Dorothy Gentleman is on a generational ship, 300 years into a 1,000 year journey, and has placed herself in her memory book where she can rest in the library for a while. She awakens in someone else’s body instead of in a blank, which tips her off that there might be a problem.
As she acclimatizes to the body, she sets out to solve a murder. Murders happen on the ship, although not too often since the person can just be put right back into a blank body, and as the ship’s detective it’s up to Dorothy to solve them.
It might help if the ship wasn’t drunk from the magnetic storm, though.
This is a novella, only 100 small pages, barely enough time to really get to know the characters or setting. As I read and found out the motive for murder, I found my head spinning as I couldn’t quite track the information. There were too many characters mentioned and not enough development of them to have them fully root in my mind. I feel like this book could use a little more padding, a few more hints about the financial aspects of the ship, for the payoff of the motive to be satisfying.
Otherwise, this was a delightful read, one that I did in one evening, and I’d read more by this author. This is the first in the Dorothy Gentleman series, so I have some more novellas to look forward to.
Asuka barely made the cut to be one of the 80 people sent to Planet X; humanity’s last hope before collapse. As an Alternate, she has no specialty training and instead fills whatever role is needed. That role turns out to be solving the mystery of who built and set off a bomb on the outside of the ship.
While all 80 people were trained in a rigorous, elite training facility before launch, they are still by and large young adults. Having slept through the first decade of travel, they were awoken to become pregnant before arriving at their destination, a full decade ahead of them. These young adults have only their DAR (Digitally Augmented Reality) to help communicate with the ship’s AI and a quantum communicator to communicate with Earth.
A war breaks out on Earth, which muddies the hierarchy of who is in charge back home while Asuka investigates her shipmates – her friends – as best she can.
This novel is wonderfully constructed. It’s basically a Locked Room Mystery set in space, so the list of suspects really isn’t that long. But these 80 people are trained to rely on one another, so who would build a bomb, and why? The answer surprised me, but in a good way. Once I reached the end, I understood why bird species were mentioned often. Not only because Asuka is a lover of birds but because the ship’s AI tried to work around protocols by presenting birds in Asuka’s DAR. The author wove this information into the narrative in a way that felt so natural that I was unaware that I was receiving clues.
The author also presented the dangers of DAR in a manner I hadn’t considered: what if that DAR was corrupted? Could you believe what you saw? Could you believe what the ship’s AI was telling you? Also, by each person having a customized DAR, each person was basically working alone. Sure, other people could be invited to view someone’s DAR surroundings, but if not invited, each person lived in a different world and saw the ship differently. At first I thought this DAR would help stave off madness because it would give the illusion of space and scenery that the person found soothing. As I read on, the horror of not being able to trust your senses became evident.
I enjoyed this novel from start to finish and look forward to the author writing another novel.
Colony ship Voyager has been travelling for 250 years to get to the planet Promissa, where they plan to land and colonize. Except every probe that reaches the surface goes dead before it can transmit information. With roughly four and a half months until their journey is complete, scientists must work out the problem while being hindered by the Governor’s political desires and a growing faction of people that believe colonization is wrong.
The novel counts down to arrival date, detailling how the Governor skews information and manipulates media so the residents of the ship see only what he wants them to see. Pushing against him are the scientists who want more information from the surface of the planet before committing to sending large groups down. In addition, the ship’s Charter has a mandate of a death date: the person’s 75th birthday, which helps preserve resources. A small group begins to protest this mandate, since they’ll be colonizing soon anyway and so there shouldn’t be much strain on the resources. This protest evolves into not colonizing as it’s unethical.
Which presents a problem. As a reader, I understand that the ship has very limited resources, so people can’t live out their natural lives. New generations need to be born and with each birth there must be a death. Also, if the people decide not to colonize, how do they expect to be able to support a growing population if they get rid of the death mandate? This wasn’t answered in the novel, or if it was, I missed the explanation.
Other minor problems nagged at me as well. Landing was dangerous because they couldn’t get the probes to send information about microbes and whatnot. Political forces demanded landing parties go anyway and people were selected on the whims of the Governor. They were all tested for agoraphobia because they’d lived on a ship for something like five generations, therefore, people weren’t accustomed to open spaces. Some of the people who tested poorly were still sent down. That makes no sense. In addition, if the elders are slated to die anyway, why not send them down to the planet? They’d worked up until their 70th birthday, so work was a huge part of their lives anyway, and they could be useful in testing the atmospheric conditions and survivability of the planet.
Another minor issue that nagged at me was the media. The ship had televised news and entertainment. Why didn’t they have a science channel as well? As a reader, I’d expect that in the later generations, a timeslot would be allocated for information about the planet.
While the bulk of the novel takes place before arrival, there is just enough information at the end to explain why the probes weren’t sending information. But I felt like the author had a really good concept that was only explored at the tail end of the book. Yes, this novel is more about the struggle as they reach the planet, but in the end, the reader discovers that both the planet and the ship have gained a kind of cognizance. Now THAT would be an interesting book: how the ship behaves to protect the crew, how the planet behaves to protect itself, and how humans bung all that up. But I suppose that could all be written in a sequel.
Overall, the novel was all right. Good enough for me to finish it, but frustrating that (what I felt was) the best part was at the end and not really explored.
Should Be Writing 