The Terraformers

Written by Annalee Newitz

Narrated by Emily Lawrence

This program includes original sound design.

From science fiction visionary Annalee Newitz comes The Terraformers, a sweeping, uplifting, and illuminating exploration of the future.

Destry's life is dedicated to terraforming Sask-E. As part of the Environmental Rescue Team, she cares for the planet and its burgeoning eco-systems as her parents and their parents did before her.

But the bright, clean future they're building comes under threat when Destry discovers a city full of people that shouldn’t exist, hidden inside a massive volcano.

As she uncovers more about their past, Destry begins to question the mission she's devoted her life to, and must make a choice that will reverberate through Sask-E's future for generations to come.

A science fiction epic for our times and a love letter to our future, The Terraformers will take you on a journey spanning thousands of years and exploring the triumphs, strife, and hope that find us wherever we make our home.

"Brilliantly thoughtful, prescient, and gripping.”--Martha Wells, The Murderbot Diaries

Also by Annalee Newitz
Autonomous
The Future of Another Timeline

A Macmillan Audio production from Tor Books.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Audio
• Release date: Jan 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9781250883001

Annalee Newitz

ANNALEE NEWITZ is an American journalist, editor, and author of fiction and nonfiction. They are the recipient of a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship from MIT, and have written for Popular Science, The New Yorker, and the Washington Post. They founded the science fiction website io9 and served as Editor-in-Chief from 2008–2015, and then became Editor-in-Chief at Gizmodo and Tech Culture Editor at Ars Technica. Their book Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction was nominated for the LA Times Book Prize in science. Their first novel, Autonomous, won a Lambda award.

Reviews for The Terraformers

[Trayvone MAthis · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is more so a social justice fiction. While it is a sci fi. Don't come here looking for wonder or intense action. It's a good book though supremely thought out with some social rights and society points I had to debate with my friends on a few occasions. Just not the wondrous or adrenalin filled stories I usually seek out.

[Baron Sekiya · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Wasn’t my cup of tea. Too many anthropomorphized animals as characters in this future setting. Was expecting more of a hard science novel than it was. But that's just me, others may enjoy the colorful cast of characters. Didn’t care for the occasional to frequent sound effects.

[Amelia Volkova · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

"Everything is a part of nature."
This was such a hopeful and sometimes cosy sci-fi, and whoever compared it to Chambers book, I have to disagree, even though I loved psalm for the wild-built, it lacked something to fully make me feel cosy and hopeful at times, and terraformers had exactly that missing part.
It has long and detailed world-building with character point of views changing with years passing to help us see how a planet is not just a place, but also the people that live there. They make the world, they build and raise and comfort and create and in the end I can understand why someone might not like this unusual story, because apparently not everyone wants a kinder futuristic world with lush ecosystem and diverse population.
Whoever complains about it being a vegan propaganda, needs to get over themselves. Some of us don't want wars and world hunger in our future, we just want a world full of hope and heart, where we get to live alongside animals equally, or as much as possible.
I knew I felt connection with this book even before I read it, and now I can surely say that I've found the vegan sci-fi I've been looking for, we need more books like this(keep in mind, it didn't use word "vegan" even once, but managed to show how such a world is possible, more or less)

[Billie · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The Terraformers
by Annalee Newitz
Science Fiction
Scribd Audio
18+

Destry and her mount, which is a mouse, are part of a team that was created, so owned by their company, to protect the planet's environment so the company can 'sell' plots of land to 'humans'. They go to investigate a collapse in a lava tube and find a city under the volcano whose inhabitants were supposed to have died after their job was over.

Ignoring that the characters who were hundreds of years old and some were supposed to be intelligent, acted like whiny pre-teens, this book started off great. The company that terraformed this planet are ruthless with their 'robot/DNA/modified' workers and will do whatever it takes to protect their investment, including mass murder.

Then this book jumped a few centuries and was no longer interesting, then it jumped again and fell straight down the gutter. I sped up the audio because I wanted to get it done and over with.

The characters are not 'human' some look human, some look like animals, and some are a jumble, but they are considered 'people' because they can think and have living tissue, then there are some that were never really explained if they were real, created as animals, or what they actually were. Were they really birds or created to look like birds and have mechanical parts?

I did listen to the audio version and while I liked the narrator, the sound effects were irritating. I almost DNF-ed it when I found this out. It's a gimmick that can ruin and take a star away from a story.

There is violence and sexual situations with beings who are not of the same species so it's not suitable for readers under eighteen.

The first part of the book is the only reason I can give this...

2 Stars