Aurora has yet another take on humanity reaching out to the stars to become an interstellar race. And yet.

One of my largest pet peeves in science fiction has been that of “making it against all odds”. With the backdrop of the entirety of the universe, almost all such stories feel almost completely unbelievable, and highly improbable at best. Aurora tackles this by describing the harsh reality that entails interstellar travel at speeds less than the speed of light, and the physical and psychological toll it takes on the progeny of the initial spacefarers.

While the premise and ending are strong, the initial half of the book is uneventful, and only the acclaim this book has received kept me going. The ship’s AI, the protagonists and the journey are all captivating aspects that tick all of my sci-fi checkboxes, but the story lacks substance, and most parts feel entirely tangential to the main plot-line.

Any amount of math or statistics that occurs in a sci-fi novel immediately catches my attention, and this book was no different. The concept of reversion to the meanthe phenomenon that arises if a variable is extreme on its first measurement but closer to the average on its second measurement and if it is extreme on its second measurement but closer to the average on its first. was novel to me, and as always extremely interesting as other mathematical paradoxes. Jevon’s paradox and Zeno’s paradox also make an appearance, as does Fermi’s.

Life is a planetary thing. It begins on a planet and is part of that planet. It’s something that water planets do, maybe. But it develops to live where it is. So it can only live there, because it evolved to live there. That’s its home. So, you know, Fermi’s paradox has its answer, which is this: by the time life gets smart enough to leave its planet, it’s too smart to want to go. Because it knows it won’t work. So it stays home. It enjoys its home. As why wouldn’t you? It doesn’t even bother to try to contact anyone else. Why would you? You’ll never hear back. So that’s my answer to the paradox. You can call it Euan’s Answer.