The Terraformers

By: Annalee Newitz

Narrated by: Emily Lawrence

From science fiction visionary Annalee Newitz comes The Terraformers, a sweeping, uplifting, and illuminating exploration of the future.

'Fascinating and readable in equal measure, The Terraformers will remake your mind like its cast remakes an entire planet' John Scalzi

Destry's life is dedicated to terraforming Sask-E. As part of the Environmental Rescue Team, she cares for the planet and its burgeoning eco-systems as her parents and their parents did before her.

But the bright, clean future they're building comes under threat when Destry discovers a city full of people that shouldn't exist, hidden inside a massive volcano.

As she uncovers more about their past, Destry begins to question the mission she's devoted her life to, and must make a choice that will reverberate through Sask-E's future for generations to come.

A science fiction epic for our times and a love letter to our future, The Terraformers will take you on a journey spanning thousands of years and exploring the triumphs, strife, and hope that find us wherever we make our home.


'The Terraformers is so engaging, you could almost miss the pyrotechnic worldbuilding and bone-deep intelligence. Newitz continues doing some of the best work in the field' James S. A. Corey



'A complete reimagining of the great galactic story of terraformers. Startling fun!' Kim Stanley Robinson


'Newitz always sees to the heart of complex systems and breaks them down with poetic ferocity' N. K. Jemisin


Also by Annalee Newitz
Autonomous
The Future of Another Timeline
Look out for A Wall Is Also A Road, October 2026©2023 Annalee Newitz

Imagine if Charles Stross and Samuel Delaney populated a Kim Stanley Robinson landscape

I started this book thinking it was a slightly lightweight far future adventure romp, like Anne McCaffrey or Timothy Zahn, with a bit of David Brin’s Uplift books. And, while the narrative keeps the exciting pace of that type of story, I was also excited to find it got deeper as I went.

The thing that had initially bugged me the most - that Late Capitalist office culture, complete with oligarchs and CCed memos, would still be around 40 000 years from now - came into focus an issue Newitz was pointing to, not a careless lack of imagination. If you enjoy Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars books and Cory Doctorow’s Walkaway (I did), there’s plenty of the same radically diverse revolution-through-committee-meeting stuff here. But also an effervescence of cool ideas: the frustrations epistemic injustice embodied in the “blessed,” whose cognitive limiters make it impossible to vocalize thoughts outside of their work; taking parental responsibility seriously, and broadly; making sentient trains not as slaves forced to work, but free people whose bodies would make helping others and solving commuting Issues problems a fulfilling kind of labour to choose.

And I laughed out loud several times when plot details turned on actually very well written descriptions of sex or cruising cultures that get more stranger with each of the three generations the story covers.

This was also an excellent audio production, with Emily Lawrence’s capable narration assisted by fantastic sound design, using sound effects and music to bring an uncanny, appealing society to life.