
The Terraformers
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Narrated by:
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Emily Lawrence
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By:
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Annalee Newitz
Long-listed, Library Journal Best Books of the Year, 2023
Long-listed, Barnes and Noble Best New Books of the Year 2023
This program includes original sound design.
From science fiction visionary Annalee Newitz comes The Terraformers, a sweeping, uplifting, and illuminating exploration of the future.
Destry's life is dedicated to terraforming Sask-E. As part of the Environmental Rescue Team, she cares for the planet and its burgeoning eco-systems as her parents and their parents did before her.
But the bright, clean future they're building comes under threat when Destry discovers a city full of people that shouldn’t exist, hidden inside a massive volcano.
As she uncovers more about their past, Destry begins to question the mission she's devoted her life to, and must make a choice that will reverberate through Sask-E's future for generations to come.
A science fiction epic for our times and a love letter to our future, The Terraformers will take you on a journey spanning thousands of years and exploring the triumphs, strife, and hope that find us wherever we make our home.
"Brilliantly thoughtful, prescient, and gripping.”—Martha Wells, The Murderbot Diaries
Also by Annalee Newitz
Autonomous
The Future of Another Timeline
A Macmillan Audio production from Tor Books.
©2023 Annalee Newitz (P)2023 Macmillan AudioListeners also enjoyed...




















Critic reviews
"The Terraformers is so engaging, you could almost miss the pyrotechnic world-building and bone-deep intelligence. Newitz continues doing some of the best work in the field."—James S. A. Corey, author of the Expanse series
"Fascinating and readable in equal measure, The Terraformers will remake your mind like its cast remakes an entire planet."—John Scalzi, author of The Collapsing Empire
"Newitz performs a staggering feat of revolutionary imagination in this hopeful space-opera. . . . With the ethos of Becky Chambers and the gonzo imagination of Samuel R. Delany, plus a strong scientific basis in ecology and urban planning, this feels like a new frontier in science fiction."—Publishers Weekly, STARRED review
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A solid 3/5. 1st third good the rest boring
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The story and setting portray a world of galaxy-spanning corporations vying with eco-communes governed by direct democracy, and it presents the reader with a pretty good idea which one of those is better. But the story fails to grapple with its own morality. Massive crimes - like slavery, deliberate mental handicapping by genetic engineering, and two characters threatening to cause a disaster that could slaughter millions - pass by in a few pages each. I found that aspect jarring and the rest unnecessarily preachy.
Uneven and sort of preachy
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Original
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Not a fan of this book
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I didn’t think the characters were fleshed out enough. It felt like the author wanted to add a lot of concepts. It also feels like it has been sent through AI, except for the vocabulary.
It started out strong
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Imaginative with unique perspectives
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The narrative was oddly constructed and seems to me like it should have been expanded to a trilogy to better resolve character arcs. There are two time jumps in the story that made following it difficult. This was only my experience though and other listeners who prefer more special effects, or robot-on-cat romance, might enjoy it.
Had Promise; Failed to Deliver
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This book was a recommendation via an interview with the author on an NPR Podcast I subscribe to. It was made to sound like a fresh angle on Climate change and mitigation from elements of the environment like the soil and trees and animals that are able to communicate their wishes needs and general health to the people in charge of the environment. This allowed them to maintain balance in the ecosystem...or at least to know that when there is lack of balance, that nobody could claim they didn't know. However, this story took a turn for the fantastical with the introduction of naked mole rats as engineers and scientists and intelligent earthworms, and actually living breathing intelligent passenger trains. If this were about a struggle between different bioengineered humanoid species on the needs and expectations of the populations vs the health of the ecosystem, kind of what I was led to believe this would be, it would have been a fascinating angle to take. As it is, I finished the book with an image of an adult version of Thomas the Tank Engine.
Inanimate objects and rodents as people? Meh!
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The basic conflict is between those who eventually settled on the planet (many in virtual servitude ) and the corporation leaders who supplied a preferred hominid shape from ancient earth DNA for a select few. This part I found interesting.
What was troublesome was the emphasis on the sex between trains, cats. humanoids etc and the annoying sound effects after a line of dialogue . The characters also often behaved in a playful way that conflicted with the seriousness of the plot.
Another issue I had with the novel itself is the tendency of the author to follow a character for a time and then jump to a much later year abandoning that character.
All in all, I stuck with the story to its predictable conclusion and felt that there were enough memorable moments to suggest that readers should listen/read The Terraformers and form their own judgement.
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An uneven audio experience
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Falls Flat
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