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    The Highest Frontier
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    The Highest Frontier
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    The Highest Frontier
    Ebook649 pages11 hours

    The Highest Frontier

    By Joan Slonczewski

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    One of the most respected writers of hard SF, it has been more than ten years since Joan Slonczewski's last novel. Now she returns with a spectacular tour de force of the college of the future, in orbit. Jennifer Ramos Kennedy, a girl from a rich and politically influential family (a distant relation descended from the famous Kennedy clan), whose twin brother has died in an accident and left her bereft, is about to enter her freshman year at Frontera College.

    Frontera is an exciting school built with media money, and a bit from tribal casinos too, dedicated to educating the best and brightest of this future world. We accompany Jenny as she proceeds through her early days at school, encountering surprises and wonders and some unpleasant problems. The Earth is altered by global warming, and an invasive alien species called ultraphytes threatens the surviving ecosystem. Jenny is being raised for great things, but while she's in school she just wants to do her homework, go on a few dates, and get by. The world that Jenny is living in is one of the most fascinating and creative in contemporary SF, and the problems Jenny faces will involve every reader, young and old.


    At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateSep 13, 2011
    ISBN9781429984744
    Unavailable
    The Highest Frontier
    Author

    Joan Slonczewski

    Joan Slonczewski is the author of The Highest Frontier, The Children Star, and A Door Into Ocean. She lives in Gambier, Ohio and teaches biology at Kenyon College.

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    Reviews for The Highest Frontier

    3.5/5

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    • 4/5
      The Highest Frontier by Joan SlonczewskiPros: interesting protagonist; fascinating world-building; thought provoking conceptsCons: fair amount of repetition, especially at the beginning; several unexplained concepts and items, including one important to the plotJennifer Ramos Kennedy’s culture source was her great-grandmother, President Rosa Schwartz. A few months after a family tragedy she’s setting out for Frontera, a university on an orbiting space station. She chose it both because a family friend runs the school but also because it’s free of many of the things plaguing Earth: mosquitos carrying disease, risk of flood and methane quakes, the expanding Death Belt, and the need for DIRG bodyguards. But university life isn’t quite what she expected: her teachers are all a little crazy, her roommate is weird and has an unhealthy affiliation for ultraphytes, the alien plants that crave salt and spread from their landing site in Utah to be a scourge on the world, her slanball coach wants her well rested, a hard thing when she’s volunteering for the understaffed EMS, and there’s so much reading and work to do for classes. Meanwhile, she’s knee deep in helping the Unity party win the next Presidential election. Jenny doesn’t understand how the Centrist Firmament belief is so strong when people live in space! But things on Earth have reached the point that if change doesn’t come soon, it’ll be too late for the planet. And yet the Centrists want to expand the solar array that’s expanding the Death Belt, intending for people to leave earth in the coming Rapture, relocating to other space stations. Stations that couldn’t possibly hold even a portion of the people on Earth.And it turns out that Frontera isn’t as free of Earthly disasters as she was led to believe.There’s very little exposition. You’re thrown into the novel with limited explanations of what things are and how the world has changed from what we currently know. While it’s an entirely character driven novel, something I’m not generally keen on, my interest never waned. There are plot points that pull the story into a thought provoking conclusion, but for the most part the book follows Jenny through her days, questioning the world and the politics that run it.As a scion of a political family, Jenny knows politics, making her an excellent character to follow. Through her mother and conjoined twin aunts, she’s connected to the upcoming Presidential election; she helps when one of her professor’s runs for mayor; sees the struggle with personnel and supplies as she volunteers for EMS, and more. She also takes two politics courses, one on Teddy Roosevelt and the other on Aristotle and democracy, the lectures for which come up often in the text. The book’s ending questions how politics is done, and if it’s possible to fix a broken system. The second point of view character, Dylan Chase, is President of the university, and through him we see the difficulties of managing his staff and securing sufficient financing. We also see him dealing with student problems: alcoholism, printer disease hacks, assault, and addiction. The world-building is top notch: Spanish colloquialisms, tax playing at casinos, unique fashion trends, amyloid (sewage processed by hab shell microbes that’s used to ‘print’ everything from food to clothing to the shelters everyone lives in), the anthrax cables that transport ships between Frontera and Earth, Toynet, Kessler debris, I could go on. The sport of slanball is pretty cool too.The supporting cast is wide and varied, though it focuses on Jenny’s family, a few professors, close students (including the players of her slanball team) and some of Dylan’s contacts (for his POV scenes). Jenny’s experiences at the school are also varied, from class work to parties to helping build houses for colonists.The first few chapters contain a fair amount of repetition, especially with regards to Jenny’s family. Which makes it all the more strange that other concepts and terms are left unexplained. You figure out what DIRGs are pretty quick, but I don’t remember the acronym being explained. Similarly, Jenny notices an object on one of her teacher’s desks that affects the plot. She brings it up to another character, implying she knows the relevance of the object, but it’s not until the end of the book that as a reader I figured out what the object was and what it meant.If you like a lot of character development and world-building in your science fiction, this is a highly entertaining, and sometimes thought provoking, read.
    • 1/5
      Oh! Satire! I get it.
    • 3/5
      Jenny Ramos Kennedy is the heir to two presidential families and a great deal of wealth. After her charming and extroverted twin dies, Jenny feels overwhelmed by the expectations of the world. Seeking to escape them, and to flee her fears of the increasingly frequent natural disasters on Earth, Jenny decides to go to college on a spacehub. There, her botany experiments, social life, and the upcoming elections all create a situation in which Jenny may either take the easy path of non-resistance, or agitate to change the world around her.

