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REVIEW: Infinity Gate by M.R. Carey

Infinity Gate is M.R. Carey’s multiverse epic that gives a personal touch to heart-pounding military sci-fi. Infinity Gate builds on the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which considers a branching of the universe into multiple realities that reflect each probable outcome of an experiment, resulting in an effectively infinite number of possible universes. Those that have branched more recently bear a closer resemblance to our own world, whereas earlier branching events could lead to dramatic differences among parallel universes. For example, sentient life has evolved only in a small minority of possible Earths. In some incarnations, other animal families have achieved self-awareness before humans, becoming the dominant lifeforms on the planet.

While potentially universal in scope, the focus of Infinity Gate is on alternate versions of Earth, and more specifically the Nigerian metropolis of Lagos. It is fascinating to consider the different possible versions of Lagos, which vary from a polluted, war-torn wasteland to a thriving cultural center and scientific hub.

M.R. Carey does an excellent job introducing the scientific concepts behind his multiverse, including the mechanism for stepping between alternate universes. But at its core, Infinity Gate is a character-driven sci-fi.

Infinity Gate has three main protagonists, starting with physicist Hadiz Tambuwal, who discovers a method for stepping into alternate versions of Lagos from the isolation of her laboratory. Hadiz is an especially strong lead character and demonstrates M.R. Carey’s thoughtful incorporation of diverse characters, making Lagos the focal point for scientific discovery and establishing a Black female physicist as the leading scientist of her era.

The second lead character is Essien Nkanika, an uneducated man from a poverty-stricken region of an alternate Nigeria. Grimdark readers will appreciate the gray morality embodied by Essien, whose motives are not always clear in his interactions with Hadiz. Although Essien doesn’t get as much page time as Hadiz, he is still a joy to read.

The third protagonist is Paz, a school-age girl from a more divergent universe where rabbits have become the predominant species on Earth. Paz’s story dominates the second half of Infinity Gate, which pivots away from hard science and more towards action-oriented military sci-fi.

Infinity Gate shines in describing the nuanced relationships between sentient organic species and mechanical beings built on artificial intelligence (AI). The interactions between Hadiz and Paz and their AI friends is particularly touching, especially as they get caught up in the epic conflict between the multiverse alliance of the Pandominion and the AI-driven revolt known, appropriately, as the Ansurrection.

M.R. Carey’s writing is accessible throughout Infinity Gate. Carey describes scientific concepts in an easily digestible way, giving just the right level of detail to make the story believable. He proves equally adept at describing the personal emotions and inner conflicts of his characters.

The first half of Infinity Gate is a solid five-star read, but the second half overstays its welcome, spending too much time on chase sequences with Paz. The action ultimately reaches a climax that falls short of the epic scale of the book. In many ways, the conclusion of Infinity Gate seems to serve primarily as a setup for future installments of the Pandominion series.

Notwithstanding the slight letdown of this latter part of the book, Infinity Gate is an outstanding start to M.R. Carey’s new multiverse series, offering a thought-provoking treatment of the many-worlds concept while introducing us to a cast of characters who appeal equally to the mind and the heart.

4.5/5

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REVIEW: The Insatiable Volt Sisters by Rachel Eve Moulton

The Insatiable Volt Sisters is the second horror novel published by Rachel Eve Moulton, following up on her debut, Tinfoil Butterfly, which was shortlisted for the Shirley Jackson Award.

In The Insatiable Volt Sisters, the Volt family have served as the caretakers of Fowler Island for generations. Located in Lake Erie off the northern coast of Ohio, Fowler Island is a popular vacation destination for summer tourists, but beneath this façade the island seems to feed on the despair of its female inhabitants, driving them to their untimely deaths.

The titular Volt sisters, Beatrice and Henrietta, have come of age on Fowler Island under the auspices of their quirky yet enigmatic father and a small group of female caretakers and companions. After growing up and escaping the island for ten years, Henrietta is called back home in the wake of her father’s unexpected death.

