Adrian Collins's Blog, page 186

REVIEW: Chastity Vol. 1 by Marc Andreyko

Chastity Volume 1 by Marc Andreyko (author), Dave Acosta (artist), Emanuela Lupacchino, Tim Seeley (artist) is a re-envisioning of the “classic” Chaos! Comics character for the new millennium. I use the term classic in quotes because the Bad GrrlsTM of Chaos! Comics were a hit and miss collection of creations from the Dark Age of Comics a.k.a the Nineties. Chaos! Comics specialized in telling stories of murderous antiheroes with gorgeous art and sexy ladies kicking ass. Which, honestly, appealed to this Goth Boy every bit as much as it was intended to.

Ultimately, Chaos! Comics disintegrated and the rights for some of their more popular characters went to other studios like Dynamite Entertainment. There, the creators seemed interested in taking the original concepts and exploring them more thoroughly than Chaos! ever did. Sometimes this has worked well and other times not so much. I’m going to say that I think it worked fantastically well for Chastity and I write this review to recommend this volume.

Chastity is updated from a sexually abused teen turned into vampire assassin to a young Olympian hopeful with an abusive mom attempting to re-live her own glory days. Chastity breaks her ankle during practice and ruins her chances, though. Depressed, she turns to become a fan to the in-universe equivalent of Twilight as a way to cope. It’s then poor Chastity discovers that the author of the books is a sadistic vampire serial killer who turns her as well as her younger brother before slaughtering the heroine’s family.

Honestly, I feel like the new version is far superior to the original. It’s a bit closer to an R-rated Buffy than pure edgelord and as a fan of Buffy, I had a lot more positive things to say about Chastity’s reimagining than her predecessor. Like Deadpool, the character benefits from being taken a few degrees back and finding a new voice than their original “dark and edgy” origins. It’s a rare statement for Grimdark Magazine but the new Chastity is far less try hard.

That’s not to say the comic is light and fluffy. Quite the opposite. It reminds me strongly of Hack/Slash by Tim Seeley that is my all-time favorite comic except for maybe Eighties Spider-Man. The violence, angst, heartbreak, and storytelling is all top notch. Chastity may not be the most horrifying kind of vampire out there but she’s still a monster and the other members of her race are pure evil. These are scary, brutal, awful vampires and I love it.

The artwork is fantastic for the comic and I enjoyed just looking at the extremely well-done panels. I fully admit to my Goth Girl bias with Chastity and think she’s one of the most interesting to look upon women in comics. She ranks up there with Cassie Hack, even though the artists don’t turn her into the same level of pin-up that my favorite slasher hunter is.

I strongly recommend picking up the first volume of this book and believe that you won’t be disappointed. This story has a beginning, middle, and end that provides its protagonist a complete arc. While I hope it is successful enough to continue for some time, if you just buy this one then you will be fine.

Read Chastity Vol. 1 by Marc Andreyko

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REVIEW – Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline

Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline basks in gaming and movies’ nostalgia from the 1980s while treading no new territory in this sequel to the uber-popular Ready Player One. 

In the first book, James Halliday, a technological visionary whose OASIS changed how humans interact with the world around them, decreed that any who solved his final riddle sent out on his death bed would become the heir to his fortune and empire. Halliday’s puzzle is based on his life growing up in the 1980s as a gamer. Wade Watts, a kid from the stacks (the poor stacked mobile home encampments), escapes to the OASIS daily and amasses a comprehensive knowledge of 80s movies, TV, video games, and trivia necessary to be able to seek Halliday’s treasure. After stumbling upon the first clue, Wade and his close friends race through the OASIS from world to world, using their knowledge of 80s pop culture to answer Halliday’s questions, fight bad guys, and win. All the while, they are chased by a conglomerate of cheaters called Sixers bent on getting to the prize before them, no matter what it takes. There is excitement, nostalgia, fun characters, and a short bit of cute romance. The novel was light on some plot points, but the nostalgia far outmatched the lack of narrative. I am a child born in the 80s and a complete geek, so I ended up loving it. Reading Ready Player One was a nostalgia bomb going off in my head with the great ending of the geeks inheriting the Earth, or in this case, OASIS. 

Given the first novel’s success and the obvious chance to capitalize on exciting 80s nostalgia felt by moviegoers, Steven Speilberg adapted the story to a movie. It was a kaleidoscope of 80s pop culture; it felt like watching Easter eggs hidden inside Easter eggs. It made 582.1 million dollars. Of course, there would be a book sequel, whether that was a good idea or not. 

Enter Ready Player Two, Ernest Clines sequel, and a story that falls into the “Are we sure we should do that?” category of sequels. Ready Player Two starts up not long after the ending of Ready Player One. Wade, also known as Parcival, and his team of friends have solved the great quest set by Wade’s personal hero James Halliday. The four of them are now billionaires. After winning the contest, Wade stays off-line for a few days and eventually logs back in and finds an inscription on the egg that the team won in Ready Player One that had not previously been there. “GSS-13th Floor-Vault #42 – 8675309” (notice the presence of multiple easter eggs in just this short quote.) This quote leads Wade to a vault where a hidden technology that Halliday kept from the world lies dormant. Wade and his team are given a choice, one that could shift the human race’s direction.  

Additionally, Halliday again offers a quest. Discover the Seven Shards. 

“Seek the Seven Shards of the Siren’s Soul

On the seven worlds where the siren once played a role

For each fragment my heir must pay a toll

To Once again make the Sire whole”.

Wade meets with his fellow teammates, and they decide as a team in a matter of seconds, with Samantha voting “No” to bring this new ONI rig technology to the world. Samantha shows a wiseness and maturity in at least thinking that releasing technology like this could be harmful. They decide to do it anyway. The ONI rig allows the user to record their sensory input and share it with others. Thus a user can download someone else’s experiences such as taste, touch, and feel as if it was their own skin. The applications for such a technology are vast and far-reaching.

It is the mid-2040s now, and a few years have passed since the original release of the ONI. The world is still wallowing in abject poverty; however, the ONI’s presence allows users to escape their circumstances. The ultimate escapism has been created where a user only needs to take care of bodily functions for 12 hours a day and be logged in the other 12. 

The team, in their various ways, set out to help humanity. Samantha AKA Art3mis created a foundation dedicated to eradicating world hunger. Shoto created his organization called the Daisho Council, which provided food, housing, healthcare, and counseling to millions of isolated Japanese kids referred to as hikikomori. Aech, (the story’s single queer character) created charities and organizations that focussed on helping LGBTQIA kids in North American and providing impoverished African nations with access to technology. Also privately, Watt’s teammates grew in their personal lives. Aech got engaged to their girlfriend turned fiance, and Shoto got married and expected a son. But Watts didn’t and couldn’t move one much to the detriment of his relationships with the team. He became obsessed with the new riddle to solve, and he threw himself into that. 

