Atmosphæra Incognita
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- $2.99
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
For more than two decades, Neal Stephenson has been the reigning master of the epic fictional narrative. His vast, intellectually rigorous books have ranged in setting from the distant past (The Baroque Cycle) to the modern era (Reamde) to the remote future (Anathem, Seveneves). But when Stephenson turns his attention to shorter forms, the results can be every bit as impressive, as this dazzling novella—itself a kind of tightly compressed epic—clearly indicates.
Atmosphæra Incognita is a beautifully detailed, high-tech rendering of a tale as old as the Biblical Tower of Babel. It is an account, scrupulously imagined, of the years-long construction of a twenty-kilometer-high tower that will bring the human enterprise, in all its complexity, to the threshold of outer space. It is a story of persistence, of visionary imaginings, of the ceaseless technological innovation needed to bring these imaginings to life.
At the same time, it shows us our familiar planet from an entirely new perspective, and offers vivid snapshots of the unique beauties and unexpected hazards of the “atmosphæra incognita” that lies between this world and “the deep ocean of the cosmos.” The result is pure pleasure, pure excitement, pure Neal Stephenson. No one with an interest in Stephenson’s work, or in science fiction at its most thoughtful and ambitious, can afford to miss this latest edition to an extraordinary body of work.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A 20-kilometer-high tower stands at the center of this idea-driven essay in the guise of a novella, in which characters struggle with logistics, but emotion is absent. Written for Stephenson's Hieroglyph idea-incubation project in 2013, this near-future science fiction tale exhibits many plausible technological feats in Stephenson's signature style. After Emma, a real estate agent, reconnects with her now-wealthy childhood friend Carl, he recruits her to secure an appropriate site for the tallest structure ever built. Resources are plentiful, but raising the tower and keeping it upright prove challenging, and engineering innovations are necessary to make the mission possible. Though Emma's life becomes inseparable from the tower's when her wife, Tess, opens "The First Bar in Space" on the top floor, they and the rest of the cast are sidelined to make way for the impressive technological achievement. Fans of Stephenson (Fall; or, Dodge in Hell) may find some interesting concepts, but the wonders of the tower are not enough to compensate for the lack of strong characters and relationships.