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Issui Ogawa, The Next Continent
Jan. 19th, 2011 11:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sanguinity2. Issui Ogawa, The Next Continent.
A Japanese extreme construction engineering firm (I always hear that with revving motors and reverbing announcers) takes on the challenge of building a vacation resort on the moon -- only the second moon-base in human history, and the first that is intended to be truly durable. (The Chinese have a moon-base, too, but it is extremely tenuous, kept going only through the raw, heroic determination of the astronauts stationed there.) The vacation resort project is the primary plot of the book, is shown from start to finish (I'd tell you the number of years, but for this plot, that would be a spoiler!) and about half of the book is devoted to loving discussions of how you'd make concrete from regolith, or the inefficiencies of dump trucks (you have to move the mass of the truck, too!), or the amazing feats of the fleet of swarm-intelligent multidozers. (In the book, there was a hopping action figure market for the swarm multidozers. I want action figures, too!) For readers who have spent countless hours doodling undersea habitats, moon habitats, and generation ships, taking immense pleasure in deciding exactly how the waste recycling system was going to work in each (I did!), The Next Continent will be right up their alley. If, however, you think that the question of how you would make concrete on the moon is trivial detail (gasp!), you'll want a different book.
(If anything, I wanted more engineering detail. How did they decide how long the R&D for all the different subprojects would require? And how much do you have to revise what everyone knows about the structural properties of concrete for applications in 1/6 g and a vacuum? And what did they need to do to be confident of those revisions? MOAR DETAIL PLZ.)
For those who are curious about how the rest of the novel breaks out: Engineering discussions are about half the novel. About five percent is monologues on how awesome the world is in 2025. Another five percent is explanations of the conspiracy of factors that have stymied THEFLYING CARS COMMERCIAL SPACE TRAVEL THAT HUMANITY HAS LONG SINCE BEEN ENTITLED TO. About twenty percent are the (very thin) plotlines of the nominal characters. (Thin to the point of being stick figures, but not so much worse than I've seen in some bestsellers.) The remaining twenty percent is the plotlines of the real characters, the space development agencies and companies. (When two astronauts meet after a long separation, they catch up by narrating to us what their respective agencies have been doing. At times I wished that Ogawa could have just thrown the pretense out the window and had the agencies themselves talk. But that would have been a bit too surrealist for this novel.)
Oh! I almost forgot -- the principal mover and shaker for this commercial moon base is a thirteen year-old girl! Yay! [1] (However, be warned: there's a quasi-romance between her and a twenty-five year-old engineer. Ogawa has them explicitly decide to not have a romance until she's adult, but even so, the scene still made me side-eye the page.) However, despite Tae being the primary motive force behind the project, she is not a point-of-view character. Most of the point of view characters are engineers and project managers -- the people who make the concrete meet the moon, so to speak -- and they did trend male.
This is the first novel I've read under the Haikosoru imprint: Japanese specfic in English translation. The translation (I presume it was the translation and not the original) was distinctly clunky, but once I caught the rhythm of it, largely readable. (People who demand pretty prose, however, will want to skip this.) I caught a few glaring copyediting errors -- Yellowstone for Yosemite, a definition for specific impulse that yields units in 1/seconds instead of seconds -- and I expect that people with a sharper eye than mine would likely pick out more.
Despite some of the technical issues around translation and characterization, it was an enjoyable romp, and I will definitely keep an eye out for The Lord of the Sands of Time (the only other Ogawa book in English translation right now, if the 'net is not lying to me), as well as the other Haikasoru titles.
[1] I about had a laughing fit when we were told what she was designing the moon base to be -- so she does have a touch of unicorns-and-ponies in her after all! Later, when we were told why she was doing this, I had the "therapy would be cheaper!? and also more effective!" thought that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
james_nicoll had. But yanno, so many books and movies would have no plotline at all, if everyone were to do the sensible thing.
(Tags: nationality:japan, ethnicity:japanese, science fiction, author:ogawa.issui)
A Japanese extreme construction engineering firm (I always hear that with revving motors and reverbing announcers) takes on the challenge of building a vacation resort on the moon -- only the second moon-base in human history, and the first that is intended to be truly durable. (The Chinese have a moon-base, too, but it is extremely tenuous, kept going only through the raw, heroic determination of the astronauts stationed there.) The vacation resort project is the primary plot of the book, is shown from start to finish (I'd tell you the number of years, but for this plot, that would be a spoiler!) and about half of the book is devoted to loving discussions of how you'd make concrete from regolith, or the inefficiencies of dump trucks (you have to move the mass of the truck, too!), or the amazing feats of the fleet of swarm-intelligent multidozers. (In the book, there was a hopping action figure market for the swarm multidozers. I want action figures, too!) For readers who have spent countless hours doodling undersea habitats, moon habitats, and generation ships, taking immense pleasure in deciding exactly how the waste recycling system was going to work in each (I did!), The Next Continent will be right up their alley. If, however, you think that the question of how you would make concrete on the moon is trivial detail (gasp!), you'll want a different book.
(If anything, I wanted more engineering detail. How did they decide how long the R&D for all the different subprojects would require? And how much do you have to revise what everyone knows about the structural properties of concrete for applications in 1/6 g and a vacuum? And what did they need to do to be confident of those revisions? MOAR DETAIL PLZ.)
For those who are curious about how the rest of the novel breaks out: Engineering discussions are about half the novel. About five percent is monologues on how awesome the world is in 2025. Another five percent is explanations of the conspiracy of factors that have stymied THE
Oh! I almost forgot -- the principal mover and shaker for this commercial moon base is a thirteen year-old girl! Yay! [1] (However, be warned: there's a quasi-romance between her and a twenty-five year-old engineer. Ogawa has them explicitly decide to not have a romance until she's adult, but even so, the scene still made me side-eye the page.) However, despite Tae being the primary motive force behind the project, she is not a point-of-view character. Most of the point of view characters are engineers and project managers -- the people who make the concrete meet the moon, so to speak -- and they did trend male.
This is the first novel I've read under the Haikosoru imprint: Japanese specfic in English translation. The translation (I presume it was the translation and not the original) was distinctly clunky, but once I caught the rhythm of it, largely readable. (People who demand pretty prose, however, will want to skip this.) I caught a few glaring copyediting errors -- Yellowstone for Yosemite, a definition for specific impulse that yields units in 1/seconds instead of seconds -- and I expect that people with a sharper eye than mine would likely pick out more.
Despite some of the technical issues around translation and characterization, it was an enjoyable romp, and I will definitely keep an eye out for The Lord of the Sands of Time (the only other Ogawa book in English translation right now, if the 'net is not lying to me), as well as the other Haikasoru titles.
[1] I about had a laughing fit when we were told what she was designing the moon base to be -- so she does have a touch of unicorns-and-ponies in her after all! Later, when we were told why she was doing this, I had the "therapy would be cheaper!? and also more effective!" thought that
james_nicoll had. But yanno, so many books and movies would have no plotline at all, if everyone were to do the sensible thing.(Tags: nationality:japan, ethnicity:japanese, science fiction, author:ogawa.issui)