“Two-Face was right. You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”

Pausing at this part of the story, I thought that “none of this needed to be done again.” Ready Player Two wasn’t just belaboring an idea, “the geek inherits the Earth,” it was taking a Gallager style sledgehammer to a plot idea and bashing it like a watermelon on stage while simultaneously singing Karma Chameleon by the Kulture Club. To say that this felt “done” is not doing it justice. 

Also, the characters at this point in the story, especially Wade, are either self-righteous or irritating. Wade spends much of his time mopping or being an indulgent jerk. Samantha goes in the opposite direction and has decided to save the world. At least her path is noble, but her interactions with Wade, who stares at her with lovelorn eyes, are annoying. It is the kind of love spats you have in the 8th grade with your boyfriend of the week. Not the type that mega-billionaire philanthropists have. But, maybe that is the point. Even though these people have done something incredible in solving one of the world’s largest puzzles, they are still just young adults trying to figure things out.

“If it weren’t for Tolkien, all of us nerds would’ve had a lot less fun during the last ninety years.”

The group’s choice to give ONI to the world means that Wade and the rest of this company’s owners control over 2/3rd of the world’s population when strapped into the brain device. An important note on the device’s connection, if a user disconnects early without slowly powering down, the user will basically scramble their brain. Also, for some reason, Wade is given access to a big red button. The button is something like you would see in a Wiley Coyote cartoon. When pushed, the entire Oasis will disappear and disconnect all users instantaneously. Plus, the ONI system is now a massive part of the infrastructure, education, medicine, national security, and the ilk. Destroying the OASIS like this would put all these areas in Jeopardy.  This idea in itself seems like a stretch, all of your eggs in one basket type thing.

A small problem with that is that it would lobotomize, for lack of a better word, all disconnected users. So DON’T EVER TOUCH THIS GIANT SHINY RED BUTTON. Also, Wade being Wade, did not tell the other owners/teammates about the existence of said button. Why he did not think this was useful information I have not been able to glean. Another foreshadowing slam with Gallagher’s hammer. At this point in the story, Ready Player Two feels like a mugging. The book stole the idea of a happy, fun time, hearkening back to the first book. It replaced it with a Deus Ex Machina machine that can meld perfectly in a user’s mind creating any experience with perfect clarity. Wade is now a childlike Emporer having tantrums and love spats with his gaming partner, who could destroy the world with the push of a button, much like the snap of Thanos. 

“How the fuck do you negotiate with a piece of software?”

I paused at this moment in the story, “It cannot possibly be this bad. This writing is a first-year creative writing course terrible.” But I know from the first story that the well crafted and exciting parts are when Wade and the gang are questing together. This is the point where they are most themselves. How would someone make these parts come together to force the team to do another quest? Well, they are forced together because a sentient evil copy of James Halliday stored inside the OASIS has leaked like Skynet wills it. Clone Halliday says that if the group does not finish the quest in 12 hours, Clone Halliday will disconnect 2/3rds of the world and kill them instantly. Those killed instantly include three of the four owners, Wade, Aech, and Shoto. 

My poor bedraggled mind threw her popcorn in the air and stomped off for a while to have a cigarette and watch the 1980’s Annie. 

The first section of the novel explores many of the stereotypes and problems with immersive VR, mostly by accident. VR seems like a peeping tom in this context; it is a voyeuristic experience. Just because you inhabit a user’s body for twenty minutes does not give you in-depth and informative experiences about being that person. It does not bring the world together, as one of the argument’s Wade uses in the story to justify the widespread use of the headset. There is a big voyeuristic disconnect. 

“My friend Kira always said that life is like an extremely difficult, horribly unbalanced videogame. When you’re born, you’re given a randomly generated character, with a randomly determined name, race, face, and social class. Your body is your avatar, and you spawn in a random geographic location, at a random moment in human history, surrounded by a random group of people, and then you have to try to survive for as long as you can.”

But, just as the first book had a three-act narrative, so does Ready Player Two. We shall now call this act 2, the exciting fun times. Wade and the team set off at breakneck paces, traveling to different parts of the OASIS, playing games they are excellent at, and deriving clues from obscure bits of trivia or a misplaced item in a movie. From these obscured clues, they obtain shards, and per Halliday’s instructions, Wade must pay a toll. The toll is the immersion in a woman’s thoughts, feelings, and emotions central to the plot. Wade realizes that he feels closer to her and more aware of her as a human being. I am not sure how I feel about this revelatory moment. 

This section of the novel is overflowing with Easter eggs, visits to movies and games. It is exciting, and its frenetic pacing keeps the tension moving from moment to moment. One of the best things in the book is when Samantha lops the head off of a duck. Trust me, it is great. This is something that should have been done long, long ago. I chuckled and cheered.

The ending, we shall call this act 3, would have made Black Mirror blush. I do not say this lightly; it came out of nowhere, and it had a sinister edge to it. I cannot say much more about it, but the tone is dark. 

Was there plot growth? Did anyone learn anything, Maybe? I am not sure that Wade grew up at all; I think that his circumstances changed. While Wade has an entire list of qualities we can talk about, the novel’s more interesting characters are the supporting cast in Shoto and Aech. They behave in ways that allow me to believe that they understand the gravitas of the situation they put humanity in. 

I think one of the main problems that Ready Player One had was how divisive it is. As a viewer, you are either a “have” or “have not.” As in you have seen this movie or played this game, and those experiences are the joy that fuels the book’s engine, or you haven’t. If you are a “have not,” looking at an Atari Machine does not bring happiness. It doesn’t elicit a response. The game is meant to be played, the book read, the music listened to. The experience is in the doing, not the watching. Unless you can have some way to empathize with a character playing a particular game, it is very polarizing, with an increasingly small percentage of the readers getting it. Ready Player One dealt with similar problems. 

Ready Player Two is a confusing novel. I want to give it points for enjoyment in the second section, but my enjoyment ultimately hinges on my past actions. I played some games and read some books which I loved. Those moments helped create large swaths of my childhood. I can empathize and get excited about the characters’ situations. But I don’t know many people who had a very similar childhood like mine. If someone unfamiliar with this niche comes to read this book, what do they get? Songs they have never sung, books they have never read, and games they have never play.  Did I like this book? No, not really. I wanted to like it as I liked Ready Player One. I enjoyed the second act, though—lots of fun references and easter eggs. Cline excels at catering to these pop culture moments, much like Ready Player One; he did a great job on this. Otherwise, unless they are like me, an early forties ultra reader and gamer, their experience would be confusing and disheartening. Just watch the movie or read the first book; it was more entertaining.  

Read Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline

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REVIEW: This Virtual Night by C.S. Friedman

This Virtual Night is C.S. Friedman’s long-awaited sequel to her 1998 cyberpunk success, This Alien Shore. The speculative fiction author’s latest space opera, second in the Outworlds series, has a brand new cast of characters and is set in the same fascinating universe of mutated humans and bustling intergalactic trade, approximately 20 years after the events of This Alien Shore.

