Yes! R&S is my favorite of his too.

I like Aurora, and think it would be a fine place to start. Despite the problems that people have outlined here, it’s a relatively shorter and more focused book than KSR’s other works.

Interesting. So you think KSR would repudiate the timescale of the Mars trilogy, knowing what he knows now?

This question of whether they turned around too quickly is an interesting one and I’m glad for those who have brought it up here. But speaking as someone who was in NYC for 9/11, I would say that it’s hard to overestimate how quickly people can panic and over-react to an unexpected catastrophic crisis.

A couple of further thoughts inspired by the comments so far:

I think island devolution is a relatively confirmed idea. I first came across it in Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs & Steel.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around “Euan’s Answer.” It’s hard to express how much this idea surprised and depressed me. I literally had to stop reading the book in order to process it, and I went online to look for interviews with KSR to see whether he’d said anything further about it. (He hasn’t yet, at least…