This is a novel about a corporate-run terraformed world and the struggle of the people building that world to push back on their awful corporate owners and ultimately become self-governing.

Chapter one of this book really gripped me: a park ranger on a terraforming planet (who can connect to sensors in nearby trees and grasses) and her texting/flying moose buddy stop a rich camping tourist hurting the local ecosystem. Here's a small handful of other delightful worldbuilding details that I enjoyed, just for flavor: new people are built/decanted rather than born; sentient worms solve NP completeness; there's an endearing cat/train relationship. I think there's something fun about a novel that sets itself extremely far in the future and stuffs itself with neat ideas.

It's hard not to feel the echoes of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy in this whole book. Aside from the obvious bit that it's about the terraforming of a planet, it's also (a more direct) struggle against capitalist ownership. It's also structured into three section, each of which are many years apart and some long-lived characters who exist across all three parts. Each both have their own underground organization (spoilery pun :drum:) consisting of similar (spoilers elided) people. The afterword mentions that KSR asked for a character named Kim if Newitz wrote a book about terraforming.

The "big bad" here is capitalism (when is it not) and its desire to control and use people as things for profit. If there's one thematic "big good", it's probably cooperatism, and giving folks who are involved in the work a voice. At times, this came off as didactic and the side of "good" felt far too unambiguous and unmessy. The way the book hews closely to so many current-day issues (gentrification, homelessness, water rights, mass transit) felt almost a little too on the nose. However, I think it all ~mostly worked for me in the end, because a novel trying to be so hopeful about the future is the kind of refreshing book I want more of in my life.

One thing I had hoped early on to see more about was some discussion about terraforming itself being somewhat a suspect activity (especially in this larger context of capitalism / colonialism / etc). There's certainly PLENTY of shade thrown at the capitalist forces at work here, but the book brushes past most discussion of terraforming itself by having it occur on a planet that is entirely a lifeless orb.

Mostly, I think it's interesting for me to think about comparing this book's ERT rangers vs evil corporation perspectives against the third perspective from To Be Taught, If Fortunate, by Becky Chambers. That book has the most humble approach to (attempted) zero-impact space exploration that I've ever seen. Characters change themselves and their bodies to fit into the new environment. Whereas The Terraformers is about changing the environment to suit (current for us) human bodies as a marketing gimmick, even when there's a furry VR gym's worth of body types and body swapping.