This Virtual Night opens from the perspective of young players of an engrossing medieval virtual reality game that is superimposed on the real world. Just as the reader starts to empathize with these characters, the first chapter comes to an explosive end. We discover that the players were somehow manipulated in-game into performing an attack meant to destroy the life support system of a major space station. Two unlikely allies, mercenary explorer Ru Gaya and out-of-his-depth game developer Micah Bello, must discover how and why the attack happened. The two chase the trail from an abandoned station infected with insanity to a chaotic outlaw stronghold in the hopes of stopping a mysterious entity capable of altering people’s perception of reality: a capacity that could bring the destruction of outworld civilization.

The novel is in tight third person with alternating point of view chapters. There are two characters whose perspectives we see most often: Ru and Micah. Ru is a Gueran outrider—an explorer whose risk-loving Variation makes her perfect for seeking far-flung inhabited worlds—who has been hired covertly to investigate the incident. Micah is a renowned VR game designer and coder of some skill who must clear his name by finding the group responsible for the attack.

This time around, Friedman’s main characters feel more engaging than those from This Alien Shore, perhaps because they hew more closely to familiar sci-fi archetypes or simply because Friedman has matured as a writer. Though we know very little of their pasts, Ru and Micah’s actions clearly demonstrate their strong character. Their interactions and deepening relationship unfold organically, in direct comparison to the first book’s depictions of relationships as a means to an end. The two also have an interesting dynamic with the scarred and self-interested character Ivar.

Friedman’s sequel further explores a huge and textured setting and investigates the concept of a technology that connects directly to the human brain. In This Alien Shore, Friedman asks what a computer virus could become in a world where it could affect the human mind. This Virtual Night examines where the threshold between reality and virtual reality should be defined when virtual reality is directly interfacing with the human brain.

“What is reality, if not shared illusion?”

This Virtual Night deals with the classic literary theme of illusion versus reality through the exploration of virtual reality. The characters in the novel often literally cannot trust what they see and hear due to the external manipulation of software connected to their brains. It would be nearly impossible to navigate a world supplanted by fiction. Today’s social technology has already proven itself capable of flooding the internet with misinformation and manipulating public opinion. Misinformation has the capacity to alienate people from one another. Fear of the other is used to dramatic effect throughout Friedman’s Outworlds series, where humanity’s great diaspora throughout the stars and subsequent mutation and fragmentation leads to marked xenophobia. Characters already fear one another based on insignificant details, so if VR technology overlays a false reality, this fear can and does explode into violence.

“Each human is, within himself, an alien landscape to all others.”

At its core, This Virtual Night feels like a classic space opera adventure, in contrast to This Alien Shore’s zigzaggy cyberpunk thriller. The book has a certain romance about it that aligns with many space opera tropes we know and love: the battles are epic in scope, the heroes and villains larger than life, the settings fantastical, and the people often irresistibly good-looking. One gripe concerns the ending of the novel, which felt a little too neat. Loose ends are tied up, and our heroes essentially save the day and then ride off into the sunset.

Though not required, it is highly recommended to read the first book in the series to fully enjoy the nuances of This Virtual Night. Fans of Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, and Anne Bishop should check out Friedman’s work.

C.S. Friedman knows how to craft a solid science fiction novel. This Virtual Night is a fast read due to deft pacing, a fun plot, and skillful world building. Held up to its predecessor, This Virtual Night’s more conventional concepts might not stick in the recesses of the mind quite as effectively. But with everything going on right now, maybe it’s okay to lose yourself in a sci-fi adventure rather than ponder deep philosophical implications of advancing technology.

4 stars.

Read This Virtual Night by C.S. Friedman

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REVIEW: “The Expanse” Series Five Episodes 1-3 Reaction

For the uninitiated, “The Expanse” is a science fiction TV series that is now in its fifth season with at least one more to come via Amazon Prime. “The Expanse” is inspired by the series of the same name by James SA Corey (pseudonym of writing duo Daniel Abraham & Ty Franck.)

We’ve covered the previous events in the TV show previously (Link)  but as this is the fifth season, I’d strongly recommend checking the previous ones out rather than jumping in cold.

Those of us who are fans of “The Expanse” have been eagerly awaiting the new series for some time after the tantalising hints at the end of the fourth season and we’ve been rewarded with three episodes on release day.

Rather than doing a beat-by-beat recap, I’m going to do a quick rundown of significant events in each episode for each plot thread/location and then discuss the things that really stood out to me over these episodes. Buckle up.

Episode One

The episode kicks off with one of the asteroids that Marco Inaros sent on a collision course with Earth passing too close to the Sun and shattering. Later, a science vessel over Venus is investigating the rogue asteroid when it gets attacked and destroyed by the Free Navy, under the command of Filip Inaros – Marco Inaros & Naomi Nagata’s son.

Naomi

On Tycho station, Naomi is talking with Belter mech Sakai and asks her not to use pejoratives against Martians before butting heads with Bull over the Rocinante’s preferential treatment. Fred Johnson then meets Naomi and advises her that her son is alive and still affiliated with Inaros.

Naomi later discusses this with Holden, who wants to come and help but Naomi explains that Holden would make things harder and she has to go alone. She had to try and save him from the fate that being associated with Inaros makes almost inevitable.

Holden

Tired of news about the Rings and their Builders, Holden switches the news off then goes for a drink. He is then pressured by Monica – the journalist from season three – who has had a shift in personality and is now driven to seek out the shadowy forces manipulating things. She says that people are still trying to get the protomolecule. Holden tells her to go away, but then goes straight to Fred Johnson to ask about it.

Despite Holden telling him about the hostile entities that eliminated the Builders and revealing that Holden perceives them as getting angry at the renewed use of the Rings, Johnson says he cannot give up the Belt’s protomolecule until they are patrolling their territory without assistance. Johnson then makes an interesting point that Holden should concentrate on his blessings – his relationship with Naomi, his ship, his crew – rather than the ‘end of the world.’

Amos

– En route to Earth, moves to the lower decks ostensibly to avoid snoring. He then stands up for new bunkmates in the face of a protection racket. He almost immediately goes for a shower with his new bunkmates asking if he knows what will happen. “I don’t like to wait.” Of course, Amos beats up the protection racket gang and then has a shower. Arriving on Luna he gets stopped by two cops and immediately reacts with “First of all, I didn’t start it and they were all alive when I walked out.” It turns out they’re taking him to Avasarala who greets him with “You look like shit.’ Avasarala wants to know if Amos is going to Earth

Bobbie & Alex

– Bobbie is working for Avasarala, trying to get info on the black market smuggling on Mars. She burns a contact and decides to ask Avasarala to finance a big purchase to flush out a major player.

Alex returns to Mars and sees adverts for work on off-world colonies on his way to visit his wife. She wants no part of him and that she doesn’t owe him closure. OUCH. Alex is in contact with his son, but the call is super awkward.

Alex meets Bobbie, who claims to be unemployed.  Bobbi is in no mood for Alex’s hopefulness regarding his family or Mars in general and is pretty blunt with him.

