V171 reviewed The Freeze-Frame Revolution by Peter Watts
None
5 stars
What if you were put on a massive space ship with the sole purpose to create wormholes for transport for anyone to use in the future. But here's the catch: since you can't use wormholes that don't exist yet, you are put into stasis for hundreds of thousands of years at a time, only coming out for a few days to complete menial tasks for an AI that was designed to be dumb enough to rely on human help, then going back under. You have been alive for millions of years, far outlasting the death of your own home planet, and even your own home solar system. You watch stars come into existence and die in the span of a short rest.
Would you get bored?
Would you get angry?
Would you start a revolution?
Can you promise that none of the other 30,000 people on board won't?
This is …
What if you were put on a massive space ship with the sole purpose to create wormholes for transport for anyone to use in the future. But here's the catch: since you can't use wormholes that don't exist yet, you are put into stasis for hundreds of thousands of years at a time, only coming out for a few days to complete menial tasks for an AI that was designed to be dumb enough to rely on human help, then going back under. You have been alive for millions of years, far outlasting the death of your own home planet, and even your own home solar system. You watch stars come into existence and die in the span of a short rest.
Would you get bored?
Would you get angry?
Would you start a revolution?
Can you promise that none of the other 30,000 people on board won't?
This is another example of what Peter Watts does best: hard, compelling sci-fi. While not quite as inaccessible as Blindsight or Echopraxia, the prose is still quite technical, laden with loosely accurate scientific theory. But it is just comprehensible enough to be compelling, making for a really great story. The short, contained story also helped in keeping me interested throughout. While the plot is great, the character work is really the unsung hero of any of Watts' works. There are quite a few "filler" characters here, but of the characters we get to know, there's a lot to appreciate in how they're developed.
Watts is hard to recommend because, unless you like a very specific kind of sci-fi, you'll likely walk away from his works frustrated and confused as to why the plot is hidden behind such unnecessary scientific detail. It took me a whole year of reflection to come to appreciate Blindsight, and it still sits with me as one of my favorite science fiction books of the past few years. If you're curious at all, I think Freeze Frame Revolution is a great starting point given its slightly more accessible prose and short length.
