Natural History

by Justina Robson

It is in the far future. The human species has diversified. Alongside the seed-forms of the Unevolved (ordinary humans) live and work the Augmented, people who have been forged, not born. Nonetheless the Augmented are human beneath their vast and complex biotechnological bodies which allow them to live deep in the oceans and out in space. As far as they're concerned, however, the old ties of blood and genes may just be ancient history.

When a new solar system is found, containing an Earth-like world, full of abandoned alien cities and devoid of intelligent life, the Augmented see it as their Forge-right to claim this place as a homeworld. After all, the aliens who once lived there have followed the same path beyond the limits of genetics and organics, adapting themselves to new environments, and heading for the frontiers of deep space.

Allegedly...

• ISBN10: 0330489437
• ISBN13: 9780330489430
• Publish Date: 2 April 2004 (first published 18 April 2003)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 14 June 2010
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Imprint: Pan Books
• Edition: Unabridged edition
• Format: Paperback (A-Format (178x111 mm))
• Pages: 384
• Language: English

Reviews

[wyvernfriend]

This is an interesting read. The concepts are hardly new, humans adapted to be the brains behind machines, several writers have done it before. Alien Tech that wants to absorb humanity. What is different is Robson's own vision of this. The choices people make and have made for them, the scary logic involved in the choices and the sheer humanity of the characters.
I was sucked in by the characters, the way they came to life off the page. I really did care for them and wanted to see what happened, even if it was flagged and inevitable.
And that was part of the problem with the book, the sheer number of characters involved in the story, it was almost overwhelming sometimes to keep track of what was going on and the politics involved.
It was amusing to read a book where some of the earthbound scenes were in the UK and UK slang was involved. It was actually quite amusing to mentally have to make that leap to accept SF written by a UK author that wasn't from 50 years ago.
I'm so glad I intercepted one of her later works a few months ago and found myself immersed in the works of Justina Robson, I have yet to actively dislike any of her books.