Avasarala

– After meeting Amos, an admiral comes to tells Avasarala that the science ship on Venus *might* have been destroyed by Inaros.

As the episode ends, Holden is alone and maudlin on the Roci, Alex sees boarded up shopfronts on Mars, Amos lands back on Earth and Inaros watches the progress of his asteroids.

Episode 2
Drummer

– Drummer has resigned from the OPA and is now running as a pirate. She finds Ashford’s ship.

Amos

– Amos has returned to Earth after the death of the woman who effectively raised him. It’s revealed that this woman, Lydia helped to anchor the young boy – whose real name is Timothy – after being a bad person herself – probably a prostitute and/or madam. It ends up being revealed that Amos was himself a child prostitute before he got too old and became muscle himself.

He meets Lydia’s partner, Charles who is now being evicted as the man who owns the house – Eric – wants it back.

Amos goes to meet Eric and punches one of his pimps/dealers to get him to pass on a message. When the guy returns to take Amos to Eric, Amos passes him some ice. No hard feelings.

Meeting Eric, it is revealed that Amos – actually Timothy – and Eric were street rats together and Timothy killed the real Amos Burton and took his identity as a way off world, while Eric took over the business in Baltimore.

Eric thought Amos was actually intending to ‘come back’ but Amos is at pains to say he’s not here to take anything that belongs to him, just to make sure that Charles gets to stay in Lydia’s house. Eric says ‘you’ve changed.’

Eric says that Burton’s ID won’t hold up if he is arrested. He also says “I love you, but show your face in my city again and I’ll put you down.”

We get a memory of Amos as a child with a bloodstained face, looking out to sea with Lydia. They deciding to make a better life where they pretend they aren’t such bad people.

Later, Amos is on the same dock at night when a bunch of young hoods wander up to him. Amos frightens them off, then makes a call – he has one more person to see before he leaves Earth forever.

.

Holden

– Monica contacts him again and says she has info about the protomolecule and wants to meet but she is not there when he goes to meet her and her apartment has been turned over.

Holden takes the issue to Fred Johnson, but the footage from the hall has been deleted. We see Monica captive inside a cargo container. She tries to escape but ends up denting the door and venting her atmosphere as she’s being stored in space. In the nick of time, Holden & Johnson managed to find her.

Alex & Bobbie

– Alex goes to visit Bobbie and she apologises and lets him know what she’s doing. Bobbie has an idea about who’s at the top of the black market – Admiral Sauveterre- but she can’t get close. Alex says he can speak to him.

Alex goes to see the Admiral after a military strategy lecture. Sauveterre makes a stirring speech about making bold moves without analysing every possible action. Everything that happens alters the strategic framework – the ring space has changed everything. To carry the dream of Mars to a dream of humanity around 1000 stars.

The Admiral gives Alex short shrift – he is, after all, piloting a stolen Martian ship for an Earth captain. Lieutenant Babbage then speaks to Alex and arranges to meet him, but she is working for the Admiral.

Avasarala

– Crisjen has a difficult chat with her daughter who is visiting her on Luna. They deal with Avasarala’s estrangement from her husband and decision to remain politically engaged rather than retire and spend more family time. Avasarala later speaks to the UN council regarding the possibility of Inaros being involved with Venus but gets shut down by her successor. Later she speaks to UNN Admiral Delgado about why the science ship might have been destroyed as it is strange for Belter pirates to operate in the inner system.

Avasarala & Delgado get a scientist in to look at asteroid data and it comes to light that the string of asteroids could be one larger one that had broken up due to gravity and for some reason, the asteroids have a strange reflectivity. On the assumption this means that the original asteroid was coated in Martian stealth tech, Avasarala wants the Watchtowers usually looking at Mars to be reassigned.

Episode Three
Drummer

–  Camina finds Ashfords ship and his data cores. She tells her pirate crew that she plans to collect the bounty on Inaros. For the money, obviously. Not vengeance. It’s totally vengeance. Camina is later comforted by a crewmate.

Holden

– Monica shows evidence that Cortisar – the protomolecule scientist from series one – has been abducted. Sakai helps Holden & Johnson find out who bought the container Monica was in, but the two Belters have already been assassinated.

Naomi

–  On Pallas station, Naomi gets heckled by Belters jealous of her money but she is saved by old pals who are happy to see her, but also still bitter that she left them. They warn her off trying to ‘save’ Filip.

Later, Naomi confronts her son and it doesn’t go well. He’s righteously angry that she left him and is now with an Earther, flying with other Inners.

He comes to her later in her ship, but she is attacked by her old friends and they steal her ship. Her friends are going to leave her on the station but Filip says she’s coming with them.

Alex & Bobbie

– Alex tells Bobbie how his meeting with the admiral went and she is still sure he’s the guy they’re after. Alex goes to meet Lt. Babbage and has a very awkward and cringy pseudo-date with her. As he gets home, he gets jumped and interrogated as to why he’s interested in the admiral. Bobbie arrives and beats up his attackers, who are then taken away by Martian police.  They decide to follow the resulting lead using Alex’s yacht and polluting skills, although Alex is wary that this ship doesn’t have any weapons.

Avasarala’s –  Delgado visits and says he was shut down when asking about the Watchtowers and that he can’t help Avasarala anymore. She says he’s her last ally. She later receives the information Drummer recovers from Ashford, indicating he was planning to do something grander with asteroids.

Too late.

Last thing we see in this episode is an asteroid crashing down towards Africa. An old man is fishing. The horizon lights up.

Thoughts

There is a lot of significant character work going into these three episodes as the tension was built up towards the first asteroid impact on Earth. There are three main threads I want to talk about.

Belter Culture

There is so much interesting stuff with Belter culture in these episodes. Starting with Sakai calling a Martian a ‘duster’ and Naomi asking her not to use slurs against inners, seeing as the rest of the crew are inners and they all work together. The attitude between Sakai and Bull later on Tycho also plays up to this tension. Then we see Naomi ostracised by her fellow Belters, including her friends and son due to her association with Inners. There’s some excellent code-switching between English and Lang Belta from Naomi, especially in the bar on Pallas that shows how she walks between two cultures and not easily or comfortably.

On Drummer’s ship it’s implied that the pirates are polyamorous and bisexual, which makes a lot of sense in how relationships would need to be conducted in close confines on long journeys. The sense of sharing and community in place of more restrictive moral codes you might expect from an Inner ship, all discipline and hierarchy. There is also the fact that Camina takes the killing of her friend, Ashford – who was her enemy in the not too distant past – very personally and this speaks to codes of honour and obligation amongst the Belters.

Finally, there are very convincing arguments put forth by many Belters that show how deep the resentment against the Inners is and how appealing Inaros grand ambitions are. From Sakai’s interaction with Bull all the way to Filip actively repudiating his mother, this is emotive and embedded stuff.

