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Available
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Series
Collection
Publication
Tachyon Publications
Description
"She believed in the mission with all her heart. But that was sixty million years ago. How do you stage a mutiny when you're only awake one day in a million? How do you conspire when your tiny handful of potential allies changes with each shift? How do you engage an enemy that never sleeps, that sees through your eyes and hears through your ears and relentlessly, honestly, only wants what's best for you? Sunday Ahzmundin is about to find out"--
User reviews
LibraryThing member rivkat
Sunday is an evolutionary specialist on a ship that travels through the galaxies at relativistic speeds, planting wormhole gates so that humanity—or its successors—can have access to FTL travel. Most of her time is spent in stasis, so 60 million years or so have gone by and the things that come
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out of the gates, when they do come out, don’t seem to have much in common with humans, but the mission continues regardless. Which is why some of the other humans decide to revolt. Sunday is closer with the ship’s AI than others, but she also has reservations of her own. There’s a lot of otherness in the book, from the AI to the post-human/galactic landscapes to the “humans” whose lives are lived in tiny chunks across millions of years, after they were programmed for the mission. I found it well-crafted but, as with other works of his, emotionally rather limited. Show Less
LibraryThing member auntmarge64
On a massive wormhole-building ship, a crew of 30,000 wakes up only infrequently over the epochs (an epoch being tens of millions of years), and only a few at a time. Most of the work is performed by an AI called the Chimp, but sometimes it needs human input to make decisions. The story begins
I'd say this is hard SF, but it's laid out so that it can be read on several levels depending on one's knowledge of and interest in the science. I floundered through much of the science, getting just enough to follow the gist while I enjoyed the central question (for me) of identity, both human and AI. How does a human still feel attached to Earth, and an Earth-designed mission, when so much time has passed there? Are there even still humans around except on this ship? And how can one trust that the AI is who you think it is, and limited in ways you think it is, and with the mission parameters you've been told it has? Does it evolve? Because though the humans have biologically aged only a few decades since departure, the ship has been awake and functioning the entire 65 million years. How would you know?
Highly recommended.
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about 65 million years after the ship was sent from Earth, and it centers on a woman bred to have somewhat of a friendship with the AI. But what happens when that woman starts to suspect that the Chimp is both more and less than she thinks, and that the crew is missing several thousands of crew members without explanation? Is it possible to have a revolution when you're awake only a couple of days every few millennia and when everything that happens is visible and audible to the AI? I'd say this is hard SF, but it's laid out so that it can be read on several levels depending on one's knowledge of and interest in the science. I floundered through much of the science, getting just enough to follow the gist while I enjoyed the central question (for me) of identity, both human and AI. How does a human still feel attached to Earth, and an Earth-designed mission, when so much time has passed there? Are there even still humans around except on this ship? And how can one trust that the AI is who you think it is, and limited in ways you think it is, and with the mission parameters you've been told it has? Does it evolve? Because though the humans have biologically aged only a few decades since departure, the ship has been awake and functioning the entire 65 million years. How would you know?
Highly recommended.
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LibraryThing member dukedom_enough
Long ago, Earth built and launched the interstellar spacecraft Eriophora, a sixty (or so) kilometer asteroid, threaded with tunnels and chambers, nestling a singularity at its heart. Flying at 1/5 the speed of light, it uses the singularity to create wormhole gates at the stars it visits, enabling
The ship's controlling artificial intelligence is called the Chimp, because it is rather less smart than a human. The Chimp can run most builds by itself, but sometimes needs human imagination and creativity. So Eriophora has a crew: 30,000 people in frozen sleep, save for rare, brief periods when groups of 4 to 6 are needed. So human lifespans are stretched over geological ages, lived a few days per millennium - or more.
After 66 million years, the expedition has circled the galaxy 32 times, and their initial high hopes are gone. For most of that time, nothing human has emerged from the newly built gates receding in Eriophora's wake. Usually there's nothing; sometimes, incomprehensible or hostile things. Some of the crew think it's time to end the voyage. But the Chimp is programmed to continue, counting the project above the lives of the crew. How can the humans conspire to resist an entity with monitors everywhere, and endless years to survey Eriophora's internal spaces while everyone is frozen? Watts's story is of a rebellion fought stealthily, a few days at a time, over thousands of years, as seen by crewmember Sunday Ahzmundin.