Shirley Jackson’s influence is evident throughout The Insatiable Volt Sisters, which features a pair of sisters who seem to be the spiritual descendants of Merricat and Constance Blackwood from Jackson’s We Have Always Lived at the Castle. Like Jackson’s classic novel, The Insatiable Volt Sisters is an anthem to agoraphobia featuring unreliable narration and a distinctly feminist take on the horror genre.

In contrast to We Have Always Lived at the Castle, Moulton’s novel is told from multiple perspectives on dual timelines. Rachel Eve Moulton’s writing is vivid yet ambiguous, initially befuddling the reader and then gradually building a profound sense of dread. Often disorienting, the story seems to be wandering a bit aimlessly during the middle of the novel. But this confusion is dispelled as a sinister force driving the island’s madness gradually crystallizes.

Rachel Eve Moulton fully embraces the northern Gothic aesthetic. Lake Erie has never felt so eerie as in The Insatiable Volt Sisters, and the ending descends into full-scale Lovecraftian horror. The Volt sisters may be insatiable, but your humble reviewer felt fully satiated upon closing the back cover of this accomplished folk horror.

The Insatiable Volt Sisters is an emotional thrill ride, a meditation on inheritance and the impossibility of escaping one’s past. Despite its pervading sense of despair, the novel is ultimately a feminist tale showing the strength of women who band together to confront the past and overcome an unspeakable evil. Moulton’s work is a must-read for fans of Shirley Jackson and highly recommended for horror enthusiasts in general.

4.5/5

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REVIEW: Veniss Underground by Jeff VanderMeer

Jeff VanderMeer’s first published novel, Veniss Underground, returns to print in a new twentieth anniversary edition, which also features five short stories and a new foreword by Charles Yu. Veniss Underground is considered one of the definitive novels of the New Weird movement of speculative fiction, combining aspects of science fiction, urban fantasy, and horror.

The novel takes place in the futuristic metropolis of Veniss, a city of decadence where artists create Living Art through a bizarre recycling of living organisms. But the real terror lies in the labyrinthine underground world of crime and body horror ruled by the mysterious Quin.

Veniss Underground is told from three points of view: twins Nicholas and Nicola and their friend Shadrach. VanderMeer employs first, second, and third person styles of narration for these three characters, respectively. In each case, VanderMeer succeeds at establishing strong emotional connections with the point of view character. The second-person perspective of Nicola works remarkably well at identifying you, the reader, with Nicola. The complex relationships among the three lead characters are also well developed, providing motivation for journeying to the underworld.

Oh, and there are meerkats, including a genetically engineered assassin meerkat. When considering the depravity of human beings, the meerkats might, in fact, consider themselves to be the superior species.

In a novel so unique, it is difficult to pin down specific influences. Perhaps the greatest influence is H.G. Wells, the pioneer of science fiction from a century prior. Like the 1895 H.G. Wells masterpiece, The Time Machine, Veniss Underground features parallel civilizations above and below ground, where the greatest terror is underneath the surface. The engineering of new animals certainly recalls work by the titular character from The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896).

Beyond H.G. Wells, there is also a strong connection between Veniss Underground and ancient Greek mythology, particularly the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, with Quin playing the role of Hades, lord of the underworld. VanderMeer’s descriptions of the underworld also recall the various circles of hell in Dante’s Inferno.

VanderMeer’s writing is dense yet accessible. The story is a page-turner, drawing the reader in from the first pages and leaving them wanting more. Fortunately, the twentieth anniversary edition provides exactly that: another 150 pages of content set in the same world, including four previously published short stories and one all-new story. Each of the stories provides another slice of life in the city of Veniss. However, the short stories are more like fragments, none of them reaching the same level of storytelling as the main novel. Nevertheless, readers may appreciate having these additional perspectives on the world.

Veniss Underground is the quintessential New Weird novel, deeply unsettling yet strangely compelling. As in his subsequent work, Jeff VanderMeer truly astounds with the inventiveness of his world and storytelling.

4.5/5

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This review was originally published in Grimdark Magazine #34.

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REVIEW: The Tyrant by Michael Cisco

Michael Cisco’s The Tyrant is a strange, dreamlike book. It was Cisco’s second novel, after 1999’s award-winning The Divinity Student. Cisco is sometimes claimed as part of the New Weird tradition, and it’s easy to see why with this book.

