Call number
Series
Genres
Publication
New York : Tor Books, 2015.
Pages
303
Description
"From Nebula and Hugo Award-nominated Carolyn Ives Gilman comes Dark Orbit, a compelling novel featuring alien contact, mystery, and murder. Reports of a strange, new habitable planet have reached the Twenty Planets of human civilization. When a team of scientists is assembled to investigate this world, exoethnologist Sara Callicot is recruited to keep an eye on an unstable crewmate. Thora was once a member of the interplanetary elite, but since her prophetic delusions helped mobilize a revolt on Orem, she's been banished to the farthest reaches of space, because of the risk that her very presence could revive unrest.Upon arrival, the team finds an extraordinary crystalline planet, laden with dark matter. Then a crew member is murdered and Thora mysteriously disappears. Thought to be uninhabited, the planet is in fact home to a blind, sentient species whose members navigate their world with a bizarre vocabulary and extrasensory perceptions.Lost in the deep crevasses of the planet among these people, Thora must battle her demons and learn to comprehend the native inhabitants in order to find her crewmates and warn them of an impending danger. But her most difficult task may lie in persuading the crew that some powers lie beyond the boundaries of science. "--… (more)
Awards
Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year (Science Fiction and Fantasy — 2015)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2015-07-14
Physical description
303 p.; 9.5 inches
ISBN
9780765336293
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User reviews
LibraryThing member FKarr
Better than Lightless; author has given a lot of thought to the world of total darkness
LibraryThing member jdifelice
Science fiction is quickly becoming a favourite genre of mine. I liked it before, but I've been reading some really great stories lately that have just captured my attention and made me think of things in a new way.
Dark Orbit is definitely one of them. It explores science, and how we perceive
I loved the characters of Sara and Thora, their distinct voices really gave insight and depth to their situation from different perspectives and I really liked them. The world they live in is so interesting, with it's many different cultures, religions, and ways to scientifically think about things. I loved how Gilman wove the story together through all of these elements. Her writing was beautiful.
I definitely want to pick up more by this author.
I recommend this to anyone who likes sci-fi and thinking outside the box.
4.5/5 stars!
Dark Orbit is definitely one of them. It explores science, and how we perceive
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things in such a new, interesting way. The themes in this novel just made me think. Humanity, how one culture can affect another, how exploring new phenomenon can be skewed by our current ways of thinking, and how our senses can blind us to other things we would think are insignificant because of what our brain naturally filters out. I loved the characters of Sara and Thora, their distinct voices really gave insight and depth to their situation from different perspectives and I really liked them. The world they live in is so interesting, with it's many different cultures, religions, and ways to scientifically think about things. I loved how Gilman wove the story together through all of these elements. Her writing was beautiful.
I definitely want to pick up more by this author.
I recommend this to anyone who likes sci-fi and thinking outside the box.
4.5/5 stars!
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LibraryThing member macha
on space and time, and a great leap for mankind. i like this writer a lot, but this one was difficult to score. high marks for the strength and originality of the ideas, coming from a very LeGuinian place. some problems with the naive style and the shallow portrayal of the characters though, and
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this made me impatient. Show Less
LibraryThing member pwaites
Dark Orbit is an entirely readable science fiction novel that for some reason just never really connected. I feel like the length of the book relative to the story is off – it might have worked better if either if the story line had been condensed or the book expanded. As is, it feels strangely
Sara is an anthropologist who lives out of sync with the rest of the universe, loosing large spaces of time as she travels at light speed from planet to planet. When she gets back from a job twenty light years away, she finds out that a team is being assembled for a mission to a newly discovered planet. Also on the expedition is Thora, a member of the elite who’s being sent far away from a scandal concerning her delusions triggering a religious movement on the planet Orem. The planet they find is surrounded and shaped by dark matter, and against all scientific explanation, inhabited.