Amos / Timothy

Especially in the second episode, there is so much awesome content around Amos here. The revelations about his real identity, his childhood and so on are massive and offer an insight into a previously enigmatic character.

The dichotomy in Amos’s character is remarkable. He seemingly seeks a dangerous brawl with a gang en route to Earth for the sake of it but will take risky action to protect a man he’s never met before in the name of a dead woman who was kind to him.

I’ve always been a huge fan of Amos’s directness and the implied neurodivergence in his character but this season is taking that to a whole new level.

Mars

At the start of the series, Mars was a superpower, going toe to toe with Earth and a real threat to the homeworld. Since the Ring gates have opened up the universe, the long hard work of terraforming is not as appealing as just moving to a habitable world and Mars is bleeding.

Alex is shocked to see the way the planet has gone from a bustling hive of industry, with work always available to what feels like a ghost town.

This has led to the black market, with Mars much-vaunted technology now being sold off to the highest bidder. I also find Admiral Sauveterre’s speech about the importance of the Ring space and taking the dream of Mars from one dusty rock around a single star to 1000 systems to feel like a foreshadowing of something hegemonic.

Would a Martian faction deliberately work with Belters to hobble Earth while actually seeking Empire among the stars?

Grimdark though?

Oh yes. This season of “The Expanse” has already had plenty of grimdark elements. We see inequality and corruption on Mars. We see our protagonists having difficult relationships where their good intentions simply don’t fix things. We see the effect of centuries of embedded exploitation, colocalization, and prejudice, resulting in terrorism on a grand scale. We see that even on rich, shiny homeworld Earth, there are still places where people have to sell their bodies for drug money, run by exploitative and morally bankrupt people. We see a broad range of people making bad choices from worse options with few good outcomes seeming possible.

In my eyes, “The Expanse” is exceptional science fiction as it twists real-world issues through just enough of a speculative lens to balance out the hard truths with enough distance and pretty visuals to stop us from turning away. It allows us to ask questions about what is morally right with choices so bad and what would we do in that situation.

In previous seasons we had inciting incidents such as the destruction of an ice hauler, the creation of the Ring gate, and now after three episodes of character work and build up, we just saw an asteroid dropped on planet Earth.  I can’t wait for what comes next.

Episodes 1-3 of Season Five of “The Expanse” can be streamed via Amazon Prime  – https://www.primevideo.com and new episodes are coming every Wednesday.

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 appeared first on Grimdark Magazine.

REVIEW: This Alien Shore by C.S. Friedman

C.S. Friedman recently released a somewhat unexpected sequel to her 1998 novel This Alien Shore last month: This Virtual Night. This Alien Shore is C.S. Friedman’s most successful science fiction work and was listed as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.  Rereading the first book in the series through a modern lens and with the benefit of hindsight reveals that This Alien Shore remains an undeniably good science fiction novel. Friedman’s thorny concepts and compelling technological ideas make the book feel fresh and relevant.

This Alien Shore explores a universe in the second stage of human space colonization. Humanity’s first attempt to colonize distant space ended catastrophically, with the first wave of colonists experiencing permanent genetic damage, resulting in physical and mental mutations known as Variations. The Outspace Guild, which was created by Guerra, one of the first colonies, now controls interstellar travel through tight control of an alternative method of faster-than-light travel that only they are capable of providing. All humans have a built-in interface between mind and machine that allows them to access the outernet. A deadly digital virus is targeting Guild members, and reclusive Dr. Kio Masada is tasked with finding it and neutralizing it before it spreads to the entire human race. Meanwhile, the young Jamisia is being hunted ruthlessly as a valuable commodity for what’s inside her head. She has been experimented on without her knowledge or consent, leading to an acute form of multiple personality disorder that might just challenge the status quo of space travel.

The universe of This Alien Shore is a high tech, highly fragmented society with intensely competitive players. At the beginning of the novel, Jamisia’s space habitat is completely destroyed by corporate raiders, killing a significant number of people. “Somewhere on the habitat real damage had been done, probably in the name of some corporate maneuver […] capitalism is a harsh mistress.” The Guild, meanwhile, has its fingers in nearly every aspect of commerce among the stars. Friedman’s Guild draws parallels to Frank Herbert’s Dune, where the Spacing Guild also has a stranglehold on space travel through proprietary navigators—though perhaps with fewer good intentions than Friedman’s.

This Alien Shore aptly distills fears of the future of internet privacy and anti-corporate sentiments that are increasingly pertinent now. Friedman forecasts many costs and corresponding benefits for a society driven by connection technology. Written before the advent of Google and Facebook’s data supremacy and those handy little tracking devices we carry around in our pockets, the novel was published right in the midst of the dot com bubble. Though at the time, digital advertisement was in its infancy, Friedman correctly guessed how prevalent predatory advertisement strategies would get. The concept of a deadly virus taking over the world feels especially apropos.

This Alien Shore contains some interesting, capable, and nuanced neurodivergent point-of-view characters. Friedman’s Guerans (part of the first wave of colonists) have a Variation that causes them to exhibit signs of mental illness that were previously eradicated in the general population on Earth. However, this Variation is often portrayed as having net positive effects with Guerans shown to perform at a much higher level than neurotypical humans. The esteemed Dr. Masada is portrayed as quite far along the autism spectrum, which allows him to manipulate data and arrive at stunning conclusions as he seeks the dangerous virus. Friedman’s own experience with mental health informs her sensitive exploration of the subject.

One relatively brief scene in the novel aged badly.  As Jamisia travels on a space ship, she spies on an isolated sector and learns that Muslims are essentially the only culture that still practices slavery. In Friedman’s depiction of the future, the Islamic practice of pilgrimage to Mecca can be prohibitively expensive enough that some people are willing to sell themselves into indentured servitude. The passage, in its entirety less than one hundred words, could echo anti-muslim feelings in the United States at the time. North American baby boomers like Friedman probably grew up watching decades of strife in the Middle East. From the 1970’s through the 1990’s, Americans witnessed the Arab-Israeli War, oil embargo, Iranian Revolution, Iranian hostage crisis, and the Gulf War in Iraq. Just a few years after This Alien Shore was published, Islamophobia reached a fever pitch with the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack in New York. But in 2020, this passage feels somewhat out of place in a book that otherwise preaches tolerance, and may confound modern readers. Its omission would not have affected the plot.

Upon reading through a more critical and contemporary lens, This Alien Shore still holds up. Themes of human madness and fear of the other are engagingly explored with well-chosen detail and vivid settings. The book ends pretty conclusively, though some questions remain about what might have happened to the main characters after the ending.

4.5 Stars

Read This Alien Shore by C.S. Friedman

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Five Reasons To Be Excited About The Expanse Season 5

With Season Five of The Expanse only days away, let’s look ahead at five of the plot threads I’m most excited by for this season. As with yesterday’s post, if you aren’t up to Season 5 in either the movies or the books, now is the time to bail out of this article–head over to our catalogue or something less spoilery.

