Emergency Skin
The Forward collection
N. K. Jemisin
Amazon Original Stories
Fiction, Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: An explorer from a rigidly-controlled colony world braves light-years of space and returns to the ecologically devastated birthplace of the human species in search of needed biological material. Success will bring the reward of skin and other luxuries deprived of all but the most worthy of the technocrati, descendants of the wise Founders who ensured humanity's survival by fleeing to the stars. But the planet once known as Earth is no wasteland. How is it possible that anything survived? What happened in the intervening centuries? And what does that mean about the space colonies?
REVIEW: This is a quick-reading story that turns old tropes about progress and the space race being the salvation of a dying Earth on their ear. The narrator is an AI implant in the mind of the never-named explorer, trying with increasing desperation to keep its mission on track in the face of dangerous distractions like "nature", "beauty", and "humanity." It's intriguing, thought-provoking, and hopeful in a world where "hope" may be the ultimate endangered species.
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