July 27 - "The Island"

“The Island”
by Peter Watts
The New Space Opera 2 (2009)

* * * (Good) Science Fiction

A work crew in space building travel gates across the universe comes in contact with an intelligent super-entity that directs them to build their new gate in a different location.

I hate when stories make me feel dumb. It’s the science here that seems beyond me. And I’m frustrated with the fact that it may not even be “real” science, but rather something fictional and thus not supposed to make sense in a real way. Still, once I finally keyed into the idea of the story, it was entertaining. It took me some time – over halfway through before I started to understand what was happening – but eventually things made enough sense that I could see the story. I may have not taken away what the author intended with the tale, but I got spaceships and drama and challenging questions: good science fiction.