1. Deep Impact

At the end of Season Four, we saw Belter terrorist/freedom fighter Marco Inaros setting multiple asteroids on collision courses with Earth. If one or more of those land, it’s going to cause massive devastation and have far reaching implications for the power balance in the solar system and beyond. Given Inaros’ speech and Amos’ decision to return to Earth from the Season Five trailer , I’d guess that at least one asteroid landed.

2. Dream Over

For the first three seasons, Mars was presented as a near-monolithic culture, breaking free from Earth’s hegemony through technological innovation and hard, unified effort. However, the advent of the Ring and the opening up of a thousand new systems has dented that resolve, with many Martians not seeing the point in backbreaking labour for their great great grandchildren to see water on Mars, when they can just hop on through the gates to readily colonisable worlds.

This has lead to black market trading of Martian technology and a sudden loss of manpower on the red planet. Bobbie Draper uncovered some very sketchy stuff over Season Four and with Inaros’ Belter faction getting more aggressive, Mars seems to be teetering from stable and ambitious superpower to a fragile powderkeg.

3. Blood Runs Thicker

As Inaros was sending irascible old Klaes Ashford into space, standing beside him was Filip, his son by former flame and now member of the Rocinante crew, Naomi Nagata. From the season five preview, we know that Naomi is now aware of her son’s survival and allegiance to Inaros and is planning to reconnect with/rescue him. I expect this to be a straightforward process.

4. A Thousand Worlds

Most of Season Four was concentrated on the world of Ilus, through one of the 1,372 systems made accessible through The Ring. This world was contested between a group of Belter refugees from Ganymede – who got there first – and an official sanctioned colonising group from Royal Charter Energy.

This tense situation was further complicated when Holden & the Investigator managed to activate some Ring Builder technology on the planet (we’re getting to that) but it’s likely that even without that escalation, the conflicts between such groups will play out across the quickly spreading human diaspora.

5. Apocalyptica

On top of the very human stories of the Rocinante crew and the political machinations between the powers in our solar system, there is the wider meta-story which started with the protomolecule and has led to humanity spreading out across the universe.

The protomolecule was discovered on Phoebe and generally misused by corporate and political interests. It was thought to be a natural substance or an alien weapon, but what it actually is is a mechanism by which the Ring Builders attempted to seed systems with Rings to access their network.

As such, once the protomolecule had time, energy and resources to develop on Venus (having been dormant for millennia since it was captured by Saturn’s gravity and became Phoebe), it created the Ring which gave our solar system access to the Ring Network.

However, it turns out that since the protomolecule was sent towards our system at sub-light speeds, the Ring Builder’s civilisation has vanished. It appears they were annihilated by an as-yet unidentified threat, and the protomolecule wants to find out about that, so has set the Investigator as a passenger in Holden’s brain for that purpose.

Given that humanity is enthusiastically spreading across the ring network and carrying all the baggage of vendetta, colonialism and greed with us, I’m sure we’ll find out about that soon enough.

Throw all of that on top of the always entertaining interplay of the main characters, standout performances by the actors and the best space physics ever seen in a major sci-fi series and I’m really excited for this season of The Expanse.

Season Five of The Expanse debuts its first three episodes on Amazon Prime on December 16th.

Grab your Amazon Prime membership to watch The Expanse Season 5 and seasons 1-4.

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ANNOUNCEMENT: Open Submissions for #27 Coming Soon!

The horror and grimdark genres are like the two cousins who sneak away from parties to set fire to things. These genres often go hand in hand, such as in books like The Aching God by Mike Shel or The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle. These books have fantasy and horror elements that mash together to create grim stories that cant be classified in either genre. 

With that in mind, GdM is doing a horror / grimdark SFF crossover for our July 2021 issue. Already we have a commitment from horror master Paul Tremblay for an interview and will be adding in some great names in the next couple of months. 

I am looking forward to bringing this mashup to readers. 

WHAT WE ARE BUYING FOR ISSUE #27

For this submittal, we are looking for dark stories that span SFF and the horror genre with elements from each. Thus, this issue will be entirely horror grimdark content-focused. Anything not meeting expectations here will get an auto-rejection–please don’t send stories outside our ballpark.

Our definition of “grimdark” is simply a grim story told in a dark world by a morally grey protagonist. Anti-heroes, antagonists turned protagonists, doing wrong for the right reasons or right for the wrong reasons, showing that evil is a matter of perspective—this is what I’ll be after to sell to our readers. As an SFF publication, we also prefer either medieval fantasy settings or near-to-far future SF settings. Urban fantasy is generally a hard sell. For the horror aspects of the stories, any horror genre will be looked at save for splatterpunk horror. 

I encourage submissions from authors from the underrepresented parts of human society. Yours, after all, are some of the most unique stories out there.

Feedback will not be provided on the reasons for stories not being selected. This is to help GdM get through the submissions more efficiently than in previous years.

THE OPEN WINDOW

I hope to purchase between 1 – 2 original stories and 4 reprints. Stories that are purchased will likely be published specifically in the 1st July 2021 issue.

For more in-depth detail on rights and submission, please refer to our submissions page.

The submissions window will open at 00:01 AEST on the 25th January 2021 and close at 24:00 on 27th February 2021. All emails received before and after this time will be deleted without response or consideration.  

I can’t wait to see what you lot come up with. Let the grimdark horror begin!

Beth Tabler,

Guest Editor Issue #27

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The Expanse season 5: space opera grimdark fans will love

Based on the acclaimed series of novels by James SA Corey (pseudonym for writing duo Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham), The Expanse has become one of the most popular science fiction TV shows of recent years. Drawing praise for deep and nuanced worldbuilding, realistic portrayal of space physics (up to a point) and a compelling cast of characters, the show survived being dropped by SyFy to be picked up by Amazon on the back of fan support.

Now, with series five (of six) less than a week away, it’s a great time to recap the state of the show’s universe and look at why it’s of interest to fans of grimdark fiction. It goes without saying that if you’re not up to series five of this show or the relevant part of the book, spoilers below. You’ve been warned.

The show embraces shades of grey, with all of our main protagonists being far from noblebright. First the ragtag crew of the dubiously salvaged Rocinante – captain James Holden, engineer (and Holden’s romantic better half) Naomi Nagata, engineer Amos Burton, and pilot Alex Kamal who are respectively a dishonourable discharge from the navy, a former terrorist, an absentee father, and severely lacking in social graces. Supporting them is the politically astute former Secretary General of the UN, Chrisjen Avasarala and Bobbie Draper, a former Martian marine who falls in with black marketeers. They’ve all made and are willing to make the tough and bad choices.

There’s also the personality of a jaded Ceres policeman–Josephus Miller—riding in Holden’s head as the Investigator of the protomolecule, looking to find out who destroyed the universe well before humanity re-populated our small corner of it.

The personal choices and relationships of these characters are a delight to watch with standout performances from all the actors. Holden and Naomi’s relationship is strained by their differing influences, Alex tries to keep the group together, and Amos veers between trying to make his own decisions and deciding it’s best if he uses Naomi as a moral compass, lest he beat up the wrong person again.

