Under the Eye of the Big Bird
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Under the Eye of the Big Bird
Buy Now for £13.67
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Narrated by:
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Ethan Reid
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Olivia Darnley
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Susan Momoko-Hingley
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Arthur Lee
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By:
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Hiromi Kawakami
About this listen
In the distant future, humans are on the verge of extinction and have settled in small tribes across the planet under the observation and care of the Mothers. Some children are made in factories, from cells of rabbits and dolphins; some live by getting nutrients from water and light, like plants. The survival of the race depends on the interbreeding of these and other alien beings—but it is far from certain that connection, love, reproduction, and evolution will persist among the inhabitants of this faltering new world.
Unfolding over geological eons, Under the Eye of the Big Bird is at once an astonishing vision of the end of our species as we know it and a meditation on the qualities that, for better and worse, make us human.
For me, this was a 2 out of 5.
In essence, it’s a series of short stories set in the same universe / future Earth, charting a long timeline where the human race declines and then morphs into post-humans, sometimes into other species. Each chapter drops you into a different moment, with a different character and their feelings, confusion, and the strange logic of the world they’re living in.
Every time you arrive in a new story, it takes a while to orient yourself. Who are these people, what stage of the timeline are we in, what’s changed since the last. You’re not really given the big picture until the final couple of chapters, which finally provide some context for what you’ve been reading. By then, I felt a bit worn down by the format.
That said, I did admire the ambition. Some of the stories genuinely work and there are moments that are interesting. Others, though, felt a bit pointless, like sketches that never quite land.
Overall, I’m glad I tried it, and finished the book but I don’t think the structure was for me.
Future Earth, dystopian original scenario
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errors in narration not edited out
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Grating child-adult narrator
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