Existence

By: David Brin

Narrated by: Kevin T. Collins, Robin Miles, L. J. Ganser

Length: 32 hrs and 25 mins

Publisher's summary

Best-selling, award-winning futurist David Brin returns to globe-spanning, high concept SF with Existence.

Gerald Livingston is an orbital garbage collector. For a hundred years, people have been abandoning things in space, and someone has to clean it up. But there’s something spinning a little bit higher than he expects, something that isn’t on the decades’ old orbital maps. An hour after he grabs it and brings it in, rumors fill Earth’s infomesh about an "alien artifact". Thrown into the maelstrom of worldwide shared experience, the Artifact is a game-changer - a message in a bottle, an alien capsule that wants to communicate. The world reacts as humans always do: with fear and hope and selfishness and love and violence. And insatiable curiosity.

©2012 David Brin (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Smart, intellectually stimulating scifi.

Reminds me of Liu Cixin and Neil Stephenson. First time reading this author. Will continue.

Where did they go?...... Not Brins best!

Main characters disappear or are remanded to small roles. This is also several books smushed down to one. Things are moving along and then suddenly you are 26 years in the future.

There are some good parts but you are left hanging several times and the story line gets twisted.

After a long absence, David Brin is Back

What other book might you compare Existence to and why?

In the Afterward for his book Earth, David Brin laments how hard it is to write a Science Fiction story set 50 years in the future, and how historically nobody has ever gotten it right. Here brin takes another pass at a near now. A future world neither Utopian or Dystopian. Just "Topian"....

Existence jumps around between its various characters in a scattered way, many are never fully fleshed out, and some simply fall off camera when they cease being interesting to Brin. Existence is a novel that either needed to be longer or shorter, cutting out the minor characters or giving them better resolution.

Still that issue aside the story is interesting and well narrated, the aliens and the threat/opportunity they represent are refreshingly original. This is however very much a book about ideas not people. The book is intended to be thought provoking, not to lead you down the familiar path of interpersonal drama.

Also noteworthy is the fact that Brin writes what I consider to be a solid ending to the story, Brin's biggest failing as an author has always been his Deus Ex Machanica endings, While there is a tiny touch of that here, it is a much better ending than seen in his other novels.

So thought provoking it was almost over my head...

Is there anything you would change about this book?

Less technical jargon for me but it certainly kept the flavor of the book front and center. Also - still not clear what the tie in was with autistics.

If you’ve listened to books by David Brin before, how does this one compare?

First one (and probably last)

Which character – as performed by the narrators – was your favorite?

Tor (if spelled correctly)

Could you see Existence being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

Yes. Charlize Theron as Tor.

Any additional comments?

This was a bookclub choice, or I wouldn't have read it. I loved that I did....and made it all the way through. Very interesting ideas.

Not getting to the point

I do not believe that the book is bad, I believe that the author tried to lengthen the book.
The book had one main interesting plotline but that plotline is too far apart (at the 2.4, 4 & 6 hours Mark) and is spread around the book via other sub stories which will probably Marge later on to a single story but what I can't take anymore is the philosophy that starts with each of this sub stories.

You get to like one story or plot only to have it stopped and moved in to philosophy and something else. It reminds me my conversations with my roommate who also like philosophy: we would start discussing a point only to move on to other things and eventually reach a discussion about something completely different. Even when I noticed it it was extremely hard to keep him on subject.

I do not believe this book or story is bad. I just can't take it anymore this jumping around between plots

Interesting but needed an editor

The story started off strongly but really started to drag after the halfway point. The plot and premise are interesting but the novel really needed an editor. Multiple meandering plot lines with no clear direction. Painful. I'm so tempted to quilt punishing myself and just stop listening.

A 2 or 4 starts book

This one is hard to rate, I am torn between 2 or 4 stars.
The author keeps raising chapters to a great climax and ends them just before the last word. Unlike cliffhangers, this just tastes artifical, when after 2 other chapters he reveals the end, the magic is gone and makes it hard to follow the story. This trick gets old very fast, and in the end is just annoying.
There are many side stories that are just abandoned, for which we never get a conclusion. He takes us over very nice journeys that appear to be critical to the story, and then a new part begins and with luck many chapters after you might get a small clue on how a particular story ended. I don't give examples since that will spoil it for future readers, but, I would say 30% of the pages are just there no make space, without leading anywhere.
On the other hand, the main story is great, well written and keeps you inside the story world. It tackles a nice problem the writing is great, characters have depth, for all that I would give it 4 starts.

Shatner reads Brin

Loved the story. The narrators seemed to think that every! line! was! climactic!, which could be tiring.

Uplifting (heheh)

If you could sum up Existence in three words, what would they be?

optimistic hard scifi

What was one of the most memorable moments of Existence?

Reporter in the blimp.

Which scene was your favorite?

The description of walking down the street and the vr overlay early in the book.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

No extreme reactions.

Any additional comments?

This is a really interesting book. The story is based on lots of recent trends happening in the world in science and other wise and extrapolating some really interesting permutations of where it could all lead and how the world responds to events. Transparency, the prevalence of cheap and good recording, climate, over population, direct and instant access to information, real time VR overlays, etc...

David Brin goes a different direction than many other books that take one trend or new technology and then postulates some future taking it to some ridiculous extreme. Creating some bizarre future that bears no resemblance to our own history or present. Where everyone is grown in a vat and controlled by the state or everyone lives in isolation never seeing each other, etc...

Instead he (much more realistically) presents a world with literally massive amounts of people all with their own ideas, prejudices and goals all working against and with each other. Many things like improving VR technology, cheap and easy camera technology, social networking and instant access to vast amounts of information, climate change, genetic tinkering, etc... All advance, become part of the world and blend in different ways. Causing problems, solving problems, etc... A very rich world with lots of layers and very believable. You could easily recognize the world he presents evolving from our world.

I also enjoy how he presents different peoples viewpoints. Never mocking the ideas of others but instead embracing them and respectfully presenting the validity of varied positions and the arguments they present. Very mature.

WOW!

I've been a life long fan of science fiction. I couldn't count how many books I've read and once the audio version became more main stream, that number increased until there is hardly a single waking hour that there isn't a book in my ear. Occasionally I may go a week without but that's rare. This book threw me for a loop. By now I can usually tell where a book is going. I may find an interesting perspective or idea that's presented and think it was brilliant. This writer completely blind sided me with this book. I was so into this one. It took me to places and ideas that were completely original in my experience. I not only recommended this book to everyone but also wouldn't shut up about it.