The prose of The Tyrant is etched like dreams and nightmares. Much like dreams, the prose doesn’t always flow smoothly, and the unexpected can arrive in a way that feels naturalistic if you’re in time with your dreams, and jarring if you’re reading it from a realist perspective.

Ella is a fifteen-year old genius with legs that don’t work due to polio. She’s a research assistant with Dr. Belhoria, working on research into life and death. Specifically they have a youth with strong astral projection powers who is essentially a paradox, alive and dead at the same time. As Dr. Belhoria explains,

“His syndrome…is a condition of superabundant vitality, with therefore corresponding surplus capacity for death. While in operation as a medium he oscillates between life and death and thus creates a static charge in space, which potential was to a small degree transferred to you.

“Oscillation allows him to be neither dead nor alive but puts him into another category of life altogether, which I will call potential life. His medium state is a reduction to pure potentiality of life…You may imagine an analogy between this and the conversion of potential to kinetic energy in mechanics. When our subject goes static, the life in him is not lost but only converted, and a certain amount of surplus is thrown off in the field of living things–hence the charge you brought away with you yesterday, and which, as you observed, was ectoplasmically expressed.”

Dr. Belhoria’s experiments end up with the youth astrally projecting himself into a liminal space that seems halfway between dream-reality and the afterlife. With his potential energy of life and death, he turns himself into The Tyrant, and wages war with the dead. He takes on Hell itself as if it were the easiest thing in the world. There is no sense that he could lose; that’s not the kind of tension Cisco is working with. The landscape of reality is drastically altered and there is no coming back from it, no return to the status quo. The prose becomes more detached and dream-like.

The walls are not made of stone–somehow she understands, that is, she gets pictures in her mind… The Tyrant has developed a method for culturing bone: when it is still embryonic the bone is highly plastic, moldable into any shape, and is often at this point in the process lightly scented with attar of roses. As it matures the bone stiffens to adamantine hardness, presenting a smooth, unbroken, and continuous surface. The exposed works of the fort are all made of lambent bone white and creamiest soap; leafless black vines, or perhaps some sort of fungus, scribble across the white walls like black creases in snow.

There are few characters of any import in the story. Dr. Belhoria, Ella, and the youth who becomes The Tyrant. Dr. Belhoria has the strongest change, to the point where she seems nearly unrecognizable by the end of the story. Her theories are proven true by the strange new world they occupy, and she just gracefully goes along with it rather than attempting any further explorations.

The youth feels more defined by his role as The Tyrant than a real person, which leaves only Ella. She also doesn’t feel like a particularly defined character, despite much of the novel taking place from her perspective. I’m also uncertain why she had to be so young, given that she’s working as a research assistant to a doctor. She’s never written with a reason to be much younger, she’s never underestimated due to her age, and it simply isn’t a factor in the story being told.

But this is not a story devoted to character in any real way. This is a story devoted to its central conceit, to this strange dream-death world the characters find themselves in. If the world-building and the ideas are not consistent, that’s because dreams never are.

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REVIEW: Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman

Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman takes place while the Black Death is ravaging Europe. If the huge outbreaks of plague weren’t enough, civilization is collapsing. The countryside is ravaged by famine, banditry, and a terrified populace. Also, it was orchestrated by Lucifer as an attempt to destroy humanity and perhaps, topple Heaven.

It’s a historical horror novel set during the Black Death. The setting has enough detail to feel alive, and the characters all feel like people of their time, while still being understandable to modern audiences.

A former knight, Thomas Givras, wounded at the Battle of Crecy, excommunicated and disenfranchised, has joined up with bandits for survival at the opening of Between Two Fires. Those bandits find a girl, Delphine, and eat her donkey. Delphine’s father has died and she has been left alone at a farmhouse, easy prey for desperate men. The leader of the bandits decides to sexually assault the girl and without hesitation Thomas kills him and the other bandits. She tags along for protection and he begrudgingly accepts.

I understand if people see the opening with its threat of sexual violence and refuse to read further. I will only note that after the opening sequence it becomes significantly less prominent.

