The Sky So Big and Black

Rating:
Summary: Good stuff in the Heinlein tradition
Review: I've enjoyed John Barnes's novels for a while now. This novel takes place in the future laid out in the previous novels Kaleidoscope Century and Candle. In this future, the concept of Memes that can control the human mind are central to the story. They aren't memes like an idea that spreads across the internet and becomes part of the culture. We are talking about the concept of a method by which a Meme can take over and control a human mind.

In Barnes's future, the Earth is completely taken over by the Meme called One True. The rest of humanity, spread out in space on the Moon and on Mars try to make do without the Earth.

This story takes place on Mars with a group of ecospectors, ecological prospectors. Rather than hunting for valuable minerals, they hunt for ways to terraform Mars by releasing water or identifying other organic resources.

Mars is cast in the light of the seminal Heinlein Libertarian society. Few laws, much personable responsibility, and a huge focus on trust and reputation. It very much harks back to ideas from Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

Without giving out any spoilers, the Martians face a tragedy are must make choices between their lifestyle and dealing with One True for help. Barnes looks at how the libertarian world (Mars) and the socialist world (Earth) can interact and what price are the libertarians willing to pay to keep their way of life.

I recommend the book. It's a fast read and has plenty of neat technical ideas interspersed with the storyline.

Rating:
Summary: Good stuff in the Heinlein tradition
Review: I've enjoyed John Barnes's novels for a while now. This novel takes place in the future laid out in the previous novels Kaleidoscope Century and Candle. In this future, the concept of Memes that can control the human mind are central to the story. They aren't memes like an idea that spreads across the internet and becomes part of the culture. We are talking about the concept of a method by which a Meme can take over and control a human mind.

In Barnes's future, the Earth is completely taken over by the Meme called One True. The rest of humanity, spread out in space on the Moon and on Mars try to make do without the Earth.

This story takes place on Mars with a group of ecospectors, ecological prospectors. Rather than hunting for valuable minerals, they hunt for ways to terraform Mars by releasing water or identifying other organic resources.

Mars is cast in the light of the seminal Heinlein Libertarian society. Few laws, much personable responsibility, and a huge focus on trust and reputation. It very much harks back to ideas from Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

Without giving out any spoilers, the Martians face a tragedy are must make choices between their lifestyle and dealing with One True for help. Barnes looks at how the libertarian world (Mars) and the socialist world (Earth) can interact and what price are the libertarians willing to pay to keep their way of life.

I recommend the book. It's a fast read and has plenty of neat technical ideas interspersed with the storyline.

Rating:
Summary: Barnes' best so far
Review: In 2095, the One True controls humanity at least those living on the earth in a hive like collective intelligence. Mars is one of the few locales in which mankind retains free will though the environment still requires terraforming to make it more habitable. On Mars, Teri Murray informs her father Telemachus that she wants to drop out and marry her boyfriend Perry, but needs her dad's permission, as she is legally a minor. Her father opposes both ideas so Teri remains in school when she learns that her beloved Perry is already married.

Teri accompanies her dad escorting a group of youngsters on a special training trip. However due to a sunburst, communications die. Not longer afterward, many of her companions including her dad die. Teri takes charge of the survivors and begins the journey to safety only to find weary despondent gene-engineered humans and conclude that someone sentient attacked Mars with the sunburst.

THE SKY SO BIG AND BLACK is science fiction at its most exciting and thought provoking best. The story line first appears as a futuristic coming of age tale, but quickly expands into several varying layers to include the survivalist trek, the sunburst attack, and the starving Marsformed genetically engineered mutants. John Barnes writes a triumphant story that keeps readers wondering what next and how did the author successfully tie everything back into a cohesive interesting story worth re-reading to grasp all the nuances.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: exciting science fiction at its thought provoking best
Review: In 2095, the One True controls humanity at least those living on the earth in a hive like collective intelligence. Mars is one of the few locales in which mankind retains free will though the environment still requires terraforming to make it more habitable. On Mars, Teri Murray informs her father Telemachus that she wants to drop out and marry her boyfriend Perry, but needs her dad's permission, as she is legally a minor. Her father opposes both ideas so Teri remains in school when she learns that her beloved Perry is already married.

Teri accompanies her dad escorting a group of youngsters on a special training trip. However due to a sunburst, communications die. Not longer afterward, many of her companions including her dad die. Teri takes charge of the survivors and begins the journey to safety only to find weary despondent gene-engineered humans and conclude that someone sentient attacked Mars with the sunburst.

THE SKY SO BIG AND BLACK is science fiction at its most exciting and thought provoking best. The story line first appears as a futuristic coming of age tale, but quickly expands into several varying layers to include the survivalist trek, the sunburst attack, and the starving Marsformed genetically engineered mutants. John Barnes writes a triumphant story that keeps readers wondering what next and how did the author successfully tie everything back into a cohesive interesting story worth re-reading to grasp all the nuances.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: First rate novel of terraforming Mars and disaster
Review: The Sky So Big and Black is a first-rate novel, clearly a Hugo contender in my view. It's scary at times, sweet at times, it presents a fascinating social structure, and some excellent SFnal speculation about terraforming Mars. And it features one of the scariest SFnal ideas since Vernor Vinge's "Focus" (in A Deepness in the Sky).