      I liked the characters, but I thought there were too many view-point characters, with too little attention paid to each. I had the same problem with the plots and the future tech; there were just too many, all jostling for space. Slonczewski is fantastic at creating plausible but currently-fictitious creatures and technology, but I wish there had been better explanations of some of the tech (after numerous arguments between characters about what to do with the solarplates, someone finally explained what they were 200 pages in! Without knowing what they were, all those instances of discussion were meaningless to me.) and fewer biology lessons (I already know the differences between RNA and DNA, but even if I hadn't, that knowledge wasn't pertinent to the story). This felt a bit like a Connie Willis story, actually; I wish it had been a little more focused. My one other concern is that there are whole lines of dialog exclusively in Spanish, with no translation or guide in the back of the book.

      All in all, though, this book features fascinating concepts with a likable but unique main character.

      Trigger warning: a character is probably raped but doesn't remember it; no details are provided, one character talks about it in a victim-blaming way but the narrative does not support him, and it is not a major part of the book.
    • 4/5
      Well worth reading. Lots to absorb in here.
    • 4/5
      Okay, let's get this out of the way: Slonczewski is my favorite writer currently writing works of science fiction. I am highly disposed to adore anything that she writes. But there were so many things going on in this novel that at times even I wondered if she was going to be able to pull it all together in the end. (Spoiler alert: she did.)

      The very basics of the story: It's one hundred years in the future. Jenny Kennedy is now the only daughter of a powerful and very political family. Reeling from the death of her twin brother, she chooses to go to college in an orbiting space habitat, billed as ultra-secure. Of course, things are never what they seem.

      Things I really loved about this story: It's hard science fiction -- specifically in the field of molecular biology/microbiology/evolution. She plays with some really fascinating ideas here: bioengineering HIV for gene therapy - "Did you take your HIV, dear?", bioengineering plants to mimic human systems, can we produce signaling molecules for humor, piety, wisdom? It's feminist science fiction -- not just a "strong female protagonist," but a variety of female and male characters, in positions of power and without, who are strong, flawed, and gentle in turns, and sometimes all at once.

      One of the most interesting aspects of the book is fed by Slonczewski's experience as a college department chair. Most of the action in this book takes place at Frontera College. It was really interesting to see issues and crises from the viewpoints of students, professors, administrators, parents, funders al at once. Conflicts of interest that had never occurred to me before were suddenly obvious.

      The issue that I'm not sure if I loved, hated, or what was race. Which was complicated -- like it is. This is a future where almost all well-off children are genetically engineered. They may or may not share the same genetic race as their parents. A Quaker couple chooses their two favorite indigenous tribes for the racial characteristics of their twins. "Racism" as we currently know it isn't on display here, though it's definitely not post-prejudice. It's just that prejudice has mostly shifted to if you were engineered or not. There are also a lot of stupid assumptions made by characters of a character who was raised Amish. Oh, and while there are definitely prominent gay characters, there is still some orientation weirdness. And don't even get me started on the gender-performance weirdness of the First Lady debates.

      Okay, really. I could write and write and write about this. (If you've read this and want to chat, send me a message!) I have some opinions. But I really loved this, and am wondering if Slonczewski is planning any more novels in this universe. (Some signs seemed to indicate yes, some no.)

