User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
Ark was my second read from the Forward collection and my second least favourite. To be fair, I think I liked it more than a lot of other readers did, judging by the reviews, but it was very slow for such a short story.
I like this story more when looking back over it than I did while I was reading. It's a very slow, quiet tale, exploring the beauty of Earth through horticulture. Samantha is a scientist, cataloging plant samples to take on the Ark when the final people leave Earth. Most have already been evacuated and Earth's last days are rapidly approaching in the form of an asteroid.
There's some understated beauty to it, but the lack of connection with the characters or any real emotional drive to the story kept me at a distance. The idea itself is very simple and it presents a sad nostalgia for Earth and all still left to discover about it. After I had read it and given it some thought, it struck me as a kind of love letter to our planet. It's just too bad that the story itself was not as compelling as the idea suggests.
Randomize by Andy Weir - ⭑☆☆☆☆
Emergency Skin by N.K. Jemisin - ⭑⭑⭑⭑⭑
You Have Arrived at Your Destination by Amor Towles - ⭑⭑⭑⭑☆
The Last Conversation by Paul Tremblay - ⭑⭑⭑⭑☆
Summer Frost by Blake Crouch - ⭑⭑⭑⭑☆
Rating: really liked it
Somewhat bleak and sad short read about the Earth being evacuated because of an oncoming asteroid. The story mostly deals with a girl named Samantha who is cataloging plant samples to take before she leaves with the final people on the Ark. An interesting and different story. It would've been nice if it was a little longer to see what happens to the people in the future who are on the Ark.
This story was part of the Amazon "Forward Collection" series.
Rating: really liked it
This short story was the softest one in the Forward Collection. Almost melancholic.
Third place.
Rating: really liked it
Well, this read was actually a pleasant surprise for me. I thought Veronica Roth's DIVERGENT trilogy went off the rails in the second book, and I never even read the controversial third book. But this contemplative, melancholic novella was really well done.
An asteroid is about to crash into the earth, and it's a worldwide extinction event - the asteroid has been appropriately named Finis. Humanity has known this was coming for over 20 years (the asteroid did a few flybys first) and somehow everyone has managed to leave Earth for another planet (how exactly this was pulled off is never explained, which I thought was a big hole in the story).
The only remaining people are a group of scientists who are finishing up the collection and cataloging of various plants and animals. They're planning to take off in their two spaceship "Arks" just a few days before Finis hits. But Sarah, a horticulturist, isn't planning to get on the Ark, because of complicated Reasons.
Ark won't be to every reader's taste (the GR reviews are all over the map). There's a lot - maybe too much - talk about plants generally and orchids in particular. But if you're in the mood for a thoughtful, slower-paced SF novella, you might enjoy this one.
Full review to come!
Rating: really liked it
The final story I read in the Forward Collection, Veronica Roth’s
Ark, is a quiet, slow, contemplative and understated tale focusing on the loss of everything familiar and unexpected beauty even in the last days of the world as we know it, with tentative hope shining through the melancholy and sadness. It should have been one of my favorites - after all, I usually love slow and contemplative character-focused science fiction -
but in the end I found myself a bit dissatisfied and also, frankly, a bit bored. “You’ve just found a new species, in the last forty-eight hours of human occupancy of Earth.“
This is a very slow and quiet story of the beauty and loss in the last days of the world, right before an asteroid collision with Earth is going to send the remaining life on the planet the way of dinosaurs. Having known this for a while, humanity managed to arrange apparently seamless evacuation to another planet in giant ark ships, taking with it, in the true ark fashion, samples of plants and animals to preserve whatever is possible of Earth’s life diversity. Only a few scientists are still left, working on the seed vault on Svalbard, getting last-minute samples just weeks and days before the fateful impact.
“Borders had stopped mattering after the asteroid Finis was discovered twenty years ago. Everyone was just an Earthling now.”
We briefly learn all this while seeing these last few days before departure through the eyes of Samantha, a lonely botanist who just may have her own plans for the end of the known world. In the last few days of leisurely cataloguing plants, hanging out and reminiscing with fellow scientists, dredging up the ghosts of the past, all while an unexpected and beautiful discovery is about to upend her own world up until now soaked in melancholy and sadness.
