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Seven Views Of Olduvai Gorge - Hugo And Nebula Winner (2012)

by Mike Resnick(Favorite Author)

3.95 of 5 Votes: 4

languge

English

genre

Fantasy

publisher

Phoenix Pick

review 1: I heard great things about this novella--it won awards in the science fiction community, for example--so I was on the lookout for a copy of it when I was at the World Science Fiction convention, held in my hometown this year.It was originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (October/November 1994). The copy I bought was in _The Year's Best Science Fiction, Twelfth Annual Collection_ edited by Gardner Dozois.While reading Mike Resnick's novella, I was reminded of the cinematic masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey, for both works are science fiction on the cosmic scale and both attempt to say profound things about human existence.The human race expanded among the stars, ruling a cruel Empire over the intelligent beings of other worlds. The human rac... moree then went extinct, and some millennia after humankind's extinction, aliens researchers from various worlds investigate Olduvai Gorge, to learn more about this terrible, yet remarkable species.One of the alien researchers has a scrying-like power, that is, obtaining visions of the past from handling artifacts. Each artifact this alien handles comes from a different period in the human race, and this forms the basis for several mini-stories in this novella. Most of these mini-stories show humanity in an unflattering light, the violence and cold unconcern that humans are capable of.
review 2: SF doing what SF does best : look at the world from a new perspective, asking the big cosmological and existential questions. The perspective in this novella is alien: a team of galactic archeologists exploring the cradle of humanity - Olduvai Gorge - thousands of years after humanity has become extinct, tens of thousands of years since Man has conquered the galaxy.What made us reach for the stars? What made us fail the survival game? The title evokes Hokusai woodcuts that are more than just snapshots of pretty landscapes. It evokes epic struggles of man against elemental forces of nature, majestic vistas where people move like ants against the far off siluette of a volcano, be it Mt. Fuji or Mt Kilimanjaro.Are seven short tableaux enough to paint the whole history of humanity? After reading Mike Resnick account, I would say yes. In the hands of a master storyteller 50 pages or so are more than enough. From an opening gambit chanelling Arthur C Clarke and the prologue to 2001: A Space Oddissey, the destiny of humanity will be defined by weapons, slavery, racial discrimination, the extinction of animal life on Earth, the destruction of the environment, the exodus from the home planet that will ultimately lead back in an elegant symmetry to the team of aliens looking for answers in the dust of Olduvai Gorge.A novella well worth checking out. less

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