to read and took me to places I had never been." Read more
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- Reviewed in the United States on April 4, 2024Wow. Let's just say this went places I didn't expect and I am a pretty jaded sci-fi genre reader. The world Ms. Bear has created is so hopeful, and yet real (full of flaws folks). And her characters are so deeply LIKABLE. I never found myself screaming at them in exasperation. Something that happens too often in other books.
A story that dealt with deep ethical questions, that tackles so much of our own issues, and that leaves me feeling hopeful. I loved that some of the friends we made in book 1 showed up again here even if the main characters were new to this story. Well worth reading. I'm waiting for the next book publishers, bring it on!
- Reviewed in the United States on July 3, 2022A doctor in an ambulance ship of a far-future secretly-dystopian society does great medicine, bad amateur sleuthing, and has the seeds of dissent planted in her soul…
Book Review: Boy, there’s a lot to unpack here, which is why the synopsis is so scattered and unhelpful on its own.
The novel starts with the discovery of a derelict generation ship. It’s been gone for 600 years, appears to be a ghost ship, and is lightyears away from any position that is achievable by the tech available when it was launched. Our hero is breaching this thing to search for survivors and evacuate them to her rescue ship. It’s spooky and exciting and the exploration of a mysterious/impossible thing under dangerous conditions is fantastic! We get reveals, deeper mysteries, and great action along the way.
Then we do it again with a modern ship that has recently docked to the generation ship, is broadcasting a distress call, and is also a spooky ghost-ship. This was was crewed by methane-breathers, so we get a lot of science about how a human has to protect herself and her potential rescuees with such vastly incompatible environments, and of course engineering challenges and difficulties. It’s great. And also, she brings back Sometime Dangerous that starts infecting her own crew.
This is the best part of the novel. After this it takes a turn into exploration of this society (broadly), and more locally, the space hospital where the rest of the action takes place. It’s not bad, but it’s not nearly as gripping, and it feels like a different story. I preferred the first one.
One the plus side, during the second phase of the novel, we get to see what a functional-but-dystopian society looks like to someone who is happily existing within it. And that in itself is quite the feat. I am reminded of Brave New World, which I really didn’t like, and which I didn’t finish. It, too, has a functioning dystopian society. But our protagonist in that one is a defective human. He’s congenitally pitted against it in vicious opposition. I don’t trust that sort of story at all, because it feels like clumsy 50s-era communist propaganda. “Here’s a terrible society. Look how badly it mistreats our protagonist! Boooo! We hates it, booooo!” Well, ok, that sucks for your protagonist, but he’s a genetic freak that’s designed by the author to be ideally tortured. What about everyone else on the planet? Are they doing OK? Are they happy? If so, why should I hate this society, rather than hating the fact that horrible congenital accidents can make life miserable? Because the second one seems like the actual problem that we should be fixing!
But getting back to Machine — it does the opposite of this! It has a protagonist that is served very well by her society. She’s happy within it, and taken care of by it, and lives a fulfilling life. And yet, as readers, we start to see giant cracks in her narration. We slowly come to realize that this entire society is run by constant personhood-violations and mental alterations to keep people servile and loyal. We realize that our narrator is unreliable, at least in terms of how her society functions and the benevolence of its ruling class. Best of all, we get the insights leaked to us in ways that are intended to be praise by the protagonist, and would be read as praise if we were likewise brainwashed. It’s really cool, and really creepy!
That being said, the plot of the 2nd part of the novel is really thin. I think this is in part because our narrator is unreliable when it comes to her society, and so has blindspots that she doesn’t see, but look like holes that one could drive a truck through, to us. While the first part of the story was basically competence-porn of a skilled Search-and-Rescue crew in dangerous territory… the second half of the story has a lot of face-palming, omg she’s an idiot, this is kinda embarrassing,-style action. This makes the book less fun, and quite frustrating. It’s hard not to be exasperated when incompetent villains are portrayed as True Heroes, even when you know why that’s being done.
In fact, I want to get a lot deeper into this. But I can’t here, because it contains full spoilers for the whole book. So, here’s a post where I dive into that, if you’ve already read Machine, or don’t mind spoilers. In short, the second part of the book is a let down if you expect it to keep going like the first part, but is interesting in its own right if you are ready for the sudden change, and willing to exercise a lot of patience.
Also, as someone who is now cursed with chronic pain as well, Machine had one of the most relatable and well-done portrayals of someone in chronic pain that I’ve seen in years. I appreciated it a lot for that alone.
So, I dunno. I guess, Recommended, With Caveats.
Book Club Review: Everyone agreed the first part is great. The devisive part was about whether the dystopian-society reading was intended by the author, or accidental. Generally these sorts of dystopian society novels are reactions to things going on in the author’s society at the time of writing, and Machine is no exception. In a Poe’s Law corollary, if the novel isn’t super-blatant in your face about how horrible such a thing is (like Brave New World, or 1984), then a reader can think “well… maybe this, but seriously?” How much someone suspected Bear was trying to say “man this sucks” vs just “wouldn’t this society be great?” significantly shaded how people read the novel, and their enjoyment of it the second part.