Elsewhere, Avasarala’s attempt to hold things together on Earth while Bobbie dealing with her illusions about Mars being broken down and the tense relationship between Belters like Camina Drummer, Klaes Ashford, Anderson Dawes are all fascinating and enthralling.

Despite technological advances, the universe of The Expanse is not kind. This is not Star Trek with its post scarcity societies or Star Wars with physics breaking lightspeed for all and space wizards. Earth is corrupt, overpopulated, polluted, and profoundly unequal, with the majority of the population barely getting by on a below subsistence handout called Basic. Earth is also at loggerheads with its former colony on Mars, now the Martian Congressional Republic. Mars has a dream of a terraformed planet and has funnelled that dream into technological advancement and a fantastically devoted populace, committed to service and self abnegation.

Both of these powers exploit the asteroid belt and outer solar system, largely populated by refugees and pioneers who have developed a distinct culture–Belters. Many among the Belt are unhappy about the domination of the Inners and seek to break free, violently if needs be.

So we’ve got inequality, climate disaster, colonialism, and racism weaved all through our setting, with no clear cut good or bad characters.

Oh yeah, and there was also a corporate conspiracy to ferment war for profit while using an alien protomolecule to create supersoldiers. That resulted in the destruction of Eros & Phoebe, the near destruction of Earth and ultimately the creation of an alien Ring which allowed wormhole access to 1,372 other systems, albeit at the apparent cost of the possible attention of a hostile alien race.

Finally, The Expanse is not afraid to have popular characters die–although we’ve not lost any of the main crew yet. We’ve seen Josephus Miller infected by Protomolecule & blown up by a nuclear bomb. We’ve seen former pirate, come good-guy Belter, Klaes Ashford spaced out an airlock for being on the wrong (right?) side of a Belter civil war. Finally or rather first of all, Shed Garvey, one of the original survivors of the Canterbury along with the eventual Rocinante crew got beheaded by a railgun round.

Is that Grimdark enough for you?  It gets worse. (Or is that better.)

Season Five of The Expanse debuts its first three episodes on Amazon Prime  on December 16th.

Get yourself a Prime membership to check out this amazing SF series.

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REVIEW: Widdershins by Alex Alexander

Widdershins begins in the slums, where we meet our protagonist Niclas. It’s difficult to call him hero, as he’s a pretty simple lad and if we’re being honest, he’s not the sharpest tool in the shed. He means well and tries to do the right thing, but he’s just not cut out for great heroics.

What’s unfortunate for Niclas is that he’s thrust into a series of situations where if he can’t be heroic, at least he is around others that can. The first thing he does is bungle a pickpocket assignment he’s given as a rite of passage into the top slum gang, the Crimson Men. But after he lands in prison, he’s rescued by a talking cat named Balthazar.

“It was the first time Niclas had seen a cat smile. The majority of it is in their eyes – their narrow, mischievous eyes.”

The city of Laburnum is ruled by a monarchy, but the real power is the Academy, whose laws are constructed in the interest of logic. It is the Age of Rationalism and the Academy has an Inquisition that stamps out all violations of this idea. The most heinous criminals in the land are guilty of logicide and are locked up in the Academy’s dungeons for all time.

“Anyone who goes widdershins is dubbed a criminal, convicted of logicide and dealt with as swiftly as an itch.”

Widdershins, as explained by Balthazar to Niclas, is simply going against the grain. The clock turning counterclockwise or anyone acting contrary to Logic is going widdershins.

After rescuing Niclas from his dire fate of imprisonment, Balthazar reveals that he has a purpose for this kindness. He needs a manservant, and Niclas is the closest thing he’s found to having one. There are certain things a cat cannot do for himself, as he has no hands. What’s more, most people will rail against the possibility that a cat can talk, and even if they believe it they are then risking their own investigation at the hands of the Academy. After all, the concept of a talking cat goes against all of the principles of logic and reason.

Widdershins also introduces us to the princess of Laburnum, a young woman named Cassandra. She’s a very good student who likes to read almost to a fault. While her scholar encourages her education, Cassandra exceeds expectations and soon learns that reading too much of the wrong kinds of books is a quick way to get into trouble.

“He was usually enjoying a good book. He spent four fifths of his time reading, which didn’t leave a great deal many fifths for much else. But it did make him very smart.”

There is also the Witchhunter in the city, and it doesn’t take him long to catch wind of a talking cat moving around the slums. And as a talking cat would be completely illogical, he determined that it must in fact be a witch in disguise.

Widdershins is a great escape down a dark and dangerous path, where not all is logical or as it seems. This story reminded me quite a bit of Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens, as far as its setting and our main character Niclas. The dark steampunk world gives a great sense of dread, while the hints of magic and wonder behind the curtain of Logic give us hope that it’s not all as bad as it seems. There is a certain lightheartedness to the telling as well, a touch of humor mixed in with the dire circumstances that our characters fall into.

“Some of the stuff people flushed down their water closets was really quite extraordinary.”

It does take a little bit to get the story rolling and all of the characters in place, but once they’re moving it’s a pretty riveting ride. There’s a lot going on beneath the surface of Laburnum, much of it quite literally. The authorities of the Academy would not want these secrets getting out, or it might unravel the entire concept of Logic.

Read Widdershins by Alex Alexander

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An Interview with Kristyn Merbeth, Author of the Memoria

Kristyn Merbeth, author of the Nova Vita Protocol novels consisting of Fortuna and the new release Memoria as well as the Wastelanders novels she writes as K.S. Merbeth. Kristyn was kind enough to sit down with GdM and discuss her passion for gaming, story creation, and the ultra-dysfunctional family that is at the heart of the Nova Vita Protocol novels.

GdM: Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?

I’m the author of the ongoing Nova Vita Protocol series (starting with Fortuna) and, as K.S. Merbeth, the post-apocalyptic Wastelanders books (Bite and Raid). When I’m not writing or reading, I’m often gaming. I also love to cook, make alcohol-infused ice cream, and hang out with my bulldog, Albus.

GdM: I read that you are a gamer. What games do you play? And what role does gaming play in your life?

Yes! I play all kinds of games – video games, board games, tabletop games. I have a D&D group that has been meeting consistently for about three years now, and some of my recent video game favorites have been Hades and the remake of Final Fantasy 7. Sometimes I game to socialize, and other times to immerse myself in a great story, but, perhaps most importantly, it’s one of the main ways that I can fully relax. It’s hard to turn off my writer brain when I’m doing other things, including reading, but games make it easy to get out of my own head for once.

GdM: What aspects of the science fiction genre attract you to it? What do you see happening to science fiction as a genre in the future?

Writing is often a way of processing and working through anxiety for me. So, I think I’ve always been naturally drawn to a genre that explores possible futures. It helps me approach the kinds of subjects and emotions that scare me without facing them head-on in a way that might be overwhelming.

