--- product_id: 27042480 title: "Aurora Mass Market Paperback – April 26, 2016" brand: "kim stanley robinson" price: "฿1488" currency: THB in_stock: true reviews_count: 7 url: https://www.desertcart.co.th/products/27042480-aurora-mass-market-paperback-april-26-2016 store_origin: TH region: Thailand --- # Aurora Mass Market Paperback – April 26, 2016 **Brand:** kim stanley robinson **Price:** ฿1488 **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** Aurora Mass Market Paperback – April 26, 2016 by kim stanley robinson - **How much does it cost?** ฿1488 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.co.th](https://www.desertcart.co.th/products/27042480-aurora-mass-market-paperback-april-26-2016) ## Best For - kim stanley robinson enthusiasts ## Why This Product - Trusted kim stanley robinson brand quality - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description Full description not available ## Images ![Aurora Mass Market Paperback – April 26, 2016 - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41ji898bY9L.jpg) ![Aurora Mass Market Paperback – April 26, 2016 - Image 2](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51dAZDK48ML.jpg) ![Aurora Mass Market Paperback – April 26, 2016 - Image 3](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41w7cfhdklL.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Thus far and no further? *by G***E on Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 4, 2015* Ever since reading the Martian Trilogy many years ago, I have been a fan of Kim Stanley Robinson. His cosmos is understandable and is populated with real people, with problems we can all recognise. I believe he also has an agenda — to knock down the fantasies of faster-than-light travel that have been at the basis of science fiction writing (Asimov) and entertainment (Star Trek) almost since the genre was invented.Early in his career Robinson decided that his SF writing would be constrained by the laws of physics (as admirably explained by the great Stephen Hawking is a recent television series). Thus Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars deal exclusively with Earth’s near neighbour and the relationship between the two. In 2312 he moves out a little further — to the asteroid belt, the moons of the gas giants, even Mercury — a busy little Solar System.In his latest novel, Aurora, he takes the leap to the stars, but once again is careful to abide by the dictates of nature. His giant starship travels for hundreds of the years and the thousands on board are born, live and die on the way to the destination — Aurora, the moon of a planet on a distant sun that appears hospitable to life.Robinson uses some interesting devices to develop his story. The somewhat reluctant narrator is the ship’s computer, simply referred to as the ‘Ship’, which is bullied into constructing a narrative of the voyage by Devi, the brilliant engineer and scientist, who dies just as Aurora is reached.The mantle of human heroine, for want of better words, falls onto Devi’s daughter, Freya, and as the novel progresses, the thrusts of Robinson’s message becomes clear. Freya, who of course had no choice in her role as a space explorer, has underlying doubts about the entire mission, which come more to the surface as difficulties begin to multiply.She becomes the aggressive leader of a faction that wants to abort the project and turn the ship back towards Earth, which she says is the only place in the universe where mankind truly belongs. Not wishing to say any more about how the novels develops, it seems that Robinson is stating, as Freya comes to believe, that the limit of our exploration and colonisation will be the planets in our immediate vicinity and anything further will be so fraught with danger as to be pointless.Is he right? Watch this space in 500 years or so. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ but it's like none I've read before *by J***Z on Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 15, 2016* Mankind has a fascination with travelling to the stars and settling other planets. The desire to do this is a natural extension of historical explorers and settlers: the "discovery" and exploration of America, the settling of the old west, the manned expeditions to the moon and the unmanned exploration of Mars and the outer solar system. But we seem to have reached out limit. The laws of physics tell us we can't travel faster than light, so exploration of other solar systems is out of reach.Of course, science fiction writers have found ways of travelling to other stars and distant galaxies for decades now. Most of those methods are either impossible (faster than light travel) or beyond our knowledge (wormholes, for example). One way that writers have gotten humanity to the stars is via the generational starship; put a bunch of travelers on a starship designed to last a very long time, let them have families and live their lives as normally as they can until they get to their destination, then settle the planet and voila, humanity has expanded into the galaxy. There are any number of novels that have variations on this story, but in the end, humanity gets there and survives.Kim Stanley Robinson's latest novel AURORA is a generational starship novel, but it's different from any other I've read. AURORA starts out with the ship just a few years away from its destination, Tau Ceti. The ship is showing signs of wear, and it will have some trouble making it there according to the ship's chief engineer Devi. As planetfall gets near, we follow the life of Devi's daughter Freya as she grows up and discovers what it means to live on a generational starship. We learn, through Devi's eyes, as well as the eyes of Ship, the story's narrator, that failures are occurring all over the ship, happening faster than they can be repaired. And they are not just mechanical problems; there are biological, sociological, and environmental issues. Eventually the ship reaches the Tau Ceti system, and a moon is selected for settlement. Not long after, things go wrong - very wrong. How the travelers deal with the problems that arose as a result of landing on that particular moon is really the meat of the bookAURORA certainly is a generational starship story, but it's like none I've read before. Robinson is sending a message with this book, and it's not a pleasant one, especially for a race of people that want to leave the womb and go to the stars. The message is that it's very hard to do, probably impossible. The traditional generational starship story usually is one that has a positive ending - humanity travels great