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The Train Store - Slow Train to Arcturus
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List Price: $24.00
Our Price: $13.67
Your Save: $ 10.33 ( 43% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Baen
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Average Customer Rating: 
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781416555858
ISBN: 1416555854
Label: Baen
Manufacturer: Baen
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 320
Publication Date: 2008-10-07
Publisher: Baen
Studio: Baen
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Classic feel, modern construction; best of both eras.
Comment: One of the things I adore about the 'classic' SF that I've read is that it uses both setting and science to pass along the authors ideas.
One of the things I adore about 'modern' SF is the use of multiple fleshed out characters to give a complete outlook on a situation without resorting to gigantic info dumps.
This book has both of those precursors to success and several others. Much like Lois Bujold while the authors have firm ideas about how the world should be, the characters aren't there for the sole purpose of letting the writer expound from their literary pulpit. Much like Ray Bradbury, the social subtexts could stand on their own without a motive protagonist who the reader can gravitate too. It's fortunate that the writers are able to combine both into this one book.
The sly humor of the two writers is woven throughout the text and plot and is manifestly even handed in the way it treats the cultures it encounters.
Slowtrain is an excellent introduction to either or both of these writers and a compelling read.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Creative, Relevant Story In the Tradition of Classic Sci-Fi
Comment: The short version: A ripping yarn with big social ideas about the need for society to be big enough to value those at its frontiers and for those on the edge to lend their experiences worth by passing them on for others' benefit. I would buy this for a tween/teen or older without hesitation.
The long version: This is very much its own book, though it would be easy to compare this to a number of other works. Imagine "The Wizard of Oz" as written by J. Michael Straczynski or "The Canterbury Tales" as written by Isaac Asimov. Such comparisons can be drawn for the simple reason that "Slow Train to Arcturus" takes a classic narrative form, the physical journey that produces and represents an emotional and intellectual evolution, and sets it down as a science fiction tale with a couple of very interesting twists. It has plenty of leg to stand on as its own tale, however.
The plot itself is a ripping yarn that gets off to an engaging start by being told entirely from the perspective of an alien scientist for the first few chapters. We are given just enough introduction to the alien species whose encounter with humanity frames the story that we feel we can trust the narrator's take on the situation and are comfortable with their intent. The alien species is compellingly written, very human in their ambitions and their better natures but sufficiently different to inspire curiosity and a little wonder. They are an example of the very best of classic science fiction alien life: just different enough to be weird, and for much of the story its through their eyes that we see events and the reader has to parse their descriptions of things. Later narration spins out to a more omniscient third person but alien views of humanity are used to good effect as proxies for the ways we humans find one another to be alien.
I won't discuss the plot, for fear of spoilers, except to say that the events of the book provide its authors with ample opportunities to create and describe complex new settings which they do with relish. They show time and again that they've put real thought, creative and logical, into the settings they describe. Elements of "hard" sci-fi pop up throughout but always as ways to enable the story rather than as barriers in its path.
To be honest, despite all this praise, for most of my first reading my reactions were critical. Up until the very end I thought I had predicted the ultimate outcome perfectly only to find that I had not. I thought I had figured out the politics of the story and I had not. I thought I had seen all these characters before but kept being surprised by little things they did until the resolution, though natural, was in fact not something I had predicted at the beginning.
Eventually I realized why I kept feeling like I had failed to click with it: I had come at it from the wrong angle. This is written in the classic, politics-on-its-sleeve style of the science fiction of a generation or two ago, where the social messages are big enough to have corners and are not going to be neatly sublimated or softened. The messages are the same progressive, tolerant, classically liberal themes of, again, "Babylon 5" or Star Trek. In fact, the conclusion of the novel made me think instantly of some of the themes of Asimov's "The Stars, Like Dust," a personal favorite.
Those themes are, in short, that life takes all kinds and we all need and benefit from that; isolation and uniformity lead to decay, fear and tyranny. This isn't the chatty science fiction of sleek kids bathed in the glow of a monitor. Rather, it's a story about people who get up and run around and create lively messes and spread big ideas and have adventures. It's science fiction that values action as well as thought. Highly recommended for anyone who has a soft spot for the strong, clever hero or heroine unfazed by long odds and many foes.
Customer Rating:
Summary: misspelling on cover?
Comment: So... it looks like the title on the cover says "Acturus" rather than the correct "Arcturus."
Customer Rating:
Summary: Hard science fiction about the soft sciences
Comment: This is the best "hard" science fiction book I've read in a long time. It takes the eminently plausible concept of a generation ship, and solves the two major issues with it:
1. How do you keep the artificial biospheres going.
2. Why would anybody want to spend their lives, and the lives of their descendants for generations to come, in such a limited environment.
This emphasis is what you'd expect from a book written by a biologist and a historian, which is what Dave Freer and Eric Flint are by training. It makes this book much more interesting than previous books in the generation ship sub-genre. That, by itself, would make this book worth reading.
However, as an added bonus, we have Dave Freer's zany humor. The story is told from the perspective of an alien, going through human societies populated mostly by what mainstream human society considered worthless losers. This makes for very interesting encounters. Here's one you can read without spoiling the book:
He was a good hunter. By uThani standards, too good. Too good to be unmarried anyway. It was fun being chased by several women, but sometimes the consequences of letting more than one catch you . . .
Caught up with you. Especially if your name meant hunter-whose-balls-are-bigger-than-his-brains. So he'd gone off on a hunting trip, a long hunting trip.
If you like hard science fiction, read this book. If you don't like hard science fiction because you don't particularly like physics, read this book. If you don't like hard science fiction, but like humor, read this book.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: fun often humorous outer space opera
Comment: When the humongous weird looking vessel entered their system, leaders of planet Miren become concerned. They send a ship filled with scientists and other researchers to investigate the encroaching craft with its strange massive bubble-like habitats.
Upon entering an orb, humans inside attack the alien visitors from Miren. Most of the outsiders are killed as they are not soldiers and the ship's residents are insane berserkers. Miren xenobiologist Kretz escapes the slaughter by entering a different biosphere containing other humans, friendlier but unhelpful as they do not have the means to get him to his vessel. Kretz realizes quickly to get back to his ship and eventually Miren, he must pass through several of these contained circular environments filled with humans at different stages of development; many hostile towards his species.
This is a fun often humorous outer space opera. The story line is hyper fast and filled with non stop action, but that is a two edged sword because the plot never goes deep into the various groups that the Miren meet or the purpose of the multi habitat spacecraft. Still this is an engaging tale with the neat twist of the humans entering the alien specie sector with hostility that pulp space opera fans will enjoy.
Harriet Klausner
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Editorial Reviews:
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The planet Miran had sent a spaceship to rendezvous with the enormous vessel that was approaching their star system. The vessel’s design was odd—a multitude of separate globular habitats in a framework—and most of the alien team that entered one of the habitats were slaughtered by savage creatures called “humans.” One alien had barely managed to escape to another habitat where the humans were more friendly, if rather technologically backward. But he needed to get back to his spaceship, and he would need one human’s help to do that.             They would have to travel through several more habitats, each one isolated from the other, each with its own bizarre dangers and customs. And friendliness toward strangers was not one of those customs. . . . Â
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