A thoroughly enjoyable and thought provoking account of a generation ship and its crew, on the way to Tau Ceti. Mostly narrated via the ship itself as it increases its capability and grapples with consciousness, or intelligence, or being - mostly humanity.

Some of the concepts and dangers brought up throughout are akin to KSR's other works, although a generation ship brings about its own unique issues. Zoodevolution seems like such a crazy problem to have to deal with.

I'm torn about the ending. Actually, it seems really laclustre. I want to know about the colony, I don't much care about beaches in this context. Reintegration isn't really explored as much as other themes, so why is an entire section devoted to this? The troubles of star people living at their destination, how that feels: fine. But it felt like this could have had a really decent 'the journey is the destination' ending. A small addition here is that this part is not narrated by anyone, its just 3rd person prose. This breaks away from the test of the book and thus seems to irk me.

With all that said, this is still a 4 star review. Really loved the exploration of these themes.