Learning the World
by Ken MacLeod · first published 2005
80% recommend20% neutral
A great sunliner is nearing the end of a four-hundred-year journey. A ship-born generation is tense with expectation for the new system that is to be their home. Expecting to find nothing more complex than bacteria and algae, the detection of electronic signals from one of the planets comes as a shock.
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Not sure about a short story, but there's a novel with that idea: Learning the World: a Scientific Romance by Ken MacLeod
on “Every Black Hole Contains a New Universe” ↗Nope. Ken MacLeod's 'learning the world'. The alien space bats were a nice touch. Charles Stross' book accelerando has an interesting take on the Fermi paradox too.
on “The Fermi Paradox” ↗…wouldn't pass your near-future filter, anyway), but the Fall Revolution series, and most of his stand-alone novels, do some really interesting things in just the neighborhood it sounds like you might enjoy. (Learning the World, while not near-future, is one of my favorite SF novels, full stop, and absolutely my favorite "first contact" story ever penned.) His contemporaries (geographically, as well as thematically) Richard…
on “Ghost in the Shell remains our most challenging film about technology” ↗I've been catching up on Macleod's output recently - I particularly liked Learning the World: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_the_World
on “List of spacecraft in the Culture series” ↗As an aside: there is a rather splendid explanation for stars going green in Ken MacLeod's SF novel Learning the World: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_the_World
on “What could make a star green?” ↗Ken MacLeod has a zoology degree - which is presumably where names like "The Stone Canal" came from... I like most of his novels, particularly "Learning the World" - which I guess is a reverse first contact novel.
on “The Realism of Our Times: Kim Stanley Robinson on how science fiction works” ↗This is a bit of a background point in the novel Learning the World (Ken Macleod).
on “Tiny bright objects discovered at dawn of universe baffle scientists” ↗