It is very well structured, presented as a psychologist listening to a series of interviews he did with Teri-Mel Murray, a young woman on Mars who was working with her father as an "ecospector". It's clear from the start that something terrible happened, and indeed that the psychologist was forced to erase Teri-Mel's memory. It's also clear that he likes her a lot, and is really torn up by what has happened, and worried that he may have to treat her again, for some mysterious reason that takes a long time to become clear. The interviews tell of Teri and her father travelling across the lightly terraformed planet to a "Gather" of the "rounditachis", people who live more or less in the open on Mars, working to help advance the terraforming. Teri is hoping that she will be certified a "Full Adult" at the Gather, and be free to marry her boyfriend. Her father wants her to go back to school for one more year, because he's not convinced that ecospecting will remain a good living. As they travel, they plan to make one more attempt at a big "scorehole". And Teri is starting to worry about her boyfriend.

All the above is cute stuff, and interleaved with neat SFnal details about the terraforming of Mars. In the background lurk details about the future history up to this point, especially the takeover of ecologically ravaged Earth by a "meme" called "One True", or "Resuna", which more or less has turned Earth's population into a hive mind. Also we learn bits and pieces about the psychologist's feelings, which give us hints about the disaster which has clearly occurred. So it's a scary book, as we learn to like Teri more and more, while we just know that she's going to get hurt real real bad. And when the crisis comes, it's exciting, and terribly sad, and even scarier than I had first expected. The resolution is moving, real, and and open-ended.

Barnes' future is on the one hand full of hope, and of cool SFnal stuff, and on the other had it is very very scary, and much of it dominated by something purely evil, yet not sneeringly evil. I should note that this is a sequel to three earlier novels: Orbital Resonance, Kaleidoscope Century, and Candle. But it reads just fine alone.

Rating:
Summary: Barnes' best so far
Review: This book continues both the Meme Wars arc from Candle, and the off-Earth arc from Orbital Resonance. We follow young Teri Murray and her father around on Mars, as ecological prospectors. The characters are wonderful and the setting is gorgeous.

Most other Barnes books include at least one instance of utter personal brutality, and I was pleased to see that this one doesn't. They are all good books, but Mother of Storms and Kaleidoscope Century both made me want to throw up.

Rating:
Summary: Intriguing and Surprising
Review: This story is set on a future Mars. Earth is under the control of a group mind known as One True and Mars is slowly being terraformed by geoprospectors who are searching for and releasing water, CO2, methane, etc.

Our story centers around a young girl just as she becomes an adult. She and her father are geoprospectors and are very good at it. The story is told as memories she relates to a police shrink. This gives the reader plenty of foreshadowing for some of the later events but really leaves the ending as a surprise (although the hints are there, you don't realize it until after the fact).

The story moves quickly and you can really care about the characters. While most of the science is believable (no faster-than-light travel for example), much of the setting relies heavily upon synthesis and replication that may never be possible at those power levels (but it doesn't really detract from the book).

A fine book of hard science fiction with excellent character development. If you like that sort of thing, this one won't disappoint.

Rating:
Summary: Intriguing and Surprising
Review: This story is set on a future Mars. Earth is under the control of a group mind known as One True and Mars is slowly being terraformed by geoprospectors who are searching for and releasing water, CO2, methane, etc.

Our story centers around a young girl just as she becomes an adult. She and her father are geoprospectors and are very good at it. The story is told as memories she relates to a police shrink. This gives the reader plenty of foreshadowing for some of the later events but really leaves the ending as a surprise (although the hints are there, you don't realize it until after the fact).

The story moves quickly and you can really care about the characters. While most of the science is believable (no faster-than-light travel for example), much of the setting relies heavily upon synthesis and replication that may never be possible at those power levels (but it doesn't really detract from the book).

A fine book of hard science fiction with excellent character development. If you like that sort of thing, this one won't disappoint.

Rating:
Summary: What a mistake!
Review: This was an exasperating book to read! Barnes has tried to make the story interesting by telling the story through recordings made by a patient of a psycologist of some kind. He has invented a lot of words like "skosh", "roo", "kim" etc which is not explaned and continues to annoy the reader by his lack of ability to actually tell a story through first person.

The story can be believable at times, but pew, all these personal, non-relevant reflections only carry along an annoying feeling that the writer doesn't seem to have the nerve to write proper hard sci-fi. He seems to be hiding behind diversions, lame reflections and obviousness instead of driving the story forward.

I can hardly understand how this book can appeal to anyone looking for science fiction. On the front cover Arthur C Clarke is quoted "A master of the genre". Well, the quote doesn't specify which genre or even which author it relates to...

Rating:
Summary: Compelling story-telling and world building. Excellent
Review: With earth controlled by the One True meme (an engineered computer virus that infects and controls human minds), Mars and the planets struggle to survive. Distance prevents a direct takeover, but Mars defense forces must constantly resist earth-sent attacks. Meanwhile, the continuing terraforming of Mars continues. Rounders like Teri Murray search for water, carbon dioxide, and methane hidden beneath Mars's surface in the battle to make Mars habitable without all the equipment that keeps Teri alive.

THE SKY SO BIG AND BLACK follows Teri and her father during the last days before 'Sunburst' as they discover a methane dome so large that it makes them rich, then deal with teen angst about Teri's fiance, and the complexities of a Rounder gather. The story is told largely in Teri's words as she details her recent history to a police psychologist.

Although this method of narration normally distances the reader from the story, author John Barnes makes Teri's story completely compelling. Like Heinlein at his strongest, Barnes develops a complete and logical society, language, and way of life. As Teri 'roos' her way across Mars, the reader is drawn into the story, the endangered planet, and the people who are battling to make it habitable--and to keep it free of Earth's disease.

In itself, the concept of a computer-style virus that attacks the human mind is interesting but not the center of this story. Rather, it is Barnes's powerful writing, his world/society-building, and his believable characters that make THE SKY SO BIG AND BLACK completely compelling.