Between Two Fires is structured like a road trip across the European countryside by foot or horse or boat. They get into scrapes, deal with other survivors, some of whom are violent or paranoid. Buehlman alternates this with people who, even as everything collapses, still show kindness. This includes a priest, Pere Matthieu, who joins them. The girl knows they have to travel to Paris and then to Avignon, though she doesn’t know why.

On this road trip, they also come across numerous monsters brought up from the depths of Hell. The book starts with a very historical, grounded sensibility, but as they deal more with supernatural threats the tone of the book changes. The creatures are macabre abominations, with the first monster and The Ones Who Knock by Night being personal favorites.

To engender life had been reserved unto the Lord of Hosts, and the numbers of the alchemy of life had been hidden from the angels.

Yet on the eve of the new war, the fallen under Lucifer had set their hands to the task of creation and tried to bring forth fresh invention; but so far below the Lord were they that they could not quicken any new thing, but only the dead; and they wedded dead flesh together with the souls of the damned and made both live again; and they took the fishes of the sea and river and the creatures of the mountain and woods and corrupted them, made them monstrous in size and quick to do harm; because none of these could propagate, saved by killing, the devil set their hand to each one, working in secret until they made an arsenal of unclean flesh against the day they might release their bestiary into the world of men.

Much of the journey is the slow development of trust as Thomas allows himself to care for Delphine and gains a friendship with the priest. The scenes in which the priest and knight confess to each other are excellent. Thomas and Delphine’s relationship starts with Thomas putting on a gruff face but she senses that he’s not going to harm her or abandon her, and knows she can trust him. Their character arcs flow smoothly and beautifully. Horror works best if you care for the characters.

Rich in detail, with a vivid setting, compelling characters, and several fantastically executed creepy scenarios, Between Two Fires is an absolute masterpiece.

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REVIEW: Savage Legion by Matt Wallace

In Matt Wallace’s Savage Legion, book one of the Savage Rebellion trilogy, the nation of Crache is a paradise of innovation where all who contribute to society may benefit from its wealth. However, beyond its walls in the shadows its citizens are so far removed from that they know not of the dark’s existence, Crache uses the poor and disabused people of society to fight the bloodiest moments its wars. Where once only those judged to have committed the worst crimes were sent to their violent ends fighting Crache’s foes, now Crache needs more and more people to be thrown into the grinder, and one such person who should not be there ends up on the front in the titular Savage Legion, kicking off an action-packed story of war, corruption, and friendship.

In Savage Legion Evie has been pressed from a barroom brawl and into the Savage Legion, the condemned rag-clad wall of flesh the Crache empire throws at its foes before sending the real soldiers in. In the capital city of Crache itself, Lexi has a week to clear her husband Brio’s name from the charge of treason, lest the leaders of Crache scrub out her Gen (guild / union), the only remaining voice in parliament for the poor people of the Bottoms. Dyeawan has been taken from a dungeon to an island. Her new boss invents wondrous things, and her sharp mind and ability to detect all lies has her soon questioning just what he is inventing, and for what purpose. Daian is an Aegin (a member of the Crache policing force), super human fast with a blade, and interestingly indifferent to the laws he is supposed to be enforcing.

Savage Legion is primarily centred on Evie’s time in the Savage Legion as she and her fellow Savages are thrown into battle after battle, Lexi as the new the leader of Gen Stalbraid as she searches for her husband Brio and realises that she can be so much more than just a host to her husband’s guests, and Dyeawan’s induction into the mysterious Planning Cadre. Evie is the raw brutal reality of the Savage Legion; Lexi experiences the terrifying corruption of Crache’s governing and policing entities; while Dyeawan is an insight into the machinations of those driving society for the betterment of its citizens.

Crache as a nation seems modelled on democratic socialism quite heavy handily, showcasing the good and the bad (the bad obviously being the more fun to read about and having the most impact on the story). It’s an engaging world to play in for Wallace that we can all likely relate to in one way or another, and the history of Crache’s change from a monarchy-style governing approach a thousand years past to an approach that favours the people and their value to society, and how the history of that change has been controlled and changed to suit the paradise narrative, is an interesting theme that I enjoyed reading about.

