The Terraformers

I didn't enjoy this as much as I'd hoped to.

The plot is broad in scope and sweeps across a period of a couple of millennia. Although set almost 60,000 years in the future it touches upon (and in some cases dives deeply into) themes that are very relevant in the 21st century, and the writing is generally engaging.

So why didn't I really like it? A couple of things: the structure of the book (three sections each set approx. 1,000 years apart) meant that just as you were starting to really understand some of the characters they were left by the wayside and a whole new set of individuals got introduced. At the end of each section it felt to me that there was still a lot of potential development of both plot and characters, and maybe this book could have worked better if each section was significantly expanded and extended and published as a trilogy.

(minor spoilers below)

I also felt that for a book where the overarching theme seemed to be "small people" fighting back against money-driven capitalist corporations, there was one glaring problem. Namely: if over the next 55,000 years the socio-economic structure of society doesn't really change from the current capitalist one, that's a very depressing message for anyone who would like to see change.

And seeing as the novel is written almost entirely from the POV of characters who WOULD like to see change that strikes me as a very odd way to approach it. Essentially the author seems to be saying "although it would be wonderful to see The System overturned, people have been trying to achieve that for 50,000+ years without success. So it's never going to happen".

The Terraformers is a wonderful examination of a world designed more for profit than for life. There are numerous takeaways in this remarkably well researched book, and the author is so imaginative and story line so engaging that it's hard not to read in one sitting. Analogies and metaphors abound, and each reader will perk up at recognizing ones that resonate. I enjoyed the story's strong environmental, anti-corporatist, and interconnectedness themes, and the personification of both sentient and insensate beings was remarkably entertaining. It was disappointing to bond with characters, only to be told in the next chapter that they had died without much explanation, but I have to admit that this may have been necessary given that the story's timeline covers thousands of years. I recognized many Buddhist themes in here too, but that may be just my take as a Buddhist reader. Read this and you'll never think of moose, worms, cats, or trains the same way ever again. Recommended!

This is a novel about a corporate-run terraformed world and the struggle of the people building that world to push back on their awful corporate owners and ultimately become self-governing.

Chapter one of this book really gripped me: a park ranger on a terraforming planet (who can connect to sensors in nearby trees and grasses) and her texting/flying moose buddy stop a rich camping tourist hurting the local ecosystem. Here's a small handful of other delightful worldbuilding details that I enjoyed, just for flavor: new people are built/decanted rather than born; sentient worms solve NP completeness; there's an endearing cat/train relationship. I think there's something fun about a novel that sets itself extremely far in the future and stuffs itself with neat ideas.

It's hard not to feel the echoes of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy in this whole book. Aside from the obvious bit that it's about the terraforming of a planet, it's also (a more direct) struggle against capitalist ownership. It's also structured into three section, each of which are many years apart and some long-lived characters who exist across all three parts. Each both have their own underground organization (spoilery pun :drum:) consisting of similar (spoilers elided) people. The afterword mentions that KSR asked for a character named Kim if Newitz wrote a book about terraforming.

The "big bad" here is capitalism (when is it not) and its desire to control and use people as things for profit. If there's one thematic "big good", it's probably cooperatism, and giving folks who are involved in the work a voice. At times, this came off as didactic and the side of "good" felt far too unambiguous and unmessy. The way the book hews closely to so many current-day issues (gentrification, homelessness, water rights, mass transit) felt almost a little too on the nose. However, I think it all ~mostly worked for me in the end, because a novel trying to be so hopeful about the future is the kind of refreshing book I want more of in my life.

One thing I had hoped early on to see more about was some discussion about terraforming itself being somewhat a suspect activity (especially in this larger context of capitalism / colonialism / etc). There's certainly PLENTY of shade thrown at the capitalist forces at work here, but the book brushes past most discussion of terraforming itself by having the it occur on a planet that is entirely a lifeless orb.

Mostly, I think it's interesting for me to think about comparing this book's ERT rangers vs evil corporation perspectives against the third perspective from To Be Taught, If Fortunate, by Becky Chambers. That book has the most humble approach to (attempted) zero-impact space exploration that I've ever seen. Characters change themselves and their bodies to fit into the new environment. Whereas The Terraformers is about changing the environment to suit (current for us) human bodies as a marketing gimmick, even when there's a furry VR gym's worth of body types and body swapping.

In The Terraformers erzählt Annalee Newitz die Geschichte eines gesamten Planeten und der Personen, die auf ihm leben. Das Unternehmen Verdance verdient sein Geld damit, ganze Planeten über Jahrhunderte und -tausende hinweg zu terraformen und dann das gewonnene Land an Investoren zu verkaufen. Das ist auch der Plan für Sask-E, dessen Geschichte das Buch in Ausschnitten begleitet: von den allerersten “menschlichen” Siedlern bis hin zu der entstehenden Gesellschaft und ihren Folgen.

Im Mittelpunkt von The Terraformers stehen die Personen, die die Verwandlung des Planeten steuern und begleiten – entsprechend bestimmen sich auch die thematischen Schwerpunkte des Romans: geht es am Anfang besonders um die Stabilität des Ökosystems, kommen später die Perversionen eines galaktisch-libertären Kapitalismus hinzu und schließlich Faschismus und Rassismus.

Der besondere Twist dabei ist, dass Newitz das Konzept der Person weit ausdehnt: So ist in der Welt des 50. Jahrtausends Intelligenz nicht mehr auf hominide Körper beschränkt, sondern auch in tierischen, künstlichen oder hybriden Körpern zu finden. Dabei behilft sich Verdance mit “Limitern”, die die Intelligenz der Wesen bewusst begrenzen, um sie weiter als “dumme” Tiere einsetzen zu können - wenn auch in einem deutlich zivileren Umgang, als wir dies heute tun. Andere Gruppen hingegen stellen sich gegen diese Limiter. Auch hieraus ergeben sich spannende Konflikte.

All dies macht The Terraformers zu einem durchweg zeitgemäßen Vertreter der Ecological Science Fiction. Neben allen thematischen Anregungen ist es zudem sehr gut zu lesen und unterhaltsam sowie spannend zu lesen.

Permalink: nilsmueller.info/the-terraformers/