“So maybe he had been apologizing for giving her life in the first place, when he knew it would be full of dread. She wished she could have told him that life was already full of dread, no matter who you were. That there was nothing you could have that you couldn’t one day lose. That autumn always gave way to winter, but it was her favorite time of year—those fleeting bursts of beauty before the branches went bare.”
But the contemplative melancholy sadness goes on for too long - for the entire story, actually. If the idea of learning about the upcoming devastation and decision to leave the planet seems interesting to explore - well, it’s not here, we are just briefly told about it, with no mention of technical or moral challenges. If you wonder how it’s even possible to evacuate pretty much everyone with all the billions of us - keep wondering. But if you want to know about orchids - well, you are in the right place. In the face of an apocalypse it’s nice to focus on small things (small tiny seemingly insignificant things is what existence is really made of) -
but when the mind keeps jumping instead to the hints of the more interesting things in the story, it does not bode well. The quietness of the story fails to be captivating enough, sadly.
Short stories are an art form, and they truly benefit from tightness and conciseness that makes a tiny story feel full and developed. But this one does not manage it. It seems to be more of a vignette than a developed SF story.
Hey, I get it, I’m supposed to care about the transience of life and beauty and the miracle of fragility of life. But all my brain cared about are the questions about how the society got to this point of departure and not that much about Samantha talking about life and orchids. And I failed to connect with Samantha or Hagen at all, which didn’t give me much at all in the character-driven story.
For all I cared in the end, they can stay, they can go, or they can just pack up and move to the damn asteroid.So yeah, I did not care much for it. But it’s not badly written, so that’s good. Plus I got a kick out of this quote:
“Don’t be that guy,” Samantha said. She closed her eyes. “You know, the one who says he’ll bring Ulysses as one of his desert-island books.”
2.5 stars. A bit underwhelming.———————
The Forward Collection, in the order read:‘Emergency Skin’ by N.K. Jemisin: Lovely. 5 stars.
‘Randomize’ by Andy Weir: Meh. 2 stars.
‘The Last Conversation’ by Paul Tremblay: Eerie. 4 stars.
‘You Have Arrived at Your Destination’ by Amor Towles: Perfectly adequate. 3 stars.
‘Summer Frost’ by Blake Crouch: Very intelligent (artificially?). 4.5 stars.
‘Ark’ by Veronica Roth: Underwhelming melancholy. 2.5 stars.
Rating: really liked it
[where they had to decide what one record album they would bring to space if they could only have one. It was an interesting c
Rating: really liked it
Rating: 3.5/5.0
Genre:
Science Fiction + Dystopia
This was a good short story about a scientist called Samantha. She has the responsibility of getting all the plant samples from earth planet to take them on the ship Ark before Finis asteroid hits the earth and ends all life on the planet.
The story is slow but beautifully written. Its atmosphere somehow reminded me of an indie film that I love a lot called Another Earth. The ending was fitting for the story. There is not much character development because it is less than 40 pages in total. Ark is the first book in the Forward series which is an Amazon Original Series. I give it strong 3.5 stars out of 5.0.
Available on Kindle Unlimited
Rating: really liked it
***4 stars***What happens when you know the end of the world is coming? In this story a huge asteroid is headed toward Earth, with its destruction as a certain result. Thankfully, with enough warning, most of the human population has been evacuated on spaceships. Only a select few stay behind before they are too loaded onto the last "ark" leaving Earth.
The focus here is on the human need to fulfill a job. Samantha is a young botanist in charge of preserving pieces of nature by cataloguing and sampling as many plants as possible to take with them. She just has a secret agenda - she doesn't plan on leaving, instead wanting to stay behind and see the world die. But then, unexpectedly, she discovers a new species of orchid and makes a special connection with one of the older scientists. So her plans might just change after all.
Fact is - Ark is a beautiful and moving story. It gets you invested in the characters and really makes you think about how life would be different with the true perspective of an imminent apocalyptic catastrophe. Veronica Roth’s contribution to the Forward Collection was original and well written, and I wish it continued.
Rating: really liked it
I really enjoyed this sci-fi short story! Even though it was slow at certain points, the writing always flowed well and the characters remained true to themselves! The conversations about plants were also quite interesting.
