My first reading love is science fiction. Whenever we moved to a new town, I'd get a library card and read all the science fiction they had. Only then would I read the other books they had. This book is good, old-fashioned science fiction.
I especially liked their system of interstellar travel. They had a sort of transporter. At the sending port, you entered a machine and are scanned down to a molecular level. This scan, which turned you into a data file, destroyed your body. Then you were sent to wherever you were going to and the file was used to print you, starting with your body and ending with your mind. You were sedated during the copying phase. As far as you were concerned, you went to sleep at the sending station and woke up at the receiving station. Because the data file could be reused and print a second you (or more), there were strict rules about handling those files. You can tell I'm really taken with this idea.
This is also a YA story, mostly because the main character, Jessica, is 17. Her parents left her with her grandparents when she was 11 to go off exploring. Jess feels a bit abandoned by her folks, so she's not really happy when they have her sent to their new study site. There is a planet that used to have lots of life, until a giant volcano blew off most of the atmosphere and killed almost everything. Life is slowly returning, which makes it a perfect study subject. Jess is positive they only sent for her so they would have a cheep research assistant.
Things go wrong. The ship they were on crashed. Almost everybody died. The radio on the ship was broken. Jess needs to get to the habitat to use that radio to contact home base. Because standard practice is to reprint people who died on these missions and not rescue any survivors, Jess knows the only way to tell what happened would be to send a file of the information to herself at the sending station.
I liked this book so much, I read it in 4 days. I may read it again, later. It's a good book.
I especially liked their system of interstellar travel. They had a sort of transporter. At the sending port, you entered a machine and are scanned down to a molecular level. This scan, which turned you into a data file, destroyed your body. Then you were sent to wherever you were going to and the file was used to print you, starting with your body and ending with your mind. You were sedated during the copying phase. As far as you were concerned, you went to sleep at the sending station and woke up at the receiving station. Because the data file could be reused and print a second you (or more), there were strict rules about handling those files. You can tell I'm really taken with this idea.
This is also a YA story, mostly because the main character, Jessica, is 17. Her parents left her with her grandparents when she was 11 to go off exploring. Jess feels a bit abandoned by her folks, so she's not really happy when they have her sent to their new study site. There is a planet that used to have lots of life, until a giant volcano blew off most of the atmosphere and killed almost everything. Life is slowly returning, which makes it a perfect study subject. Jess is positive they only sent for her so they would have a cheep research assistant.
Things go wrong. The ship they were on crashed. Almost everybody died. The radio on the ship was broken. Jess needs to get to the habitat to use that radio to contact home base. Because standard practice is to reprint people who died on these missions and not rescue any survivors, Jess knows the only way to tell what happened would be to send a file of the information to herself at the sending station.
I liked this book so much, I read it in 4 days. I may read it again, later. It's a good book.