≡ Download Gratis Blue Remembered Earth Poseidons Children Book 1 Alastair Reynolds 9780575088276 Books

Blue Remembered Earth Poseidons Children Book 1 Alastair Reynolds 9780575088276 Books

Download As PDF : Blue Remembered Earth Poseidons Children Book 1 Alastair Reynolds 9780575088276 Books

Blue Remembered Earth Poseidons Children Book 1 Alastair Reynolds 9780575088276 Books

BLUE REMEMBERED EARTH is the first book of the Poseidon's Children Trilogy by Alastair Reynolds. Unlike most of his other work, notably the Revelation Space books, which are dark and gritty, BLUE REMEMBERED EARTH is optimistic. It takes place in the 22nd century. The view of mankind's place in the solar system is certainly looking up. There is no more war, crime, or poverty. People lead long and, it seems, prosperous lives. There is a price to be paid, of course. Humanity is under constant surveillance, and safeguards are installed into every human to prevent violence, especially violence against another person (as we see in one point in the novel). Those who don't want to live under constant surveillance can move to a place called the "Descrutinized Zone" on the moon.

The politics and economy look a lot different than they do in our time. The United States does not seem to be one of the dominant technological powers; the China and Africa lead the way in that category, and the Akinya family of Africa is the focus of BLUE REMEMBERED Earth. The Akinyas can probably at best be described as a dysfunctional family. Geoffrey, our main protagonist, has basically turned his back on the family business, much to the consternation of his cousins Hector and Lucas. His sister Sunday is an artist living in the Descrutinized Zone on the moon. Geoffrey and cousins don't get a long; Sunday almost never comes home. And to top it all off, the family matriarch, Eunice, has passed away. It is her passing that is the kickoff point of the novel.

Eunice lived alone in lunar space on the Winter Palace, and isolated herself from the family for a very long time. Almost nothing is known about her. A safe deposit box belonging to Eunice has turned up in a bank on the moon. Hector and Lucas bribe Geoffrey with a large sum of money for his elephant research - he has implanted a networking type of device into an elephant in order to learn more about the inner workings of its mind - to get him to go to the moon and see what's in the safe deposit box. As much as Geoffrey dislikes his cousins, he needs the money for his research, so accepts the deal. His trip to the moon has the side benefit of allowing him to visit Sunday while he is there. What he finds, in and of itself,is meaningless. But it turns out to be the first of many clues planted by Eunice to get the family to do...what, exactly?

As you might imagine, Sunday gets involved - after all, she isn't going to let Geoffrey come to visit without finding out why he's really there. And then there's the Panspermian Initiative, a group that is dedicated to the colonization of space and which has close ties to Eunice. The Panspermians also have an interest in what Geoffrey found in the safe deposit box. As I said, what he found was a clue, which led him to another clue, which led him to another clue, starting at the moon and working outward towards Neptunian space. What Geoffrey, Sunday, and the rest find out there is just the beginning.

BLUE REMEMBERED EARTH is pretty good stuff. If you found the Revelation Space novels too dark and dense for you, this book may be the thing for you. It's a fairly straightforward story, and while the plot may be one that we've seen time and time again in science fiction and fantasy, Reynolds does a pretty good job of sprucing it up so the reader is truly interested in what comes next.

What does come next? ON THE STEEL BREEZE, and I'm looking forward to getting to read it. Really, the story of Poseidon's Children has just begun, and it's worth following it forward.


Tags : Blue Remembered Earth (Poseidons Children, Book 1) [Alastair Reynolds] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <STRONG>BLUE REMEMBERED EARTH is the first volume in a monumental trilogy tracing the Akinya family across more than ten thousand years of future history ... out beyond the solar system,Alastair Reynolds,Blue Remembered Earth (Poseidons Children, Book 1),Gollancz,0575088273,9780441020713

Blue Remembered Earth Poseidons Children Book 1 Alastair Reynolds 9780575088276 Books Reviews