If the “against all scientific explanation” gives you a clue, Dark Orbit is one of those books that rely heavily on SF mysticism. Sometimes this works for me (I was fine with both Battlestar Galactica and Planetfall), but I wasn’t so fond of it in Dark Orbit, possibly because it’s centered around philosophy. There were some interesting ideas about how our society is shaped by how perceive the world through our senses, but I often felt like passages were just spewing philosophy at me instead of exploring it through the narrative. Thora in particular could feel like a vehicle for philosophy, although her sections were a bit better once she was lost on the planet and had other things to think about.
It’s been about a week since I’ve read Dark Orbit, and I’m struggling to recall anything in the way of character development or personality when it comes to Sara. She dislikes authority. But did we see that through her actions, or were we just told it over and over again? Thora is a clearer character, mainly because she’s got an important backstory and the aforementioned philosophy. A few of the secondary characters were distinct – Moth – for instance, but there were others that I struggled to keep track of.
Undeniably, my favorite thing about Dark Orbit was the little we saw of the planet itself. There’s some gloriously strange and alien landscapes, like a grove of chiming, reflected light. It’s too bad we got to see so little of it.
The prose style of Dark Orbit also made it easy to read, and I never had any significant issues with pacing. Some of Thora’s early sections did drag (basically they were distant and unemotional philosophical musings), but they did get better later on. I don’t know if I ever fully engaged with Dark Orbit, but it was all right. Someone with a greater interest in philosophy might get more from it.
Originally posted on The Illustrated Page.
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short for the story it’s telling.Sara is an anthropologist who lives out of sync with the rest of the universe, loosing large spaces of time as she travels at light speed from planet to planet. When she gets back from a job twenty light years away, she finds out that a team is being assembled for a mission to a newly discovered planet. Also on the expedition is Thora, a member of the elite who’s being sent far away from a scandal concerning her delusions triggering a religious movement on the planet Orem. The planet they find is surrounded and shaped by dark matter, and against all scientific explanation, inhabited.
If the “against all scientific explanation” gives you a clue, Dark Orbit is one of those books that rely heavily on SF mysticism. Sometimes this works for me (I was fine with both Battlestar Galactica and Planetfall), but I wasn’t so fond of it in Dark Orbit, possibly because it’s centered around philosophy. There were some interesting ideas about how our society is shaped by how perceive the world through our senses, but I often felt like passages were just spewing philosophy at me instead of exploring it through the narrative. Thora in particular could feel like a vehicle for philosophy, although her sections were a bit better once she was lost on the planet and had other things to think about.
It’s been about a week since I’ve read Dark Orbit, and I’m struggling to recall anything in the way of character development or personality when it comes to Sara. She dislikes authority. But did we see that through her actions, or were we just told it over and over again? Thora is a clearer character, mainly because she’s got an important backstory and the aforementioned philosophy. A few of the secondary characters were distinct – Moth – for instance, but there were others that I struggled to keep track of.
Undeniably, my favorite thing about Dark Orbit was the little we saw of the planet itself. There’s some gloriously strange and alien landscapes, like a grove of chiming, reflected light. It’s too bad we got to see so little of it.
The prose style of Dark Orbit also made it easy to read, and I never had any significant issues with pacing. Some of Thora’s early sections did drag (basically they were distant and unemotional philosophical musings), but they did get better later on. I don’t know if I ever fully engaged with Dark Orbit, but it was all right. Someone with a greater interest in philosophy might get more from it.
Originally posted on The Illustrated Page.
Show Less
LibraryThing member tldegray
I expected this book to be a story about scientific space exploration, maybe about alien contact. What I got was an enthralling book about time and travel and possibly time travel. This book always had me pausing to think about the idea it was currently presenting. I fell into it and didn't climb
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out until I was finished. Show Less
LibraryThing member thegreatape
Wound up putting this down about 40% of the way through. Can't really even put my finger on anything particularly *wrong* about the book, just never got reeled in by the plot, ideas or any of the characters.
LibraryThing member fpagan
Set on a dimensionally unstable exoplanet in the very far future, this story features some technologies that will probably always be impossible and neglects to explain how the exoplanet can harbor native humans despite being newly discovered. But I found my disbelief to be willingly suspended
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thanks to the highly original and enjoyable plot and its deep exploration of the true (?) power of perception and consciousness. Show Less