Tag: Annalee Newitz

Book Review: TERRAFORMERS is worth a read

On By Steven D'AdamoIn On Storytelling, ReviewsLeave a comment

I’m coming late to this review, having finished The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz a few weeks ago.

I think a slim part of the reason why it took me so long to review this novel is because I’m still not entirely sure how I felt about it.

As a world-building experiment complete with planet-sized terraforming projects, centuries-long urban planning policies, and biomechanical creatures of varying sentience and form, I found this book thoroughly enjoyable.

However, I think I struggled with the structure of the novel, even as I came to understand Newitz’s attempts to emphasize that monumental societal change does not necessarily happen overnight. Sometimes it takes generations, even when those generations live for centuries, rather than decades.

And so, this book is split into three novella-sized plots, each one taking place several hundred years after its predecessor. Again, while I appreciate the author’s notion that The Revolution is not always instantaneous, this three-part structure made it difficult to connect with any character in particular.

Scratch that, By the time I had connected with Destry of the Environmental Rescue Team – an ecological engineer purpose-designed for her job – the first plot was finished, and I was thrust seven (?) hundred years into the future, with characters who reference Destry as a hero, but who do not land as well as the first plot.

The overall plot between the three timeframes worked, I think. I just found it jarring.

I think Newitz did an excellent job of taking big, messy ideas, like bioengineered limits on intelligence based on one’s role in society, or the Personhood of creatures other than hominids, and including some biomechanical beings, or the concept of a society where people have mastered ecological balance as a form of control (and profit)… Newitz takes these grandiose ideas, and then allows little microcosms of character dialogue talk debate, challenge, and advocate for them in very accessible ways.

The world was incredibly well thought-out and felt lived in. The characters sounded unique and fully realized with their own motives and flaws, and the plot was cohesive and nuanced, even across multiple large time jumps.

This book is worth reading for those reasons, even if its structure feels a little forced.

Steve D

On FOUR LOST CITIES and Building this Fantasy Town

On By Steven D'AdamoIn Fantasy, On Storytelling, ReviewsLeave a comment

This post is not a real book review, at least, not entirely. I just finished listening to Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age by Annalee Newitz, and it got me thinking and rethinking the way I design and evolve cities in my fantasy universe.

A running theme in my world-building — and one of my pervading interests in history and anthropology — touches on the rise and fall of cities and civilizations. For years, I had the reductionist viewpoint that great cities rose and fell in linear patterns, and with clear markers for their demise.

When I learned that the far more common pattern is for cities (or civilizations) decay for years or decades or centuries before fading from prominence, I wanted to explore that in my storytelling.

Four Lost Cities provides a really interesting investigation into the formation and decline of cities across human history. Newitz uses archeological evidence to make the case that the evolution and dissolution of cities is not a linear path, that the very definition of a “city” and its growth are defined more by socio-cultural forces of its time than by rigid and often arbitrary models based solely on commerce.

What would this look like in a setting of my making? Would I be able to capture the uncertain rise and long decay of a city or a people in character-centric stories?

My current work-in-progress, the duology I’ve been referring to as The Herb Witch Tales, spawned from this theme. Before I knew who my characters were, I wanted to explore a city’s evolution from small port town, to sprawling tent camp of migrant settlers, to developed population center.

The story developed from the idea of the city, and I found characters to fit that initial blueprint. The duology is now much more grounded than that much broader idea, but I’ve tried to pay particular attention to the ways in which the characters perceive and interact with place — the places they’ve lost, left, or found.

Although The Herb Witch Tales is currently a duology, I can easily imagine future stories where the growth of this family is inextricably tied with the growth of the place they come to call home.

So, I must recommend Four Lost Cities, because it is informative, thought-provoking, and inspiring in a world-building kind of way.

Steve D