That being said, we did get some pretty good discussion out of this, which is my primary metric for if a book makes a good Book Club book. Not as much as I was hoping when I was driving to our Perkins, because it turns out we’re not quite as viewpoint diverse as we used to be. That was a little disappointing, I was hoping for more of a fight. :) (But friendly!!). Still, we went long in our discussion, and it was quite the interesting discussion. So, for book clubs, Recommended.
- Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2024This was an excellent, "new age" sci-fi book. I loved it! It was different than what I've been reading lately because I long ago stopped reading sci-fi, in general. I loved all the different types of "people/aliens"; the story was extremely engaging, and I loved the main character.
- Reviewed in the United States on October 10, 2020This book, the second in Bear's "White Space" series, is a little disappointing. While the first book in the series, "Ancestral Night," was full of wonder and mystery, "Machine" takes place in a much more confined mental space. The heroine, Jens, is a rescue doctor, former soldier, and former copy. She and her crew work out of a rescue spaceship called "Sally," which is hooked up to her brain. The crew is called to an emergency beacon from a century ship called "Big Rock Candy Mountain." Inside, they find a dead captain and thousands of passengers in cryonic suspension. The crew takes some of the "corpsickles," and brings the back to the great hospital in the sky. Core Central, to thaw out. About 1/3 of the passengers survive revival. But they bring with them an infectious code which virtually shuts the hospital down and infects many of the characters. The hospital is filled with a huge assortment of alien characters, many with amusing traits. Almost all of them seem to get along.
The book then becomes a detective story. Jens, former cop, is tasked to find out who is sabotaging the hospital and to recommend what to do about it. This part of the book is a little plodding. Jens regularly states that she is on the verge of solving the mystery, but really never does until one of the villains confesses to the crime. I found several problems with this. First, the "conspiracy" does not even involve a crime. Second, and more important, it does not even seem like a "big deal" morally. So some rich people get some benefit. So what? No sentient being is harmed by what they are up to. And this points to what I think is the biggest problem with this book. It tries too hard to be politically correct. The heroine must, of course, be a lesbian. Those rescued from the century ship must, of course, be politically backward. All good people must be "rightminded" and fitted with a mental implant called a fox which keeps them thinking proper thoughts -- all praised by Bear. The Synarchy -- the governing body of sentients -- is tasked to make sure there is little income equality. Bear portrays it as a virtual socialist paradise. And her "big reveal" is that some of its people are using their wealth to help themselves. No wonder the last part of the book feels flat.
That said, Bear has a great imagination, and is good at world building. She also is quite good at action sequences, and can convey mystery and tension quite well. I only wish she would not deploy these gifts in support of galaxy-wide socialism.
- Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2024I was tempted to just put it down and write it off. I do not like it. There is too much diving into the response of the character. There is just too much hanging at the end left unresolved. The end is unrealized and the objective that started the plot is then forgotten.
- Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2024This is a novel about a trauma surgeon on a medical ship that ends up dealing with a bunch of cryopreserved people who desperately need help. Telling you the rest of it would ruin the complicated story that follows. I will say that there is some fascinating characters, amazing aliens, and medical mysteries that abound. I loved reading this story and I hope that this particular series continues.
Top reviews from other countries
- David BrownReviewed in Canada on September 27, 2022
5.0 out of 5 stars A Positive Experience
A well written space adventure exploring emotional space in a complex future of colourful aliens. I enjoyed reading this novel and recommend it unreservedly.
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Ziggy NixonReviewed in France on May 11, 2024
4.0 out of 5 stars Un mystère de science-fiction très fascinant !
Il s’agit d’une histoire de science-fiction vraiment intéressante qui évite les clichés habituels selon lesquels « tous les extraterrestres sont fondamentalement humains par nature ». Autour d’une terrible série d’événements, nous rencontrons toutes sortes d’« êtres vivants » et voyons comment ils contribuent à cet univers. Même si le rythme est parfois inégal, cela reste une lecture très bien écrite et ludique !
- Krenger BernhardReviewed in Germany on April 12, 2023
1.0 out of 5 stars Worst read ever
Really bad story telling. Could not read beyond the first 50-100 pages.
Get a sample of the book first and see yourself if you like this style ..
- PreachReviewed in the United Kingdom on April 16, 2021
5.0 out of 5 stars A fresh, imaginative work. Could not put it down
I had to give this 5 stars. The story gripped me from the beginning and held me transfixed to the end. A masterful story told at a fantastic pace.
The world building is finely detailed and never over explained. The characters are built from the ground up around their morphology and become satisfactorily rounded beings. There is an undercurrent of ironic humor throughout that puts flesh on the bones of the characters.
The antagonist is a tale of the law of unintended consequences and the protagonist flawed and cynical and fighting to find the core of her belief system.
And beneath it all this shadowy futuristic concept of a society which offer some sociological and psychological insights by which we can judge our own society and our place within it.
Thoroughly enjoyed it and I think you will too.
- Oliver ThomasReviewed in the United Kingdom on June 12, 2021
4.0 out of 5 stars Clever, compelling, a little bit contrived.
The plot is tangled, but not unintelligibly so...however, those tangles do start to struggle for momentum toward the end of the book. Characterisation and setting are very strong. I as delighted by the characters Starlight and Cheeirilaq. Also, Rilriltok.