      No, wait! Two more things! I really loved the exchange of religious ideas in this book. And also the Foundation trilogy shout-outs. Okay. Done.
    • 3/5
      A solid read that I thought I would like better. The future and the people in it feels disconcertingly strange, the way the future should feel. The science aspects are hard-core and interesting, albeit a bit one-note. All kinds of plot elements are thrown into the stew. But, like an overdone stew, the end result for me was edible but lacking in drama. I had no emotional connection to the characters. After the few two chapters, I was thinking "I hope they get out of rich kid land soon" -- but they never did. While the Earth is suffering as badly or worse than anything by Bacigalupi, we spend all our time completely divorced from it.Readable, but less impressive than I was hoping for.
    • 3/5
      I was disappointed. I have loved Slonczewski's previous work, and was very much looking forward to this one. However, it went very slowly for me- both because of its length, and its lack of focus.It would have helped to prioritize the plot elements somewhat. What is this? A story about going to college and living away from home for the first time? one of alien invasion? one of global politics? of culture clashes? a romance? All these were elements, yet none seemed to be especially important compared to the others, and they balanced off with each other to diminish the interest of each thread.The secondary characters were often quirky, but mostly did not feel well-rounded to me- which is a shame, because that could have made the whole feel more coherent. It did not help that Jenny, our main protagonist, is rather a Mary Sue- she's a super-achiever at nearly everything she tries: studying! original research! emergency medical responding! slanball (the main sport of the day)! politics! her only flaw is that she cannot do public speaking... but she even finds a successful work-around for that.Also, the world does not hold together for me. If in fact ALL commerce and communications go through Toynet- conveniently developed by Jenny's dad (did I forget to mention she's filthy rich?)- well, that's an obvious problem, and would be undermined, as the internet is, and also opposed rather than embraced by all governments everywhere- especially when it turns out that it's being used to fudge election results. For some reason, no one expresses any second thoughts about all this.It's all just- odd. I think there might be a couple of really fabulous novels buried in this one... but this one is not one of those. Jargon is not a good substitute for thinking things through.I know Slonczewski can write far better, and I wish she had here.
    • 3/5
      A nice, if uneven read overall. The Highest Frontier tries to weave three separate themes about the future together: electoral politics, higher education, and ecological catastrophe. The three threads don't quite come together in the end. Slonczewski's proven ability to bring radically alternative biology to life takes a back seat to college fundraising and dialogues on political science that don't quite work. But book gets a full star for it's treatment of Dylan and Father Clare from me.
    • 4/5
      Some decades into the future, global warming has made the tropics uninhabitable. An enormous 'sunbelt' of gigantic solar panels covers this dead ground, to at least extract power from it.Wars are in progress at the two poles, over the last remaining sources of prime agricultural land..Alien contact has been made, but not with intelligent creatures but with 'ultraphytes', alien RNA-based life, which are able to produce cyanide to kill their prey. They arrived from space as 'spores' falling to Earth and now infest most parts of the planet. Preserving the Earth's very existence as a place for human life is the prime political concern.,And there are differing views on how to do this: either to 'cleanse' and rejuvenate the Earth, or give it up and move those who are useful (and those who can afford it) to self-contained habitats in space. Even those who religious belief is in the limited 'cosmos' their holy texts declare, are prepared to accept life in space habitats.Government is now funded mostly by 'tax-playing' (i.e. betting and losing) while religious groups, ethnic groups (like native peoples) and corporates are major economic and political forces.The focus character is Jennifer Ramos Kennedy, descendant of three presidents, who is being groomed to join her families' pro-Earth faction. Despite her iconic surname, a genetic flaw makes public speaking incredibly difficult for her and she has her personal version of the 'Kennedy Curse' in the recent death of her more charismatic twin brother, Jordi. To show that her faction is also supportive of space habitats, she is sent to Frontera College located uniquely in a terraformed space habitat. An election is brewing, so everything she does needs to be carefully considered. She joins the local 'slan-ball' team (a kind of null-G basketball) and the emergency first-aiders. These two activities clash as late-night call outs to frat drinking parties take their toll. Rather than eschew education as a know-it-all teenager she assiduously researches her term papers and debates with her tutors. She has a love affair. And she also has a strange room mate who is somewhat monosyllabic and a biology professor who is conducting some very odd experiments, which lead to something totally unexpected in Frontera - a very strange election 'debate' and a revelation about one of the 'characters'.As a character, Jenny drives this novel. It uses cutting-edge science to create a complex, richly-detailed, realistic future, as a good science fiction novel should.As the deserving winner of the John W. Campbell award for best science fiction novel of 2012, it raises the bar dramatically for quality fiction focused on young people.
