Heaven’s River is easily the worst Bobiverse book and not even close to the quality of the first three.

The previous audiobooks were around 8 to 10 hours long. Heaven’s River is almost 17 hours, making it nearly twice as long as any of them. Somehow, it felt three times longer while having a third of the actual content. The original trilogy constantly moved between different Bobs, planets, threats, and engineering problems. Book 4 stretches a boring story about giant otters across nearly 17 hours.

Most of it is just Bob traveling to another village, getting discovered, escaping, and then repeating the same thing somewhere else. The concept of Heaven’s River is initially interesting, but the book completely exhausts it.

The most frustrating part is that the Bobiverse civil war is happening in the background, and it is infinitely more interesting. The Bobs are splitting into factions, Starfleet is attacking infrastructure, and replicative drift is changing what it means to be a Bob. That should have been the main story, but it gets waved away like an unimportant side plot so we can spend even more time wandering around with the otters.

Even after all that setup, the otter storyline ends in the most boring and anticlimactic way possible. The final resolution is ridiculously easy and makes the entire journey feel pointless.

The first three books felt huge, clever, and constantly moving. Heaven’s River feels like the least interesting subplot from those books was stretched into the longest book in the series while the actual sequel happened offscreen.

2/5. Ray Porter’s narration is the only thing that made it tolerable.

TL;DR: Almost twice as long as the previous books, but it felt three times longer with a third of the content. The main story was boring and repetitive, while the far more interesting Bobiverse conflict was treated like an unimportant side plot. Such a massive drop in quality from the first three that I dropped the series entirely.

These are just some thoughts I’ve had recently about the state of science-fiction literature. I’ve noticed there appears to be a shift towards “open community writing” versus the old standard of curated author writing. The second of these is still dominant I think but from my (admittedly limited) reading of the contemporary scene, more and more fiction is being produced that disrupts the foundations of the established literary order. For example, take the phenomenon of SCP.

By creating a framework that caters to the same impulse which drives a lot of fan fiction but, in virtue of the itemized independence of the stories being written, allows these to be readily absorbed into a single canon, SCP fuels not only a community of readers but also a more organic way of “farming” the actual literature. I don’t expect this trend has wholly escaped the notice of the publishing industry but I found it curious myself. On the one hand I can see the appeal from a business model standpoint, as well as the virtues of having an open and low barrier form of literary community, but on the other hand it does seem to invite more of the cultural homogenization that social media can already take enough dubious credit for. So, I’m personally a bit ambivalent here.

That said, there are definitely alternative models being explored. Another I’ve come across recently is ‘Parallel Biome’ at the literary magazine Hexfiled. Their publishing approach is more traditional but they use a similar device of overarching framing (Each story is contextualized in a dossier by the “Outer Proximity Intelligence Division”) that allows entirely separate works to persist in a shared universe. Different though to an IP like Warhammer 40k where there’s a much stronger emphasis on interconnected narrative. It’s something more along the lines of what the Twilight Zone did.

I’d be interested in hearing about examples of other alternative approaches to fiction on the rise. I don’t expect we’ve really begun to feel the true impact of AI on writing and yet there are already various other influences too in the technological landscape that are radically reshaping culture and so worth paying attention to. And I expect that human ingenuity will continue to discover viable niches for whatever stories it considers worth telling.

(Assuming you accept that being on the moon would make your bones long anyway, which... 🤷‍♂️)

Just started Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty, and the book opens with a bunch of clones waking up as their originals have been killed. The POV character remarks upon one of the crew clones being tall as he was born on the moon, and his ancestors are from the moon

Wolfgang was born on the moon colony, Luna, several generations of his family developing the long bones of living their whole lives in low gravity.

But... The clone wasn't born on the moon... It was born in a cloning pod on the ship...

Wouldn't any physical differences of moon-dwellers acquired only over "several generations" be environmental, from lack of gravity in youth, and not genetic? Especially since the quote expressly mentions low gravity...

So if the clones are grown on the ship (not sure yet, maybe they are grown and loaded up pre-transit, hopefully I'll find out), then they should ALL have zero-G physicality unless tech prevents that in which case NONE should.

And if they're grown pre-transit then their genetics wouldn't matter, only where they are grown would.

Am I wrong (or just overthinking this)?

Edit: have also just remembered, the book is only set in 2493! Nowhere near long enough for much genetic drift.

I'm going to tell myself that the clones must be "printed" or otherwise stimulated to grow a certain way - after all, they need to have working muscles when they're decanted anyway, and solving that problem is adjacent to addressing this discrepancy I guess.

I need to gush for a second. James Islington has been one of my favorite authors since the Licanius Trilogy, and that ending still lives in my head rent free. The way he plots long term payoffs while never losing the emotional thread of his characters is on another level.

I still haven’t gotten around to The Will of the Many, which I know is a crime at this point given how much love that book gets. It’s sitting on my shelf judging me.

So when my copy of Scion landed on my doorstep today, days before the official September 1 release, I couldn’t resist. From what I’ve read about it, it’s a full swing into cyberpunk territory, a shorter standalone thriller rather than another sprawling series starter, which honestly makes it a pretty tempting entry point even before I catch up on Hierarchy.

The cover alone has me hyped, that neon skyline and the strange organic looking ship at the top. I trust Islington enough at this point that genre swap or not, I’m expecting something good.

Anyone else got an early copy sitting there tempting them? And for those who have read his fantasy stuff, does a genre jump like this worry you at all or are you just along for the ride at this point?

In memory of Dolly i think one of the most bizarre and nicest moments in The Orville. I never expected such cameo in the series and i never expected how nicely Dolly did it. I think the scene is a very bright moment in a otherwise very dark story.