The story's text itselfembodies this stealth. Occasional characters are printed in red, not black. The reader naturally strings these together, discovering a secret message. Decoder rings, anyone? Great fun, though not central to the narrative. The Freeze-Frame Revolution is a prequel to Watt's "The Island", winner of the 2010 Hugo Award for novelette, so we know the rebellion will fail, while Sunday survives.
Peter Watts's great theme is on display here: the smallness and probable, eventual doom of merely human beings, crippled by our evolved limitations in an uncaring universe where faster, smarter, less blinkered minds exist. He's one of SF's best at connecting scientific realities to imagined worlds, which, for me, makes the grimness worthwhile. Well, actually I like the grimness for its own sake, too - science fiction noir. This short book is a good introduction to a superb, underappreciated writer.
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instantaneous travel - to the previous port of call, and eventually to the next star in line. A sort of railroad of gates is contructed, so those who follow Eriophora may journey easily, even as the spacecraft itself crawls for decades between its gate builds.The ship's controlling artificial intelligence is called the Chimp, because it is rather less smart than a human. The Chimp can run most builds by itself, but sometimes needs human imagination and creativity. So Eriophora has a crew: 30,000 people in frozen sleep, save for rare, brief periods when groups of 4 to 6 are needed. So human lifespans are stretched over geological ages, lived a few days per millennium - or more.
After 66 million years, the expedition has circled the galaxy 32 times, and their initial high hopes are gone. For most of that time, nothing human has emerged from the newly built gates receding in Eriophora's wake. Usually there's nothing; sometimes, incomprehensible or hostile things. Some of the crew think it's time to end the voyage. But the Chimp is programmed to continue, counting the project above the lives of the crew. How can the humans conspire to resist an entity with monitors everywhere, and endless years to survey Eriophora's internal spaces while everyone is frozen? Watts's story is of a rebellion fought stealthily, a few days at a time, over thousands of years, as seen by crewmember Sunday Ahzmundin.
The story's text itself
Peter Watts's great theme is on display here: the smallness and probable, eventual doom of merely human beings, crippled by our evolved limitations in an uncaring universe where faster, smarter, less blinkered minds exist. He's one of SF's best at connecting scientific realities to imagined worlds, which, for me, makes the grimness worthwhile. Well, actually I like the grimness for its own sake, too - science fiction noir. This short book is a good introduction to a superb, underappreciated writer.
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LibraryThing member ayaeckel
Lots of setup for not much delivery
LibraryThing member Dokfintong
This is a keeper.
We already know that Hugo nominated Peter Watts can write. Here he leaves is undersea stories aside and dives for far far outer space.
This novel works on so many levels. The premise is that a group of technologists take on a never-ending job to seed wormhole gates across the entire
Our hero, Sunday Ahzmundin likes all this. She gets along well with the asteroid's AI, called the Chimp, and finds the work interesting. Over time, though (and we are talking about LOTS of time), she learns that some of her colleagues hate what's been done to them and plan to overthrow Chimp and do something different, although what is not clear to Sunday or to us. Sunday isn't at all sympathetic with the conspirators till something happens that she blames on Chimp, or perhaps Chimp's original programmers, and she joins the revolution.
Some of the science gets a little fuzzy near the end but my then I was enjoying things so much I didn't care. The book held me in its grip till the end.
I received a review copy of "The Freeze-Frame Revolution" by Peter Watts (Tachyon) through NetGalley.com.
We already know that Hugo nominated Peter Watts can write. Here he leaves is undersea stories aside and dives for far far outer space.
This novel works on so many levels. The premise is that a group of technologists take on a never-ending job to seed wormhole gates across the entire
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galaxy. They ride a hollowed out asteroid that travels at sub-light speed and so the job takes millions or perhaps billions of years. The technologists sleep through all this, waking only when they are needed. Our hero, Sunday Ahzmundin likes all this. She gets along well with the asteroid's AI, called the Chimp, and finds the work interesting. Over time, though (and we are talking about LOTS of time), she learns that some of her colleagues hate what's been done to them and plan to overthrow Chimp and do something different, although what is not clear to Sunday or to us. Sunday isn't at all sympathetic with the conspirators till something happens that she blames on Chimp, or perhaps Chimp's original programmers, and she joins the revolution.