Rating: really liked it
This was well written-at least enough so that I wanted more-I wanted to know more about the people getting ready to leave the planet. Maybe a little more about how their lives went, knowing their planet would soon be unable to support life. Instead, I got a lot about plants, and one woman's personal history and her final decision. I was a bit bored.
*I obtained this audio free through Amazon Prime.*
**Read 6.10.20, during a time which feels like the end of earth as we know it. I'm not adding reading dates so this does not add to my reading goal for the year. (I don't count short stories, unless they're part of a collection or anthology.**
Rating: really liked it
Loved it!!
Mel 🖤🐶🐺🐾
Rating: really liked it
Rather slow, twee and overly sweet for my taste, certainly taking into account it’s a 38 page story about the end of the worldWe follow Samantha, a horticulturist on an evacuated earth. She researches plants in the Svalbard gene vault to include these on Ark Flora, preserving biodiversity while humanity moves to
earth the sequel. An asteroid is coming to bring the planet back to a pristine state.
You might imagine everyone is freaked out and racing to save as much as they can, but Samantha and friends have time to stack a boat with supplies, bring lunch to people a hour away growing orchids in the midst of blizzards and even hit a blunt while categorizing plants.
Despite the implausibilities I liked the atmosphere Roth portrayed: melancholic, tinged with love for a dissapearing planet and people lost. The writing is quite nice with some pretty, almost selfhelp like quotes included below.
Why take a shower when you’re just going to get dirty? Why eat when you’re just going to get hungry? Every flower dies eventually, Sam. But not yet.
She wished she could have told him that life was already full of dread, no matter who you were. That there was nothing you could have that you couldn’t one day lose. That autumn always gave way to winter, but it was her favorite time of year—those fleeting bursts of beauty before the branches went bare.
“Well, you can’t love everything equally,” she said. “You just can’t—and if you did, then it’s the same as loving nothing at all. So you have to hold just a few things dear, because that’s what love is. Particular. Specific.”But the story felt implausible (like how would we evacuate 7,5 billion people into space?) and non-urgent, something I would have at least expected based on the basic premise of the story.
2,5 stars rounded down.
Rating: really liked it
The Publisher Says: On the eve of Earth’s destruction, a young scientist discovers something too precious to lose, in a story of cataclysm and hope by the #1
New York Times bestselling author of the Divergent trilogy.
It’s only two weeks before an asteroid turns home to dust. Though most of Earth has already been evacuated, it’s Samantha’s job to catalog plant samples for the survivors’ unknowable journey beyond.
Preparing to stay behind and watch the world end, she makes a final human connection.
As certain doom hurtles nearer, the unexpected and beautiful potential for the future begins to flower.
Veronica Roth’s Ark is part of Forward, a collection of six stories of the near and far future from out-of-this-world authors. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single thought-provoking sitting.THESE SIX STORIES ARE FREE TO READ FOR ALL PRIME MEMBERS. NO KINDLE UNLIMITED NEEDED. AS LONG AS YOUR MEMBERSHIP REMAINS IN GOOD STANDING THEY WILL REMAIN IN YOUR COLLECTION.
My Review: The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is a very real thing, one that I am a bit surprised exists...it's so logical, so self-evidently necessary a thing that I'm amazed some religious nut or another hasn't blown it up...and has existed in differing forms since 1984. If there is to be any smallest hope of survival for humanity, this type of gene bank/seed collection/research project must exist and be replicated many, many times over. Blessedly, the Nordic countries and Kew Gardens in the UK are making this global movement happen. I personally thank them for this difficult, contentious, and urgent task being done to benefit all of humankind.
Author Roth, whose Divergent series was not to my personal taste, is a skilled phrasemaker and a keen observer of Life. I was utterly transported to Svalbard, brought *right*there* by this stellar phrase:
The land had glowed blue—beautiful in the way that a Rothko painting was beautiful, because it was empty enough to shrink a person and then swallow them.
Two things I adore—Arctic landscapes and Rothko paintings—brought together in a way I'd never so much as dreamed was possible. I treasure moments of discovery like this, they make mental furniture fresh and interesting again by unexpected interrelationships.
