Blue Remembered Earth (Poseidon's Children Series #1)

by Alastair Reynolds

Overview

One hundred and fifty years from now, Africa has become the world’s dominant technological and economic power. Crime, war, disease and poverty have been practically eliminated. The Moon and Mars are settled, and colonies stretch all the way out to the edge of the solar system. And Ocular, the largest scientific instrument in history, is about to make an epochal discovery…
 
Geoffrey Akinya wants only one thing: to be left in peace, so that he can continue his long-running studies into the elephants of the Amboseli basin. But Geoffrey’s family, which controls the vast Akinya business empire, has other plans for him. After the death of his grandmother Eunice—the erstwhile space explorer and entrepreneur—something awkward has come to light on the Moon, so Geoffrey is dispatched there to ensure the family name remains untarnished.
 
But the secrets Eunice died with are about to be revealed—secrets that could change everything...or tear this near utopia apart.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101568859
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/05/2012
Series:	Poseidon's Children , #1
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	576
Sales rank:	48,264
File size:	760 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Alastair Reynolds was born in Wales in 1966. He has a PhD in astronomy. From 1991 to 2007, he lived in the Netherlands, where he was employed by the European Space Agency as an astrophysicist. He is now a full-time writer and lives in South Wales with his wife, Josette.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Engrossing…Blue Remembered Earth is, ultimately, a collection of conflicting ‘isms’: individualism, collectivism, romanticism, capitalism, expansionism, escapism. The ability to integrate such competing notions into a stable narrative speaks to the ideological power of the best SF; it also demonstrates Reynolds’s genre mastery….More importantly, the projected series—and the work Reynolds has yet to produce—will tell us much about the state of SF in the early twenty-first century.”—Los Angeles Review of Books
 
“Reynolds both develops a richly detailed portrait of a resurgent, postapocalyptic Earth society and economy, and leaves himself plenty of room to expand his narrative space exponentially…If Reynolds can keep this up—and there’s enough planted here for future volumes to already suggest that he can—he might have one of the most enjoyable series of the still-young decade.”—Locus
 
“As my number one SF writer of the ’00s, any novel or story by Alastair Reynolds is a must...As speculation about a mid 2100s Earth and nearby solar system, Blue Remembered Earth is simply unrivaled in recent SF and if only for that and the novel is a top 25 of mine…A compulsive read that you do not want to put down…If you want to understand why SF at its best is still the most interesting form of literature today, Blue Remembered Earth [is the place] to go.”—Fantasy Book Critic

Editorial Reviews

Reynolds (Terminal World) cements his status as one of the preeminent writers of hard SF with this gripping and intelligent kickoff to the three-book Poseidon’s Children sequence. It’s 2161, and Africa is the Earth’s “dominant economic and technological” power. Geoffrey Akinya has used major scientific advances to enhance his research into elephant intelligence, preparing to mind-meld with wild pachyderms. His studies are interrupted by the death of his 131-year-old grandmother Eunice, which catalyzes events that takes the biologist to the Moon and beyond to decipher a series of clues Eunice left behind. Akinya’s quest further enmeshes him in some very complicated family dynamics. The futuristic science, which includes expansions of virtual reality and a convenient mode of travel from Earth to the Moon, is plausibly conveyed. Beyond that, Reynolds’s creative imagination uses current and speculative science and technology as the underlying structure for a thoughtful exploration of humanity’s place in the universe. Agent: Robert Kirby, United Agents. (June)

Publishers Weekly

Engrossing…Blue Remembered Earth is, ultimately, a collection of conflicting ‘isms’: individualism, collectivism, romanticism, capitalism, expansionism, escapism. The ability to integrate such competing notions into a stable narrative speaks to the ideological power of the best SF; it also demonstrates Reynolds’s genre mastery….More importantly, the projected series—and the work Reynolds has yet to produce—will tell us much about the state of SF in the early twenty-first century.”—Los Angeles Review of Books
 
“Reynolds both develops a richly detailed portrait of a resurgent, postapocalyptic Earth society and economy, and leaves himself plenty of room to expand his narrative space exponentially…If Reynolds can keep this up—and there’s enough planted here for future volumes to already suggest that he can—he might have one of the most enjoyable series of the still-young decade.”—Locus
 
“As my number one SF writer of the ’00s, any novel or story by Alastair Reynolds is a must...As speculation about a mid 2100s Earth and nearby solar system, Blue Remembered Earth is simply unrivaled in recent SF and if only for that and the novel is a top 25 of mine…A compulsive read that you do not want to put down…If you want to understand why SF at its best is still the most interesting form of literature today, Blue Remembered Earth [is the place] to go.”—Fantasy Book Critic

From the Publisher

In the 22nd century, Africa leads the world in economics and technology, while most people live long, disease- and hunger-free lives. Humanity has expanded to the moon, Mars, and beyond. The grandchildren of the late Eunice Akinya, matriarch of the powerful Akinya family, puzzle over her curious legacy and her possible connection to a cult dedicated to spreading all life forms throughout the known universe. As Geoffrey Akinya, who has devoted his life to the study of elephants in the Amboseli Basin, learns more, he realizes that Eunice involved herself in matters that could potentially tear the universe apart. The author of Revelation Space and Terminal World launches a series following one family into the far future, as the human journey into space extends past the solar system into the further reaches of the galaxy. Reynolds combines hard science with believable characters and a strong plot to deliver his vision of a future in the stars. VERDICT This dynastic series opener deals with the popular topics of space travel and colonization of other planets in a style that should appeal to fans of David Brin and Kim Stanley Robinson.

Library Journal

First volume of a new planet-hopping series from the author of Terminal World (2010). By the middle of the next century, Africa is the dominant technological and economic power (a provocative notion, though Reynolds declines to show us how this came to be), wars and poverty have vanished, and violence is impossible: Thanks to mandatory neural implants, anybody that so much as attempts it gets zapped with an incapacitating migraine. Geoffrey, scion of the rich and powerful Akinya clan, studies elephants in the hope of achieving a full mind-meld with them. Recently, Eunice, Geoffrey's grandmother, a brilliant researcher who spent the latter part of her long life as a recluse aboard an orbiting space station, died, having left a MacGuffin somewhere in the solar system and a series of teasing clues to its location. Geoffrey's cousins, ruthless businessmen Hector and Lucas, prefer the MacGuffin remain undiscovered or, better, destroyed; still, they send Geoffrey up to the moon to investigate the first clue. Geoffrey, despite strict instructions from Hector and Lucas not to, can't help enlisting his sister, Sunday, to help with the search. Thus the plot--find the MacGuffin, get the grand tour--uncomfortably resembles that of Kim Stanley Robinson's recent 2312, for which we probably have Dan Brown to thank. The backdrop sparkles with human merfolk and bioengineering, artificial intelligences or "artilects," "quangled" (quantum-entangled) mind-to-mind conversations and a whirl of experimental habitats and societies. The most lifelike character, Eunice, is a multipartite computer reconstruction, even though her MacGuffin turns up in the place most of us would look first, never mind the red herrings. Along the way, Reynolds tosses out and then casually abandons dozens more astonishing concepts and developments. Readers hoping for adventures in the mind-boggling fashion of Revelation Space may emerge dissatisfied but certainly not deterred.

Kirkus Reviews