Starborne
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Is utopia a death sentence for mankind? Does living in a perfect world destroy what makes us human?
Fifty men and women, living perfect lives, decide to give it all up to embark on the adventure of a lifetime.
Equipped with enough genetic material to populate a new planet, these fifty set out to travel to the farthest reaches of the galaxy, with their only link to home a fragile telepathic bond between a blind crew member and her sister back home.
Starborne is a thoughtful, introspective look by one of the Grand Masters of science fiction at what it means to be human and to live a life of meaning.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
One of SF's most prolific writers, Silverberg (Hot Sky at Midnight, 1995, etc.) seems to be resting on his considerable laurels (which include four Hugos and five Nebulas) with this meandering and talky philosophical exercise. A multiethnic crew of 50 humans are aboard a starship, carrying enough genetic material to populate a new world, and thus to rejuvenate the human race, which is currently stagnating on Earth. As they hurtle through the galaxy seeking a habitable planet, the crew spends much of its leisure time discussing the higher reasoning and visualizing functions involved in playing the game of Go. The narrative focuses on Noelle, the blind mission communicator whose ability to converse telepathically with her sister jumpstarted the mission, and the year-captain, a monk-turned-xenobiologist who tries to hide his infatuation with Noelle. In time, a kind of static impedes communications between the sisters. Members of the crew postulate that "angels" of some type are causing the interference. Will continued attempts at communication destroy Noelle? Silverberg writes compelling prose, flocked with lovely imagery, as always, but this novel falls far short of Geoffrey Ryman's more elegiac and transcendent pieces using similar themes.
