Alien bat people! (Learning the World: A Novel of First Contact - Ken MacLeod)

Member Name: The Duke

Product:	Learning the World: A Novel of First Contact - Ken MacLeod
Date:	12/08/06 (94 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good story, readable, not swamped with technology.

Disadvantages: Some ideas are a little confusing.

"Learning the World" is a tale of space exploration told from the points of view of a number of protagonists in the distant future of humanity. As the space exploration (generation) ship "But the sky, my lady! The sky!" nears its destination after hundreds of years of travel, the inhabitants start to get excited about the prospect of being able to colonise the system.

Sending out probes to gather information on likely sources of raw materials, the ship's inhabitants are shocked to discover that one of the main planets in the system, known locally as 'Ground', is populated by intelligent beings that are a little advanced, technologically.

Putting the ship into a kind of stealth mode orbiting the sun of this star system, they begin debating on a course of action on whether there is any way they can continue to populate this system or whether they have to leave it again, either to return home to attempt to find another system.

Unbeknownst to the ship's crew though, is that their arrival has not gone unnoticed.

"Learning the World" is a new take on the old story of space exploration which are quite commonplace in science fiction writing, but "Learning the World" introduces new ideas to give it a fresher feel to it than others in the genre. Told from a number of different viewpoints, we find out the reactions to a possible first contact scenario from various factions within both the human generation ship and the population of Ground.

Atomic Discourse Gale writes a blog that she's entitled "Learning the World" and from this the thoughts of the younger ship generation are revealed. The rest of the tale is told in traditional fashion, including the events unravelling on Ground when the bat-like people suddenly realise that what they thought was a comet is something even more exciting and potentially dangerous.

The blog method of telling part of the story is reasonably effective. It does go some way to explaining some things that might not be immediately apparent and while the author shies away from over-complicating matters with huge swathes of technology, there are a lot of ideas that MacLeod uses that do require an explicit explanation rather than be obvious with a passing comment during the narrative.

Most of any possible confusion does raise its head during the passages with the humans, possibly because the story takes place thousands of years in humanity's future where moral values, technology etc are going to be quite alien to us. It's perhaps strange that the reader might actually be able to relate more to the bat people whose technological levels are probably around those of the late 19th and early 20th centuries than the futuristic humans (I know I did at several times).

The plot moves from start to finish at a steady pace, not really changing as it progresses and even the ending is treated in the same way as the resolution is not rushed towards. I felt that the consistency of the pacing helped the readability of the book, freeing you to concentrate more on the characters and story than worry about the passage of time or swamping you with too much at one go.

Other than the possibility of slight confusion in places due to some of the author's ideas (although nothing that would confuse the plot), there are not really an awful lot of negative aspects of the book, assuming you're a fan of the genre. I found it extremely easy to read and the blog entries are printed in a darker, bolder typeface than the rest of the book, so these are easily identifiable compared with the rest of the story, which I found extremely interesting and offered something a little different to the normal space exploration stuff that I've previously read.


ISBN 1-84149-344-9

Summary: What happens when advanced humans enounter intelligent beings on a planet they wish to colonise?