With the author being US-based, it’s relatively clear that Crache is a fantastical representation of the US with all of its current problems. The allegories for police brutality, government manipulation of its population, and the downtrodden, disabused, poor, and unwanted banding together against the machine are very starkly and bluntly written, with little subtlety. Things such as Aegins needing to hit unofficial arrest quotas, and people using money and influence to become more equal than others, for example, I felt were quite heavy-handedly done. I will say, however, that Wallace’s approach to including plenty of human diversity and inclusivity was welcome, though not as smoothly done as Alex Marshall’s The Crimson Empire trilogy in my mind. It is also likely, based on how bluntly some of the other themes in this book are written, that this is entirely purposeful–after all, the time in the US of subtle messaging is years dead and gone.

For the grimdark fan, while on the surface this felt like a book where I would find plenty of gritty anti-heroes to read about, it is an epic dark fantasy. The good characters might be covered in a bit of muck and blood, but they are good characters, and by the end some of the antagonists become at times almost comically evil. There are plenty of characters in this book worth investing in–Evie, Taru, and Dyeawan, for me–and readers will likely get plenty of enjoyment from the bold themes and messaging throughout, but the nuanced anti-hero and villain the grimdark fan chases is not what I found in this book.

Savage Legion is a barnstorming and bloody adventure with plenty of modern themes amongst the medieval fantasy world brutality for readers to connect with. Dark fantasy and epic fantasy fans–especially those US-based ones–are likely to get a very big kick out of this book. I, most certainly, will be picking up book two, Savage Bounty, immediately so I can continue this story.

3.5/5

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REVIEW: The Ten Percent Thief by Lavanya Lakshminarayan

In The Ten Percent Thief, Lavanya Lakshminarayan immerses us in Apex City, formerly known as Bangalore, once the Silicon Valley of India and now governed by a technocapitalist meritocracy. The Big Brother of the tale is Bell Corp, a corporation that has created its own technocratic caste system by ranking individuals on its signature bell curve. Individual productivity and the virality of social media posts help to improve one’s score, propelling them toward the upper tail of the bell curve. But it’s not enough to reach the top percentile: citizens must continually strive toward perfection to maintain this privileged ranking. Bell Corp has a zero-tolerance policy toward failure: anything less than perfection is unacceptable.

The harshest dichotomy in the neo-caste system of the novel arises between “Virtual” citizens at the upper end of the curve and “Analog” individuals at the lower tail. The Virtuals enjoy a technologically privileged, purportedly utopian lifestyle. But in reality, this existence has taken the humanity out of humankind. Despite numerous technological luxuries, being a Virtual is a stressful existence, with the constant fear of becoming unproductive and sinking to a lower caste. Moreover, Virtuals are implanted with a chip that monitors their thoughts and nudges them toward making decisions favorable for Bell Corp.

In the lowest caste, Analogs of The Ten Percent Thief live an existence similar to our own with (gasp) face-to-face conversations, trips to the grocery store to buy food, and newspapers that are printed on actual paper. The Analogs are the new untouchables, treated like zoo animals by the Virtuals who observe them through glass but are forbidden from interacting directly. In a further act of dehumanization, Virtuals even refer to Analogs with the pronoun “it.” The Analogs who fall to the lowest part of the curve are considered beyond saving and are ultimately harvested for their organs.

The Ten Percent Thief is constructed as a set of interconnected short stories, shifting perspective among a diverse set of characters from both the Virtual and Analog worlds. Lavanya Lakshminarayan employs both first- and third-person narration to show us different facets of Apex City. My favorite chapter is actually told in the second person by an AI algorithm implanted in the brain of a Virtual news reporter, addressing the reporter as “you” from within her own brain. She struggles against the AI algorithm as it tries to optimize her as an individual. It is difficult to separate her own genuine thoughts from the whispers of the AI.

