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Book Review of The Songs of Distant Earth

The Songs of Distant Earth
pipil avatar reviewed on + 5 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1


This is a very humanistic science fiction story. Although the story deals with applied science, fantastic technologies, space travel, human colonies and their logistics, it also handles the emotions and feelings of the characters. What is also special about this story is that it doesnt deal with sci-fi fantasies like galactic civilizations or tele-transportation and there is neither sex nor violence. In it, there is a very sweet love story in which the characters cant be together for the rest of their lives, so she decides to have his son to remember him until her death, which she does, but the fact is that he outlives both of them. How? Well, he is traveling away from them at high speed to the original place where his spaceship was supposed to go and due to the effects of hibernation, he lives longer. Once awaken to start the original mission which is to colonize another planet, he gets to see her accumulated messages and notices their aging, through the years in which she and his son sent the messages to the automated communications system in his ship. He cant answer the messages because to get to the new planet three hundred years had to pass. One can also feel poetic tones in the authors writing.