Samantha, whose world was always going to be destroyed in her lifetime by the irresistible force of a five-mile-wide asteroid Author Roth (or series creator Blake Crouch, I don't know for sure which) named "Finis" (Latin for "end" and the title of a much-anthologized story from a 1906 issue of
The Argosy magazine) meeting the Earth's crust, is an ultimate orphan...her family all dead...as well as a detail-oriented and thorough person. Perfect type to have working on this program, like she was designed for it:
So maybe {her father} had been apologizing for giving her life in the first place, when he knew it would be full of dread. She wished she could have told him that life was already full of dread, no matter who you were. That there was nothing you could have that you couldn’t one day lose.
She volunteers to remain in Svalbard cataloging germ plasm samples for inclusion in the
Ark Flora's hold. This is it, you see, these last few items from the seed bank represent the final species on Old Earth to make the deep-space voyage to Terra, our new home. Samantha, however, is holding a secret: She has decided she ain't a-goin' since, if she stays, she will have the one and only chance anyone will ever have to experience first-hand the end of the world. The *actual* end of the world. Someone without close ties can make that decision for themself, no one really can argue...and since she hasn't shared the plan, no one will.
Snort.
Doctor Nils Hagen, an eminent widowed scientist, is like Samantha. He's not interested in a space voyage he won't live to see the end of; he'll die here in his greenhouse full of the orchids he so passionately loves. In Svalbard. Not far from the North Pole. Privileged much, Nils? He's lost his will to live with his wife's death, and Samantha relates to his desire to see the end of something we all thought should be eternal: Home. After all, what use is a future without your love in it? His wife gone, his orchids dying in Svalbard as the sun goes out for a generation or two; nothing on an Ark for the likes of his old-man ass.
Samantha isn't old enough to know that the question, "what's your favorite...", isn't one old people care to answer. How the hell can you, brash young pup, even begin to scrape the frost from the corner of the windowpane that we've allowed to frost over so long ago that glass was a novelty item? If we tell you something, anything at all, you still won't know what you're asking: "Look at everything you've ever done and thought and felt about this thing, sort through the Alp of memories, and spit some pat, facile phrase into the whippersnapper's ear. Maybe she'll quieten down then." Nils tries an old stand-by: "I don't have a favorite. I love them all equally."
“You just can’t—and if you did, then it’s the same as loving nothing at all. So you have to hold just a few things dear, because that’s what love is. Particular. Specific.”
Smart, this one. Saw through that "hush now, little one" response in a heartbeat!
So a friendship begins. And so Nils, with so many ideas and so much information, begins to let Samantha see what truly happens when The End has a date on it, how life lived becomes A Life, how meaningless nothings are, in fact, everything as well, and how utterly impossible it is to see The End without also seeing In The Beginning clear as sunlight on water in, on, over, above, around it.
When the student is ready, the teacher will come.
Rating: really liked it
So Veronica Roth clichè.
The writing style is fine but the character development and the plot are so repetitive. Dystopian, controlled world. People are chosen/selected. The earth is going to get destroyed soon. Everything natural on earth is coming to an end.
Sadly, it couldn't hold my interest. It becomes really monotonous after the first 5 pages and the characters are so so. The ending is really bad. Like a story was just starting and it ended out of nowhere.
Rating: really liked it
I decided to read this on my way home from work since it had the perfect length. Another one of the stories commissioned by Blake Crouch that talk about a pivotal moment in technological advancement.
We follow Samantha, member of the last group of scientists on Earth. Her job is it to catalogue plants before an asteroid hits the planet and ends all life on it. Four arks have already left with genetic samples and evacuees, hers is the last ship - though she has no intention of boarding it.
However, she suddenly makes a discovery that could change everything.
As seems to be common between this author an me, I liked the worldbuilding and the sound of her tale, that is to say the actual writing style (not least because Evan Rachel Wood narrated the audio version and superbly so). However, once again there was something that threw me: scientific inaccuracies (in a scifi story!) that wouldn't have taken long to research and the fact that, for me, the ending didn't make much sense. (view spoiler)
[She discovers a species of orchid hitherto unheard of but she leaves the plant on Earth to burn and go extinct BUT the discovery somehow makes her change her mind about staying behind and watching Armageddon?! By the way, that is also one of the two scientific inaccuracies I was talking about because she wouldn't be able to actually witness the end of the world, she'd just disintegrate considering her location, the size of the asteroid and where it was supposed to hit but whatever. (hide spoiler)]Not bad but that seriously threw me so this isn't the strongest entry in the series.
