Solaris Rising pt. I

This is such a great book, I could hardly put it down! In fact, I finished it, and my conclusion blog will be posted shortly after this one, but for this post I will be focusing on the first half of the book. The stories are all fascinating and very diverse. Everything I said I enjoyed about short sci-fi stories in my previous post stands true, except for one thing. I have noticed that some stories end before completely satisfying my curiosity, ending what seems to be a small plot arc just as a much larger makes itself apparent. Although this left me disappointed a couple time, I'm sure it was exactly the affect the author intended. These stories also went through enough of the exposition as to allow the reader to imagine their own continuation, an aspect I found to be interesting. Something else I remembered that I liked so much about science fiction is how the stories progress. The author makes as little of the setting evident as is necessary, and slowly reveals more to the reader, until all is clear, and everything makes sense. Often this is manifested in a main character suddenly finding themselves in an unfamiliar environment, and set out on a, in this case short, quest to figure out just what is happening. Another manifestation of this process is a character going about their daily lives, except the reader is completely unfamiliar with their daily lives, and something extraordinary happens.

So far, one of my favorite stories was one with a very interesting concept. In this futuristic world, giant mechanical star ships are able to breed to create new ships, and some are grown in a similar fashion as fruit. The main characters is assigned to oversee the fertilization of what is essentially a ship flower, something which is a rather routine process. Unfortunately for her, the bird machine thing that is supposed to impregnate this flower does not come at the expected time due to some mystifying glitch. When the protagonist's companion asks her how likely it was that this robot did a certain thing, and she replied, "it's as likely to do that as it is to write poetry" (Palmer 163). In context this means it to be nearly, if not completely, impossible. Of course, the robot wrote poetry, and did exactly what the character thought impossible. This sort of development is quintessential to science fiction writing: the main character will be tasked with rather something rudimentary, and it will inevitably take a very unexpected turn. 

I have enjoyed reading this book (all of it), and you can expect my blog conclusion shortly!