    • 4/5
      Jennifer Ramos Kennedy, from a family with two presidents to its name, goes to space college to escape her family, their security guards, and the memory of her dead twin brother. Earth is near collapse because of global warming and the invasion of ultraphytes, alien lifeforms that excrete cyanide, and America’s two political parties are busy fighting over how aggressive to be in exerting control over the Antarctic breadbasket and whether there are really stars and planets other than Earth or only a Firmament. The political stuff seems both extrapolative and to-the-minute, given how much of it focuses on manipulating voting both through carefully poll-tested positions and through making it hard for the “wrong” people to vote. It’s a big, ambitious novel, not really if-this-goes-on but ‘what will it be like to be an idealistic, influential young person if this goes on?’ I can’t say I loved it, but I thought it wove together various strands of scientific and political speculation with real flair and imagination.
    • 4/5
      It has been ten years since Joan Slonczewski’s THE CHILDREN STAR, but the author is back with a bang with the recently released THE HIGHEST FRONTIER. Delving into a rather new arena with a story focused on the exploits of a girl born to leaders, cloned from leaders, and destined to be a leader as she enters her first year of college in a space habitat orbiting Earth, Slonczewski enters a new frontier for her writing easily, but not without a few hiccups.I should preface this review by saying that Slonczewski is a microbiology professor by trade, and it does show in her writing. Several of her books have been about sentient microbes. This one, however, is rather tame in setting by comparison. About 100 years in the future, Earth has become decimated by climate change and pollution, and the only safe haven left is a network of space habitats in orbit around the Earth. Religious leaders have proclaimed this the Firmament, God’s territory. Jenny Ramos Kennedy is girl who lost her twin brother and has spent the past few months trying to overcome her mental issues, fears, and inability to speak publicly before coming to Frontera College orbiting high above the Earth. Paired with her story is a Presidential race and the spread of an alien organism called the Ultraphyte which had helped in the decimation of Earth, releasing cyanide and killing thousands.The one place where Slonczewski never falters is her attention to biological detail, but at the same time, this does have a tendency to draw out the book and slow the pacing down to a crawl. There are even biology classes in the book which could substitute for a real biology class, with such detail that, despite having been a biology major for a year (bad idea), I was confused. Even more so than her previous books, I feel like THE HIGHEST FRONTIER is some love story to biology, possibly making it difficult for those that are not from a scientific background to get into the story.One thing I loved was the characters. Each one was brilliantly crafted and came to life on the pages. I especially loved Jenny’s love interest Tom, an Amish kid who left the world he grew up in to come to Frontera – for a good reason. I’ll let you read the book and find out more about him. Anouk the French hacker, though, was my favorite. Imagine being banned from Earth for your many attempts at breaking into government computer networks. She’s a genius through and through, but her common sense might be just a little lacking.While not quite at the level as her 1986 masterpiece A DOOR INTO OCEAN (one of my favorite books of all time, you must read it), Slonczewski puts forward a very welcome new book that is sure to win new fans and put a new spin on the science fiction genre yet again. The creativity that went into this book and the fascinating finale should win this book awards. I would definitely recommend this book, but I suggest having google open at all times, especially if you don’t know Spanish. Which I don’t.VERDICT: Though complex and full of biological terms that might be offputting, THE HIGHEST FRONTIER is a fascinating speculative look at what the world might be in 100 years. With great characters and an all-too-believable plot, this is a book worth checking out.
    • 4/5
      This is a wel constructed plot of a very interesting fictional futue. The science fiction part is both technological communication, and biolological evolution. This is superimposed on an earth whose climate change and environmental degredation have continued to progress to nearly unlivable conditions. The plot is sprinkled with good characters who mostly try to improve the quality of life for their friends, community and school.The author had a good deal of knowledge of ecology, ecolgical trends, and biology prior to constructing the plot and then the story. The author has also continued the trend in increased partsan politics polarized citizen philosophies and increased college cost trends and the trend in single source media. With this background, the book is very believable and exciting to read.