Read this book recently, Above World
Mar. 6th, 2012 09:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conuly
It's a good enough book, and I have every expectation that the author will continue to improve in any sequels (and there are bound to be some).
One thing kinda bugged me, and it relates to the premise and long-ago backstory. It's ignorable because there are other explanations, but I still felt, well, bothered by it.
See, apparently "a long time ago" (that is, at some point in OUR future) there was a plague, and environmental devastation, and life was becoming difficult for humans.
So some humans left earth, and some moved into domed cities, and some had nowhere to go so they continued their subsistence existence, and some paid good money to undergo major genetic modification to live as mythological creatures. We meet TWO new species that live underwater, and harpy-people and centaur-people and a spider-person. (Not the terms used in the book, and they're considered somewhat offensive in general.) We know of snake-people as well, and who knows what-all else is out there?
The excuse given is that the company responsible for these changes (and they make a pretty - and continuing! - profit on this, making one species go through them to reproduce, making another go through them to breathe underwater (using some never-explained generator for their breathing devices that works long distance) and so on) advertised it as a solution to the environmental problems. Changing this dramatically, they said, would enable humans to colonize still more of the planet and live where habitation was otherwise impossible.
Now, this makes sense for underwater people (sort of. Technically, we *already* have people living underwater for long periods of time, and I have no doubt that, if pressed, we could make it better to live as humans underwater in domes and whatnot) because that stuff covers a good 70% of the planet. But for everybody else?
The truth is that humans already live in some pretty marginal areas. We've got people living 3 miles above sea level. There are people living in every desert in the world, up to and including Antarctica. People live right up at the poles, bumping up against the tree line. Every tiny volcanic island is inhabited, every swamp, every pestilential location on the globe. For crying out loud, there's people living in Australia, and it was even scarier when it was first settled! The only thing more remarkable than the fact that the rabbits are taking over there is that humans did it first.
Pretty much, if there's even the slimmest possibility of inhabiting an area, somebody has already inhabited it. Maybe they've left since then, moved or died out or got conquered and resettled, but somebody lived there at one point. Seriously, we're like the cockroaches of the vertebrate world. We have better brains, they have better hygiene. They can live two weeks with their heads cut off, we can build thermonuclear devices. They'll probably survive after the end of WW3, and there's a not-insignificant chance we will too.
This is not to insult my own species, you know. I rather admire cockroaches. They're survivors, perfectly suited for nearly any environment, and humans... well, despite the fact that we seemingly are suited for almost NO environment, we can live just about everywhere as well.
Except underwater without aid, which explains the mermaids.
Of course, it's entirely possible that many of the signers-up were just sick of their lives and wanted to start fresh in as dramatic a way as possible. Becoming a mutant freak definitely assures that all ties to your old life are broken! In that case, the "survive where humans can't!" line would just be a blatant marketing ploy. I can live with that.
Anyway, other than that it's a pretty good middle-grade book.
One thing kinda bugged me, and it relates to the premise and long-ago backstory. It's ignorable because there are other explanations, but I still felt, well, bothered by it.
See, apparently "a long time ago" (that is, at some point in OUR future) there was a plague, and environmental devastation, and life was becoming difficult for humans.
So some humans left earth, and some moved into domed cities, and some had nowhere to go so they continued their subsistence existence, and some paid good money to undergo major genetic modification to live as mythological creatures. We meet TWO new species that live underwater, and harpy-people and centaur-people and a spider-person. (Not the terms used in the book, and they're considered somewhat offensive in general.) We know of snake-people as well, and who knows what-all else is out there?
The excuse given is that the company responsible for these changes (and they make a pretty - and continuing! - profit on this, making one species go through them to reproduce, making another go through them to breathe underwater (using some never-explained generator for their breathing devices that works long distance) and so on) advertised it as a solution to the environmental problems. Changing this dramatically, they said, would enable humans to colonize still more of the planet and live where habitation was otherwise impossible.
Now, this makes sense for underwater people (sort of. Technically, we *already* have people living underwater for long periods of time, and I have no doubt that, if pressed, we could make it better to live as humans underwater in domes and whatnot) because that stuff covers a good 70% of the planet. But for everybody else?
The truth is that humans already live in some pretty marginal areas. We've got people living 3 miles above sea level. There are people living in every desert in the world, up to and including Antarctica. People live right up at the poles, bumping up against the tree line. Every tiny volcanic island is inhabited, every swamp, every pestilential location on the globe. For crying out loud, there's people living in Australia, and it was even scarier when it was first settled! The only thing more remarkable than the fact that the rabbits are taking over there is that humans did it first.
Pretty much, if there's even the slimmest possibility of inhabiting an area, somebody has already inhabited it. Maybe they've left since then, moved or died out or got conquered and resettled, but somebody lived there at one point. Seriously, we're like the cockroaches of the vertebrate world. We have better brains, they have better hygiene. They can live two weeks with their heads cut off, we can build thermonuclear devices. They'll probably survive after the end of WW3, and there's a not-insignificant chance we will too.
This is not to insult my own species, you know. I rather admire cockroaches. They're survivors, perfectly suited for nearly any environment, and humans... well, despite the fact that we seemingly are suited for almost NO environment, we can live just about everywhere as well.
Except underwater without aid, which explains the mermaids.
Of course, it's entirely possible that many of the signers-up were just sick of their lives and wanted to start fresh in as dramatic a way as possible. Becoming a mutant freak definitely assures that all ties to your old life are broken! In that case, the "survive where humans can't!" line would just be a blatant marketing ploy. I can live with that.
Anyway, other than that it's a pretty good middle-grade book.