Some of the science gets a little fuzzy near the end but my then I was enjoying things so much I didn't care. The book held me in its grip till the end.
I received a review copy of "The Freeze-Frame Revolution" by Peter Watts (Tachyon) through NetGalley.com.
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LibraryThing member mschlack
The most interesting thing about this book is its notion that neither humans nor an AI would be reliable stewards of a very long intergalactic voyage. The notion of the AI needing to wake up humans to handle some of the trickier judgments is both amusing and interesting. There's also a sneaky dig
I haven't read the companion works. The book stands on its own, but it is short. There's not that much character development. But I found it interesting and thought provoking, as well as entertaining.
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at the notion of a galactic civilization -- over the distances and time required, it's more likely that people will become disconnected and isolated. I haven't read the companion works. The book stands on its own, but it is short. There's not that much character development. But I found it interesting and thought provoking, as well as entertaining.
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LibraryThing member grandpahobo
This is one of those books that leave me feeling like there is a significant message about people or society that I missed. There is a lot of technical mumbo jumbo that you have to slog through, but the underlying story is worth it. Perhaps I'll re-read it someday to see if I can figure out what it
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all means. Show Less
LibraryThing member Faith_Murri
I received this eARC from Tachyon Publications on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of this book in any way.
It wasn't a cage if it kept moving. It wasn't a prison if we could go anywhere.
The Writing and Worldbuilding
The writing style was very unique, so
I feel like some aspects of this would have been better told as a film, namely characters. There were so many names being thrown around, and especially after science rants, I found myself having cleared all my name caches to make room for theoretical physics and quantum mechanics or whatever, and not knowing who the heck anyone was other than Sunday (obviously), Chimp, and Lian. If this was a film, then visuals would have played a huge role in helping me know who's who. This book gave basically zero physical descriptions, so all I had to go by was names.
I loved the themes and the grey morality of Chimp, though it was nothing I haven't seen before.
"I want to see how it turns out."
"It."
"Everything. The universe. This--reality. This hologram, this model, whatever we're in. It had a start, it's got an endpoint, and the closer we get to it the clearer it becomes. If we just hang in there long enough we'll at least get to see the outlines."
"You want to know the purpose of existence?"
"I want to know the destination of existence. Anything less is selling out."
The Characters
Sunday: She was sassy and interesting, but I got the sense that nothing really mattered from her. If she had died and another character took her place, I really wouldn't have cared tbh.
Chimp: I loved Chimp! He was honestly such an intriguing AI because he isn't a genius, and he has these almost human qualities to him that made him really interesting to read.
Lian: I liked her at first, but as it went on, she really started to piss me off.
All the people I constantly forgot existed: Well, they were background for the most part and when they weren't supposed to be background, I just got confused.
Conclusion
It was a very interesting read, and overall, I enjoyed it, but I'm unlikely to read anything else in this series (it's part of a series btw lol though you don't necessarily have to read it in order) or maybe even by this author. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone only used to reading YA, but people who already understand and enjoy hard sci-fi might really enjoy this.
It wasn't a cage if it kept moving. It wasn't a prison if we could go anywhere.
The Writing and Worldbuilding
The writing style was very unique, so
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interwoven with Sunday's own voice that it felt like someone speaking to you a lot of the time (besides the science rants that really put the "science" in "science fiction"). Because of the science-y parts, I found the book actually quite difficult to get through, though the story did intrigue me. The climax was really great, especially because of all the build-up toward it. The ending, however, was very unresolved and just a little too open-ended for me. In other words, there was no clear conclusion and I was just left confused.I feel like some aspects of this would have been better told as a film, namely characters. There were so many names being thrown around, and especially after science rants, I found myself having cleared all my name caches to make room for theoretical physics and quantum mechanics or whatever, and not knowing who the heck anyone was other than Sunday (obviously), Chimp, and Lian. If this was a film, then visuals would have played a huge role in helping me know who's who. This book gave basically zero physical descriptions, so all I had to go by was names.
I loved the themes and the grey morality of Chimp, though it was nothing I haven't seen before.
"I want to see how it turns out."
"It."
