Learning the World
A great sunliner is nearing the end of a four-hundred-year journey. A ship-born generation is tense with expectation for the new system that is to be their home. Expecting to find nothing more complex than bacteria and algae, the detection of electronic signals from one of the planets comes as a shock.
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- Ken MacLeod has a zoology degree - which is presumably where names like "The Stone Canal" came from...
I like most of his novels, particularly "Learning the World" - which I guess is a reverse first contact novel.
- As an aside: there is a rather splendid explanation for stars going green in Ken MacLeod's SF novel Learning the World:
- I've been catching up on Macleod's output recently - I particularly liked Learning the World:
- Ken MacLeod has some really good work in this vein. I haven't read the Engines of Light trilogy (which wouldn't pass your near-future filter, anyway), but the Fall Revolution series, and most of his stand-alone novels, do some really interesting things in just the neighborhood it sounds like you might enjoy. (Learning the World, while not near-future, is one of my favorite SF novels, full stop, and absolutely my favorite "first contact" story ever penned.)
His contemporaries (geographically, as well as thematically) Richard K. Morgan and Adam Roberts are probably also worth checking out.
- Nope. Ken MacLeod's 'learning the world'. The alien space bats were a nice touch. Charles Stross' book accelerando has an interesting take on the Fermi paradox too.
- Not sure about a short story, but there's a novel with that idea: Learning the World: a Scientific Romance by Ken MacLeod
