Skye Object 3270a

Skye Object 3270A is a (barely) fourteen year old girl in Silk, a city some way up on the space elevator over Deception Well. Together with her best friend Zia and two boys, she goes on an adventure that will change their lives forever.

Skye was discovered in an escape pod, in cryogenic suspension, at the age of two, and much of this book tells the story of her seeking for the truth to what happened to the ship the pod came from. I found the book both funny and exciting, although there were some parts that didn't hold my interest as much. All in all, a good book, and I wouldn't mind reading more from this author. ( )

I received this book through LibraryThing Early Reviewers. I have read, and liked, Linda Nagata before, but I just couldn't get into this one. It may be just that it's aimed at young adults, although I also read quite a bit of YA. Or maybe it was just because it was more of a space opera, and I'm not really into that right now. For whatever reason, it took me forever to read this because I found it somewhat boring. But that's not to say that a younger person, more interested in hard SF, might not find it interesting. ( )

It's been forever since I got a copy of this through the Librarything Early Reviewers giveaway. I kept starting and stopping it. There just wasn't enough to hold my attention and I never really connected to the characters. I am finally going to give up on trying to finish it. ( )

I received Skye Object 3270a by Linda Nagata from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program a little while ago. It was great and I’m a little annoyed at myself for putting off reading it for so long.

It’s a book that can be classified as middle grade or YA — personally I’d call it YA because a) it’s about teenagers and b) I don’t really understand where the boundaries for middle grade are supposed to be anyway. On the other hand, the main character is 14, a little younger than standard for YA and the romantic story line isn’t super serious as in many YA books.

Skye Object 3270a is set on and above a distant planet in the far distant future. It’s about Skye, who was found in an escape capsule when she was a baby. No one knows where she came from or how long she was in hibernation in the capsule before being discovered. She is named after the astronomical designation for her capsule before they realised it was a capsule (which I thought was a bit mean of the civilisation, but at least no one teases her for it).

Skye and her friends are ados, adolescents in a world where people live for several centuries (perhaps indefinitely, but the planet they live above (up a space elevator) hasn’t been settled for that long and the oldest people were just under 300 I think). People are considered ados and aren’t taken seriously until they’re 100 and become Real people. Interestingly, this sees 14 year olds lumped into the same demographic as 99 year old and they’re all treated more or less the same. Which is to say, sort of taken seriously but also dismissed as a bit silly and reckless.

And reckless is a pretty good description of Skye and her friends. From bungee jumping down the space elevator shaft the maximum allowed distance (4.3 km) to breaking many rules for a variety of reasons, there are lots of entertaining shenanigans in this book. There’s also a more serious underlying mission to find out where Skye really came from.

What really struck me about Skye Object 3270a is the depth of the world building. From the space elevator to the freefall scenes to the nanobots and biological oddities, Nataga’s world was not only physically plausible but rich and detailed. An exemplary example of SF worldbuilding. Apparently, Skye Object 3270a is set in the same world (but different characters) as Nagata’s Deception Well (which is indeed the name of the planet in Skye Object 3270a) and a few other stand alone novels. I bought the Locus Award-winning The Bohr Maker (also in that universe but set earlier in time) a while ago and it has just jumped up a few places in my virtual TBR pile.

I highly recommend Skye Object 3270a to lovers of quality science fiction and adventure. Although it is written for younger readers, I think it can be enjoyed by all (even if older readers, like myself, shake their heads at the dangerous stunts the characters pull).

5 / 5 stars ( )

[ Skye Object 3270a by Linda Nagata
Skye Object is a fourteen year old girl. She is called that because she arrived at her present home in a space life boat. When the boat entered the Silk system, it was plotted as “sky object 3270a.” The name stuck to the two year old, found in frozen sleep. Skye is the main character in this young adult science fiction tale.
Silk is a city that hangs on a space elevator grounded in Deception Well, a now uninhabitable planet three hundred kilometers below Silk. Skye has three close friends, one girl and two boys. They form the core element of the story. It is a book about adolescents more than technology, although the technology comes through as the teens explore their surroundings. It may be stretching a point, but it reminds me of the movie Memphis Belle, a film in which a B-17 bomber is the setting, but the story is about her crew, young fliers in war.
We experience the teens learning how their society works, about each other, and about themselves. There is no doubt that Nagata knows adolescents. I learned from her. Skye matures with her friends, and she has an underlying drive. She wants to know more about her origins. What she does know is that her mother space ship was invaded and she was launched in an escape/rescue pod. She also knows that her little pod is intact at the external end of the space elevator along with the construction yard for other space vessels, and for the maintenance of the elevator itself. The hope that fuels her drive is that there are other like vessels out there with members of her original society. She thinks they too should be rescued, and wonders why no others have arrived at Silk.
With the support of her friends Skye’s compulsion leads them to take a ride on the exterior of the space elevator to find her life boat. It is tuned to Skye’s presence and she wants to board it to see if the little vessel will send an “all is well here” signal to other pods she feels are out there. This is the part that I found impossible to put down even for the television program Hogan’s Heroes. Nagata’s knowledge of how things behave in orbit is informative, and her descriptions of close calls and their danger are enthralling. It is very realistic yet mystical…and, for Skye, it works. Her quest for background and family is absolute, and she looks forward to feeling whole. There is a promising sequel here.
Nagata’s characters are lively, curious, and constantly on the move in many aspects of their development. The author’s descriptions of their activity held my interest. There is always something happening and my attention never flagged. I did not think that this genre would do that for me. I am new to young adult science fiction, and found this book delightfully smart.