distances, gets where it wants to go, lands on a planet, and settles the planet. Then of course you have the endless sequels that tells what happens to those settlers. But hold that thought for a moment.Robinson has made it very clear in interviews, articles, and other books he's written that infodumps are essential to a science fiction story, even at the expense of characterization which has become so important, especially in modern day science fiction. The first half or so of the book develops Freya's character so that we understand her actions later on. The second half of the book is almost devoid of the same kinds of characterization. Character interactions, when there are any, are used to allow Robinson to go into high infodump mode. And the message of all that infodumping is that travel to the stars is extremely difficult, if not impossible. Robinson is not afraid to tell us, in something excruciating detail, how the universe works and how it really is working against you.Robinson is telling us that no matter how much planning is done for a long range interstellar mission, it's not all going to go the way the plan says it's going to go. There will be mechanical failures: Things will break, unexpectedly wear out, or just not work the way they are expected to. Some bacteria will creep in somehow, somewhere, and kill the crops and animals that the settlers are depending on for food. People will become unhappy with their situation. Those volunteers that left the solar system six generations prior to the start of the story were okay with being thrown into the unknown. Those that were born into it on the trip didn't ask for their situation - it was thrust upon them. They don't like mandated population control, or the biome in which they live. When pressed for a decision after the incident on the moon they landed on arose, there was dissension and disagreement as to how to handle it, and violence resulted - just like back on Earth. It's not clear that makeshift solutions to unforeseen problems will work as there is no precedent.There is more, much more, but I could be venturing into spoiler territory if I go too much further. It seems that what Robinson is telling us is that maybe, just maybe, we ought to take care of the planet we have, because it's going to be difficult to leave and go elsewhere. The unknown may be exhilarating and exciting, but it can also be terrifying (there, I've managed to say something about the latter part of the book without actually spoiling anything). We don't know it all, we can't know it all, and we can't plan for it all.With regard to sequels, I think Robinson has been somewhat sneaky with AURORA. Unless you blink and therefore miss it, AURORA takes place in the same universe as 2312 (which may be in the same universe as his award winning Mars trilogy). There are a few references to things that we know about from 2312 that put this story in that setting. If you squint a bit I suppose, then, that you could call this a sequel to 2312. However, it also seems clear that if he wants to, Robinson can write a sequel to AURORA based on the events surrounding the events that occurred at Tau Ceti. It would be interesting to read that book if it ever comes about.AURORA is a fine novel, one of the best, along with NEMESIS GAMES, that I read from 2015, and in my opinion is superior to 2312. You may not like what it is telling you, but it certainly is a fascinating and different look at the generational starship story.Ali Ahn is an adequate narrator for the book, and she fits because AURORA is narrated by Ship, who has a female persona. An awful generalization, but one that I'm going to make because it suits the situation, is that there is one type of bad narrator, one type of good narrator, and then there's the adequate type of narrator. The bad one is the one that jars you out of the story for any number of reasons. A narrator should allow you to immerse yourself into the story without kicking you out of it. It's hard to describe the best kind of narrator (but I'll try anyway), which would be one that gets the characters right, the voices right, and brings emotion to the work. Ali Ahn is the adequate kind of narrator - the one you don't notice one way or another, who does not kick you out of the story but doesn't knock it out of the park, either. Whether that is actually good or not is up to the listener, but that works for me, and that's what Ali Ahn brought to AURORA. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ An unusual way to tell a story *by N***H on Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 9, 2020* This is not the usual sort of science fiction novel, but is more of a philosophical treatise on the likelihood of successful interstellar space travel. In addition, it gives an interesting, but quite deep, analysis of how artificial intelligence might work. It presents a number of interesting questions along the way, some of which the reader has to answer for themselves, while for other questions the novel presents some answers, but you may not agree with all of them.I agree with other reviewers, who have indicated that this is NOT a ‘light read’, but that shouldn’t put you off as long as you’re willing to put some effort into understanding subjects ranging from AI, through ecology to time dilation during space flight. If this book doesn’t make you think, then you must already be an expert in at least two of the area involved in astrobiology! One of the unusual aspects of the writing is that the story is told by the AI that controls the spaceship, which leads to some odd descriptions of how to use English – the AI is learning the ‘art’ of communicating through the written word - so, you can learn some use of English as well!Then there is the whole question of simple life forms, on an alien world, and how they might find the sudden introduction of another biological lifeform nothing but an incubator for their own biochemistry – that’s a really deep, but significant aspect of the questions this book asks.Finally, there are insights into human behaviour and society’s reaction to the unusual, the unexpected and the contentious issues facing them.Not too bad a coverage of modern life, all wrapped up in an adventure through space….well worth a read, give yourself time to digest the information though. --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.co.th/products/27042480-aurora-mass-market-paperback-april-26-2016](https://www.desertcart.co.th/products/27042480-aurora-mass-market-paperback-april-26-2016) --- *Product available on Desertcart Thailand* *Store origin: TH* *Last updated: 2026-04-27*