The point of view characters in The Ten Percent Thief include a Virtual schoolchild having contact with Analog society for the first time, a Virtual citizen who has become unproductive and demoted to Analog status, and a Virtual worker who compromises his own ethics to reach the upper echelon of the bell curve. We also see a Virtual social media influencer terrified of people discovering the truth behind her carefully crafted persona, a pregnant woman who defies Bell Corp’s draconian rules about procreation, and a group of Analog revolutionaries plotting to secure justice and equality for their people, including the titular Ten Percent Thief herself.

The Ten Percent Thief has an undeniable Orwellian flavor, with citizens constantly monitored and punished for any views that oppose those of their tyrannical government. It is especially interesting to read how the Virtual people attempt to control their own minds, pushing out any nonconformist thought and focusing their attention on corporate-approved ways of thinking.

Although it embraces all the familiar tropes of techno dystopian science fiction, The Ten Percent Thief shines because of Lavanya Lakshminarayan’s finely honed prose. Lakshminarayan succeeds in establishing emotional connections to the rotating cast of characters in each chapter, while providing a broader view of Apex City society. Lakshminarayan’s pacing is excellent throughout, with none of the chapters outstaying their welcome. The book ultimately circles back to the beginning, providing new perspectives based on everything we have witnessed in between.

The Ten Percent Thief is a deeply thought-provoking and timely novel that updates the traditional notion of castes for a near-future meritocratic society infused with artificial intelligence. The future caste system is every bit as rigid and frightening as the old system India discarded decades ago.

5/5

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REVIEW: Wraithbound by Tim Akers

Wraithbound presents a world that is literally coming apart at the seams. Reality-warping elemental Chaos is only barely restrained by monumental, magically-infused barricades. The fortunate and affluent live deep within the Ordered Lands, while those less privileged are relegated to the outer borders, suffering the corrosive influence of the roiling Chaos just outside the walls. As the creators and maintainers of the so-called “orderwalls,” the mages of the Iron College have become a prominent pillar of society. Known as spiritbinders, these mages interweave a portion of their souls with an elemental spirit, gaining power over that spirit’s domain. Each spiritbinder dedicates themselves to a single element. Air, water, fire, and stone are some common choices, while others form pacts with more abstract entities, such as manifestations of law or life. Rumors also exist of renegade spiritbinders who entangle themselves with darker entities, such as demons or the souls of the deceased. With the continued survival of civilization at stake, the Iron College has established the justicars, a ruthless security force tasked with both policing the ranks of the spiritbinders and also hunting down unsanctioned “feral” mages operating outside the strictures of the College.

Young Rae Kelthannis finds his comfortable lifestyle turned upside down when his father, a minor weather-controlling stormbinder in the employ of Baron Hadroy, becomes entangled in a justicar-led purge of heretical magic. The Kelthannis family flee to the edge of civilization, eking out a meager life in the shadow of an orderwall. Despite the risk of justicar scrutiny, after a miserable decade of self-exile Rae gives in to the temptation to follow in his father’s footsteps. He attempts a spiritbinding of his own, using his father’s fractured sword as a focus for the magic. Instead of joining with a minor air elemental as intended, he finds his spirit entwined with something much more treacherous: a wrathful soul from the realm of the dead. This disastrous summoning has lethal consequences for Rae’s loved ones, and he immediately finds himself pursued by both justicars and an even more implacable foe: a brutal mage encased in a mechanical suit. To survive, Rae will have to come to grips with both his father’s hidden past and his dangerous new spiritbound partner.

Wraithbound is an epic fantasy where magic takes center stage. The various types of spiritbinding and their myriad manifestations are examined in intriguing detail, providing fun daydream fodder to readers and making this book an easy recommendation to fans of Brandon Sanderson’s intricate magic systems. Command of elements like fire and water are common enough in fantasy stories, but Rae’s tumultuous alliance with the wraith is both fresh and compelling. Rae is reckless and untrained, while the wraith bristles at being compelled into servitude. With the wraith seeking ever more control over his earthly host’s body, the reader is given the sense that Rae has caught a tiger by the tail. He requires his deathly companion’s dark assistance if he is to live to see another day, but the wraith’s agenda and Rae’s own are often at odds.

