In the hands of another author it might amount to tedious specifying and dry-as-interstellar-dust worldbuilding, but Robinson makes it come thrillingly, grippingly alive. This artificial mind is happy to provide great scads of data about every aspect of the ship. Indeed, Robinson foregrounds the bare facts of this voyage by giving most of his narration over to the ship’s central computer as it painstakingly works towards a de facto Turing test pass. Tau Ceti has many planets, around one of which is a moon with good levels of oxygen and no indigenous life: a perfect blank slate for new colonists. The ship has been flying for 160 years and is now approaching its target system, undertaking the ticklish business of slowing from 0.1-of-light-speed to a more manageable velocity. Inside are 12 separate ecosystems, from tundra to tropical, each with their own human population, maximised for diversity of flora and fauna. Her world is two huge wheels, spun to imitate gravity, fixed around a long central axle aimed at the star Tau Ceti.
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