"Everything. The universe. This--reality. This hologram, this model, whatever we're in. It had a start, it's got an endpoint, and the closer we get to it the clearer it becomes. If we just hang in there long enough we'll at least get to see the outlines."
"You want to know the purpose of existence?"
"I want to know the destination of existence. Anything less is selling out."
The Characters
Sunday: She was sassy and interesting, but I got the sense that nothing really mattered from her. If she had died and another character took her place, I really wouldn't have cared tbh.
Chimp: I loved Chimp! He was honestly such an intriguing AI because he isn't a genius, and he has these almost human qualities to him that made him really interesting to read.
Lian: I liked her at first, but as it went on, she really started to piss me off.
All the people I constantly forgot existed: Well, they were background for the most part and when they weren't supposed to be background, I just got confused.
Conclusion
It was a very interesting read, and overall, I enjoyed it, but I'm unlikely to read anything else in this series (it's part of a series btw lol though you don't necessarily have to read it in order) or maybe even by this author. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone only used to reading YA, but people who already understand and enjoy hard sci-fi might really enjoy this.
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LibraryThing member AnnieMod
An underfed novel or an overgrown novella - call this whatever you want. The author calls it a novella but he admits that it is ~1K words longer than what a novella should be so I will call it a novel. Not that really matters - except for pure statistical purposes.
On a ship somewhere among the
The humans on board would not have been needed - except that human minds can take decisions easier in some cases than computers can. So the people sleep frozen and come up to help when needed - on a schedule that only the ship knows. Except that some of the people start wondering if the ship really have their best interests in mind. Sunday Ahzmundin is not one of them - initially anyway - if anything, Sunday is the computer's pet. Until it becomes clear that the ship considers people to be expendable. But how can you organize anything when you may never see the same people twice, you get awaken once every thousand years (or even less) and your enemy can see everything? Well... human minds are not only good for decisions after all as it turns out - a revolution can happen even under these conditions... Or can it? Who underestimates whom becomes the most important question long before the end shows the (almost) obvious answer.
The end itself is almost abrupt and in some ways may be considered open but it actually closes the story we started with - if not the overall story. In a way, it works better than a definite end.
This novel is technically part of a series but it can be read as a standalone - I had not read the stories that make up the rest of the cycle (yet).
On a ship somewhere among the
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stars, people are being awaken at random intervals to help the AI of the ship with tasks it cannot perform. The ship's job is to open wormhole gates and it had been doing it for 60 million years. Noone knows if humanity still exists - either on Earth or anywhere in the Universe but the ship has a goal so it continues on its path - dealing with whatever comes out from the gates in the rare cases when something does and just keep up with its plan. The humans on board would not have been needed - except that human minds can take decisions easier in some cases than computers can. So the people sleep frozen and come up to help when needed - on a schedule that only the ship knows. Except that some of the people start wondering if the ship really have their best interests in mind. Sunday Ahzmundin is not one of them - initially anyway - if anything, Sunday is the computer's pet. Until it becomes clear that the ship considers people to be expendable. But how can you organize anything when you may never see the same people twice, you get awaken once every thousand years (or even less) and your enemy can see everything? Well... human minds are not only good for decisions after all as it turns out - a revolution can happen even under these conditions... Or can it? Who underestimates whom becomes the most important question long before the end shows the (almost) obvious answer.
The end itself is almost abrupt and in some ways may be considered open but it actually closes the story we started with - if not the overall story. In a way, it works better than a definite end.
This novel is technically part of a series but it can be read as a standalone - I had not read the stories that make up the rest of the cycle (yet).
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LibraryThing member Tikimoof
I felt like there wasn't enough to tie this down. I may have been spoiled by Blindsight, but the concept wasn't quite cool enough for me to feel invested in the characters' mutiny.