I imagine I’m not the only one that pours my fears into my writing, which might partially explain why science fiction has been really thriving over the last few years. There has been such an incredible rise of new, diverse voices in science fiction, and some excellent books that have pushed the boundaries of what the genre can be. I look forward to more of that in the future. Bring on the genre-bending weirdness!

GdM: You have written the Wastelanders series and the Nova Vita Protocol, of which Fortuna and your newest book Memoria are a part. Was the process of writing the two series similar?

Writing them was very, very different for me, actually. I’m a pantser at heart, and my instinct is always to jump right in and start writing. That worked well enough with the Wastelanders, but when I tried doing the same thing with Fortuna, I found it impossible. I kept getting stumped by world-building questions and having trouble picturing scenes in a world so very different than ours. Plus, I usually jump around and write scenes non-chronologically, which is tough with multiple POVs. So I had to sit down and do quite a bit more world-building and outlining than usual before I could begin to write.

GdM: When you start a book, do you have an end goal in mind for the narrative and characters? Or do you go where the ideas take you?

I have a sense of where I want the characters to end up, and how I want the ending to feel, but I don’t know everything that will happen along the way. For me, a sense of discovery is the best part of writing, so I like to give myself plenty of room to explore as I go along. And even though I outlined more than usual with this series, on occasions where my outline tugs me in one direction and my heart pulls me in another, I always follow my heart.

GdM: Both your series have to do with family. What family is, specifically for Nova Vita, how a family can mold you. Is this an idea that you gravitate towards?

Absolutely. My family is very important to me; I have two brothers, in particular, that I’m very close with, and I’ve always wanted to write something with sibling relationships at the heart because of that. For many of us, our relationships with our siblings are the longest relationships we have in our entire lives. Years of inside jokes and stupid fights and shared experiences that no one else can ever truly understand. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of exploring all of the ways in which our families can bring out both the best and the worst in us.

GdM: Can you tell me about the Nova Vita Protocol thus far?

The Nova Vita Protocol is about the Kaisers, a deeply dysfunctional family of criminals who make a living smuggling illegal goods between the five human-settled planets of their system. It’s told from the POV of the two oldest siblings, former “golden child” Corvus who left the ship three years ago to fight in a civil war on his home-planet, and family screw-up Scorpia, who has been struggling to fill his shoes ever since. In Fortuna, a deal gone wrong drags the family into a deadly interplanetary conflict, and forces Scorpia and Corvus to decide the future they want for their family while they grapple with grief and their own strained relationship. In Memoria, the siblings will be faced with the consequences of all of their messy past choices as they discover buried alien secrets and find that interplanetary war, once again, is threatening Nova Vita.

GdM: Memoria is your second book in the Nova Vita Protocol series. What was your experience like writing this one, versus writing the first book Fortuna?

Though I wrote companion novels in the Wastelanders series, Memoria is the first true sequel I’ve written. I was really nervous about it at first! I felt a lot of pressure to do the characters and the story justice. But once I was able to get over those initial nerves, I loved being able to revisit a world and characters that I already knew and cared deeply about. And it also meant I didn’t have to do as much up-front world-building, so I was able to dive right in to the fun part.

GdM: Tell me about the characters Scorpia Kaiser and Corvus Kaiser. I love how Scorpia has “middle child” syndrome. How did you first come to know them?

Some of my first ideas stemmed from their respective roles within the family: Corvus as the responsible oldest sibling and golden child, and Scorpia as the scapegoat and troublemaker. From there, I thought about what kind of people they have had to become in response to these roles – and also, the ways in which they aren’t a perfect fit for them. Both of them are saddled with expectations about who they should be, but Corvus isn’t sure if he can be the person his family remembers anymore, and Scorpia is trying very hard to overcome her past failures. I also considered how they were affected by the shift in the family when Corvus left. Corvus being alone for the first time, no longer defining himself in relation to his siblings and what the family needs from him, and Scorpia suddenly realizing she had a different slot to fill than the one she was accustomed to.

GdM: Both Scorpia and Corvus are developing and coming into their own through Memoria. What do you see for the future of these two characters?

In book three, both characters will be more secure and confident about who they are and who they want to be. I think the series, at its heart, is the story of Scorpia and Corvus discovering themselves in stages, and how the relationship between them shifts in response. In book one, they mainly explore who they are in relation to their family, and their roles within it; in book two, they spend more time exploring who they want to be as individuals; and in book three, they begin to consider their place in the world as a whole, and how they want to be remembered when they’re gone.

GdM: Your battle scenes are exciting! How do you choreograph them? Do you have a set way that you want them to flow, or do you watch it unfold in your head and write down what happens?

Fight scenes are my absolute favorite thing to write! My process usually involves staring at a blank page for an extended period of time, visualizing how I want it to go – and then, the second I figure it all out, I start word-vomiting everything onto the page as fast as possible before it slips away. I’m a very slow drafter otherwise. I jump around chronologically, edit as I go, write “insert description here,” all sorts of bad habits. But I always write out fight scenes, start to finish, without stopping, trying my best to capture the vision in my head.

GdM: Has the last couple of year’s world events affected your characters and writing? I know that Fortuna and probably most of Memoria was written before the Covid virus, but the virus and the xenophobic president Leonis seem almost prescient.

I never sit down with the intent to write about what’s happening in the world, but I think it’s impossible not to live through such tumultuous times and not be affected. Real world events and my feelings about them tend to seep onto the page without me realizing it. But there are also some eerie coincidences. I was just re-reading a scene in book one where the characters go through a sanitation checkpoint on Gaia and everyone is wearing medical masks, which I’m sure some people will assume is a response to Covid, but it was written years beforehand. I suppose part of it might be that I tend to explore worst-case scenarios in my writing, and unfortunately, that has been pretty spot-on for the last few years.

GdM: You have some fascinating world-building in Fortuna and Memoria. How did you go about creating the different settings?

I started with the geography of the various planets, and the difficulties they face. Each planet in Nova Vita has its own fair share of issues to grapple with, from the deadly jungles of Deva to the harsh tundra of Titan. From there, I considered how those challenges might shape them as a society. For example, Titan’s harsh climate and sparse resources have led to an ongoing civil war, which created an intensely patriotic and militaristic culture. On Gaia, a terrible virus years ago has led to deep distrust of the other planets, the everyday wearing of gloves, and greetings that don’t involve touch. I’ve written pages of notes about the different worlds and cultures – things like values, common sayings, architecture, unique laws, main imports and exports – and only a fraction of it ended up on the page, but I think all of it contributes to making each setting feel distinct.

GdM: Finally, a fun question. What is your favorite series? Are you a Star Trek fan, into Star Wars, Battlestar Gallactica, Firefly, or something entirely different?

Ohh, it’s gotta be Firefly! I’m a sucker for charming rogues and, as an Arizonan, I’m very into the western vibes.

Read Memoria by Kristyn Merbeth

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