I am an avid fan of Reynolds’ books and try to keep up on reading everything he publishes. Ever since the Revelation Space trilogy he has been one of my favorite authors to follow. This particular book, Blue Remembered Earth, was not as riveting as his earlier works. Certainly described a world completely different from Revelation Space, but the story was slow to materialize. Once the story started to unfold it was not as engaging or thrilling as his writing certainly can be which was a disappointment. However, it is fascinating to have an earlier period in earth’s history unfold as well as inferior technology. I would still be interested to read the second book to see where things proceed. I believe the Revelation Space Universe excels and this is where Reynolds should invest his time! Write books in this universe please.
This was recommended highly to me. I finished reading it just last week and had to sit here now trying to remember what this book was about in order to write this review. I love sci-fi, especially about people not trained specifically for space who go into space and deal with it--I can identify. I kind of feel like "ok, this book was about siblings born in Africa of a far and distant time in the future and things have changed so there are significant "enhancements" available. One studies elephants and wants to be able to see life through the eyes and mind of an elephant but then gets waylaid by family duties and ends up abandoning his elephants for "something else" that isn't specifically indicated what but I am assuming has to do with going back out into space" while the other is just sort of non-specifically back at her home and I assume, from reading the reviews of the next two books in the series, must procreate. Nothing in this whole story from cover to cover motivates me to go read the next book in the series, and it usually doesn't take much but writers today, and not just sci-fi or fiction or novelists, no longer write using the basic ideas (making the reader come to care about the characters and/or the plot and/or SOMETHING so we'll almost desperately want to read the next page and the next page, ad infinitum and even mourn when the series ends. Oh well, will want to talk to my recommending friend to find out what she saw that I didn't, maybe need to reconsider my opinion of her reading habits.
An elephant researcher as a main character?! How can this not be enjoyable?! Wonderfully written, with plausible imaginings of not too future Earth, and colonies on the Moon, and Mars! This is no cyberpunk, it invites thoughtful reading, the attention is in the details, the story is developing slowly, there is a lot of care for the technology and science to be conceivable in the next couple of hundred years. An Earth where ecological disaster has shifted the habitable areas to Africa and underwater, where crime and terrorism are controlled by the Mechanism, which means permanent and omnipresent surveillance, even benevolent...There are a lot of important issues that are brought up, food for thought, things that are already starting to confront us.
I do love Mr. Reynolds' voice as a writer, the undertones of melancholy, like someone that still spends hours looking into the night sky! And then how can you not appreciate his subtle humor when you get sentences like this "The zookeepers could be overwhelming until you built up sufficient exposure tolerance. Sunday had passed that point years ago the wilder excesses of their starry-eyed idealism now ghosted through her like a flux of neutrinos. "
BLUE REMEMBERED EARTH is the first book of the Poseidon's Children Trilogy by Alastair Reynolds. Unlike most of his other work, notably the Revelation Space books, which are dark and gritty, BLUE REMEMBERED EARTH is optimistic. It takes place in the 22nd century. The view of mankind's place in the solar system is certainly looking up. There is no more war, crime, or poverty. People lead long and, it seems, prosperous lives. There is a price to be paid, of course. Humanity is under constant surveillance, and safeguards are installed into every human to prevent violence, especially violence against another person (as we see in one point in the novel). Those who don't want to live under constant surveillance can move to a place called the "Descrutinized Zone" on the moon.

The politics and economy look a lot different than they do in our time. The United States does not seem to be one of the dominant technological powers; the China and Africa lead the way in that category, and the Akinya family of Africa is the focus of BLUE REMEMBERED Earth. The Akinyas can probably at best be described as a dysfunctional family. Geoffrey, our main protagonist, has basically turned his back on the family business, much to the consternation of his cousins Hector and Lucas. His sister Sunday is an artist living in the Descrutinized Zone on the moon. Geoffrey and cousins don't get a long; Sunday almost never comes home. And to top it all off, the family matriarch, Eunice, has passed away. It is her passing that is the kickoff point of the novel.

Eunice lived alone in lunar space on the Winter Palace, and isolated herself from the family for a very long time. Almost nothing is known about her. A safe deposit box belonging to Eunice has turned up in a bank on the moon. Hector and Lucas bribe Geoffrey with a large sum of money for his elephant research - he has implanted a networking type of device into an elephant in order to learn more about the inner workings of its mind - to get him to go to the moon and see what's in the safe deposit box. As much as Geoffrey dislikes his cousins, he needs the money for his research, so accepts the deal. His trip to the moon has the side benefit of allowing him to visit Sunday while he is there. What he finds, in and of itself,is meaningless. But it turns out to be the first of many clues planted by Eunice to get the family to do...what, exactly?

As you might imagine, Sunday gets involved - after all, she isn't going to let Geoffrey come to visit without finding out why he's really there. And then there's the Panspermian Initiative, a group that is dedicated to the colonization of space and which has close ties to Eunice. The Panspermians also have an interest in what Geoffrey found in the safe deposit box. As I said, what he found was a clue, which led him to another clue, which led him to another clue, starting at the moon and working outward towards Neptunian space. What Geoffrey, Sunday, and the rest find out there is just the beginning.

BLUE REMEMBERED EARTH is pretty good stuff. If you found the Revelation Space novels too dark and dense for you, this book may be the thing for you. It's a fairly straightforward story, and while the plot may be one that we've seen time and time again in science fiction and fantasy, Reynolds does a pretty good job of sprucing it up so the reader is truly interested in what comes next.

What does come next? ON THE STEEL BREEZE, and I'm looking forward to getting to read it. Really, the story of Poseidon's Children has just begun, and it's worth following it forward.