I may have been having trouble with scale - I don't know if the ship is capable of lasting until the death of the
I may have been having trouble with scale - I don't know if the ship is capable of lasting until the death of the
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universe (in terms of humans available to be revived), but I just couldn't really care one way or another about the Chimp winning versus the humans. I feel like you have to be at least a little invested in a character's drive for a story like this, and it never happened. Show Less
LibraryThing member reading_fox
Clever. True hard -SF. Humanity needs to explore the galaxy, travel times are unfeasible, but wormhole technology has been mastered. So you create a ship and send it out to make gates enabling everybody else to follow. It might take a while (eons) but the goal is worthwhile. It could almost be
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automated, but nobody quite knows what will be encountered in the void and a generation ship wouldn't last that long. The solution - redundancy in every detail. You end up with a planetoid a few kilometres in diameter, and 30000 humans born and dedicated to the mission. They spend most of eternity in cryogenic slumber, but get awoken for short shifts, days seldom weeks to solve problems. Mix and match the crew to prevent mission creep. Overseen by an AI - not too clever, just enough to keep the mission on focus. Show Less
LibraryThing member JudyGibson
I quite enjoyed this one. I'm comfortable with a bit of ambiguity, or at least not understanding everything that's going on. Some people seem to have a problem with this.
LibraryThing member AmyMacEvilly
Very good, but I still don't quite get the ending. I'm not sure what else there was other than Chimp.
LibraryThing member bragan
A spaceship built out of an asteroid with a singularity at its heart circumnavigates the galaxy over and over, laying down a series of wormhole gates as it goes. But circumnavigating the galaxy the non-wormhole way takes a very, very, very long time. An unimaginably long time. It's been going now
It's apparently been a while since I've read this kind of big-idea, cosmic-scale, sense-of-wonder-invoking SF, and even longer since I've read one that didn't kind of ruin it by being really poorly written. But, boy, was it fun to come back to it with this one. The vast scope of it really fires up the imagination, and the very limited perspective we got on it all, leaving so many fascinating unanswered questions, only stokes the imagination even more. It's rather niftily done.
Somewhat less niftily done is the plot, involving the titular revolution against the ship's AI, which is at best very lightly sketched out. I do have to wonder if a longer version -- this one is right on the cusp between novella and novel -- might have been more fully satisfying. But then, a longer, more detailed focus on the logistics of it all might have just bogged the whole thing down and diluted the effect of the nifty stuff. As it is, the plot development did just exactly as much as it needed to for it all to work, and, you know, I will absolutely take that over some hypothetical version that goes on long enough for me to stop going "Oooooh, neat" and start getting bored.
The one thing that I do wish had been done differently involves a particular gimmick that I won't spoil, although I think becomes pretty obvious pretty quickly. It is sort of thematically appropriate, and I'm sure the author thought he was being very clever, but I just found it constantly distracting and immersion-breaking, which was a real disservice to a story that deserved better.
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for over sixty million years, meaning that those on board, who spend most of the journey in suspended animation, have probably long outlived their entire species. Certainly, nothing that looks human has ever come out of the gates behind them. How long is it going to keep going? Well, that's a very good question. One that some of the crew are starting to ask. One that the ship's limited AI hasn't really provided a satisfying answer to.It's apparently been a while since I've read this kind of big-idea, cosmic-scale, sense-of-wonder-invoking SF, and even longer since I've read one that didn't kind of ruin it by being really poorly written. But, boy, was it fun to come back to it with this one. The vast scope of it really fires up the imagination, and the very limited perspective we got on it all, leaving so many fascinating unanswered questions, only stokes the imagination even more. It's rather niftily done.
Somewhat less niftily done is the plot, involving the titular revolution against the ship's AI, which is at best very lightly sketched out. I do have to wonder if a longer version -- this one is right on the cusp between novella and novel -- might have been more fully satisfying. But then, a longer, more detailed focus on the logistics of it all might have just bogged the whole thing down and diluted the effect of the nifty stuff. As it is, the plot development did just exactly as much as it needed to for it all to work, and, you know, I will absolutely take that over some hypothetical version that goes on long enough for me to stop going "Oooooh, neat" and start getting bored.
The one thing that I do wish had been done differently involves a particular gimmick that I won't spoil, although I think becomes pretty obvious pretty quickly. It is sort of thematically appropriate, and I'm sure the author thought he was being very clever, but I just found it constantly distracting and immersion-breaking, which was a real disservice to a story that deserved better.
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Awards
Locus Award (Finalist — Novella — 2019)
John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (Finalist — 2019)
Original publication date
2018-06-12
Local notes
Sunflower Cycle, 2
DDC/MDS
| Fic SF Watts |