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Building Harlequin's Moon

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Building Harlequin's Moon

By: Larry Niven, Brenda Cooper
Narrated by: Tom Weiner
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About this listen

The first interstellar ship, John Glenn, fled a solar system populated by rogue AIs and machine/human hybrids, threatened by too much nanotechnology, and rife with political dangers. The John Glenn’s crew intended to terraform the nearly pristine planet Ymir in hopes of creating a utopian society that will limit intelligent technology, but by some miscalculation they have landed in the wrong system. Short on the antimatter needed to continue to Ymir, they must shape nearby planet Harlequin’s moon, Selene, into a new, temporary home and rebuild their store of antimatter through decades of terraforming.

Gabriel, the head terraformer, now leads this nearly impossible task; his primary tools the uneducated and nearly illiterate children of the original colonists, born and bred to build Harlequin’s moon into a virtual antimatter factory. With no concept of the future and with life defined as duty, one girl, Rachel Vanowen, begins to ask herself, what will become of the children of Selene once the terraforming is complete?

©2005 Larry Niven and Brenda Cooper (P)2012 Blackstone Audio, Inc. Hard Science Fiction Science Fiction Space Opera

Critic reviews

“Niven and Cooper have crafted a multigenerational, star-spanning epic with intriguing, fast-paced action. Against a backdrop of mind-boggling technology, the authors ask important questions about how far science should go and its impact on social structures and human rights. Niven and Cooper are playing God on a grand scale." (Brian Herbert, New York Times best-selling author)
“Fans of both hard and softer, psychological SF will welcome veteran Niven and newcomer Cooper’s well-written tale…Niven and Cooper provide complicated characters, particularly the AI, which struggle with realistic moral dilemmas.” ( Publishers Weekly)
“Exploiting Niven’s classic flare for world building, he and Cooper craft an entertaining epic with subtexts concerning cultural obsessiveness and the fear and worship of science.” ( Booklist)
All stars
Most relevant
After a brief but interesting section on the building of the moon (Pure Niven) the story goes flatline.

It takes a long time for anything to happen, but the sad truth is that nothing much does occur in the story. The last 30 minutes or so are rushed and cover approximately 200 years.

This desperately needs an abbreviated version, and even then I wouldn’t’ recommend it.

A very over-hyped novel

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