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A review by kerstincullen
The Clockwork Rocket by Greg Egan
4.0
This is a very cool work of speculative space time. It's well thought out, and I had fun trying to figure out what was going on in the beginning. I am not an expert in relativity, but thought that the math was laid out well without equations using text (mostly conversations) and diagrams. Then this new physics was applied to chemistry and biology, which was well thought out and fascinating. Not 'light' reading by any means but fun in a very nerdy way.
I am not sure what to make of the speculative biology. It was fairly unique, and the reproduction was supposed to be super horrifying, but it made me pretty uncomfortable to be gendered the way it was. Pronouns matter as our culture has a whole lot of baggage when it comes to gender, so I felt pretty uncomfortable that in a very, very alien species (whose reproduction, sex or gender is absolutely anything like that of ours) the gender whose brain gets slagged to reproduce asexually is labeled as 'she', and the sterile nanny who gets to live much longer and run the government is labeled as 'he'. I guess it just felt unnecessary? Maybe using the singular they would have helped? Also why is it that only male authors come up with horrifying alien female reproductive biology?
I guess maybe as an early career scientist and a new mother who lives in a real universe where real people in academia express horrible opinions about scientist becoming mothers, nightmare alien biology was almost too much. I just wanted to read about the fun math.
I am not sure what to make of the speculative biology. It was fairly unique, and the reproduction was supposed to be super horrifying, but it made me pretty uncomfortable to be gendered the way it was. Pronouns matter as our culture has a whole lot of baggage when it comes to gender, so I felt pretty uncomfortable that in a very, very alien species (whose reproduction, sex or gender is absolutely anything like that of ours) the gender whose brain gets slagged to reproduce asexually is labeled as 'she', and the sterile nanny who gets to live much longer and run the government is labeled as 'he'. I guess it just felt unnecessary? Maybe using the singular they would have helped? Also why is it that only male authors come up with horrifying alien female reproductive biology?
I guess maybe as an early career scientist and a new mother who lives in a real universe where real people in academia express horrible opinions about scientist becoming mothers, nightmare alien biology was almost too much. I just wanted to read about the fun math.