Wraithbound is also rich with layered mystery. Although it’s given away in the title, Rae doesn’t discover the true nature of his bound spirit until the halfway point of the book. The actual identity of the wraith isn’t revealed until much later. The role of Rae’s father in the magical catastrophe that has come to be known as the Hadroy Heresy and the ultimate goal of Rae’s pursuers are also crucial parts of the puzzle he must solve. I felt clever whenever one of my suppositions turned out to be correct, and absorbed even further into the narrative with every unexpected twist. Akers keeps the reader guessing.

Promoted as the first book in The Spiritbinder Sage, Wraithbound concludes with some tantalizing hints about the future direction of the series. However, prospective readers can rest assured that Wraithbound provides a self-contained tale with a proper ending, rather than merely a fraction of the story with an arbitrary or abrupt conclusion.

Much like Rae himself, the reader is whisked from one danger to the next, with very few pauses to rest. Rae’s perilous journey takes him far beyond the Ordered Lands and into the Chaos-infested wilderness, the skies, and even the shadowy land of the dead. Fast-paced and packed with cinematic magical duels, Wraithbound is an exhilarating ride from start to finish.

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REVIEW: Life Beyond Us by the European Astrobiology Institute

Life Beyond Us is an anthology of fifty-four original science fiction stories and science essays compiled by the European Astrobiology Institute, a consortium of European institutions devoted to research, education, and outreach activities in the field of astrobiology, i.e., the study of life in the universe. This anthology is the brainchild of over sixty contributors from across the globe, including some of the world’s top authorities in astrobiology, astrophysics, and aeronautical engineering, as well as experts in science philosophy and linguistics.

Life Beyond Us features twenty-seven short stories, each followed by a professional essay explaining the scientific underpinnings of the story. Over its nearly 600 pages, Life Beyond Us covers a wide range of topics in astrobiology, including the environmental conditions that could foster life, the possible forms of microscopic and macroscopic organisms, and the social consequences of humans making first contact with alien life.

Currently, the only known life in the universe is on our home planet of Earth. How do we extrapolate this knowledge from a single data point to address the potential of life elsewhere in the cosmos? If extraterrestrial life exists, what forms could it take? And how can we study life on another world without contaminating it with organisms from our own planet? If we do discover life elsewhere, what are the ethical implications of engaging with it? How can we even communicate with extraterrestrial life if it does not use the same medium for communication as humans, viz., sound and visual cues. These questions are made especially difficult since there is no universally agreed upon definition of life itself. Life Beyond Us does an admirable job of addressing all these questions and many others.

Life Beyond Us is compiled by a trio of prolific science fiction editors: Julie Nováková, Lucas K. Law, and Susan Forest. The short stories are written by a diverse range of contributors from around the globe, including both amateur authors and well-established writers such as World Fantasy Award winner Tobias S. Buckell and Julie E. Czerneda, a science fiction veteran with twenty-three published novels already under her belt.

Each short story is followed by a companion science essay. The essays are all accessible and authoritative, complete with citations to relevant papers published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. The references are up-to-date, including articles published as recently as last year. The science essays are all written in an approachable fashion, similar in style to articles published in Scientific American, clearly explaining the scientific principles of the preceding story for a general audience. I found the essays to be of uniformly excellent quality across the anthology.

The short stories themselves are more inconsistent. Some are five-star quality, with engaging characters and well-constructed storylines, including many unexpected plot twists. But several of the other stories serve as thinly veiled vehicles for discussing aspects of science. Nevertheless, a common feature among all the short stories is that they are rooted in realistic science, making them both believable and instructive.

Overall, Life Beyond Us is an outstanding collection emphasizing the hard science behind science fiction. The authors clearly recognize the importance of science fiction in stimulating readers’ imagination and fostering an interest in scientific disciplines. This is important for both the field of astrobiology and more broadly for recruiting the next generation of students across STEM disciplines. Personally, I would love to see more anthologies in a similar vein as Life Beyond Us focusing on other areas of science such as quantum physics or artificial intelligence.

The team at the European Astrobiology Institute is to be commended for this comprehensive anthology, which was clearly a labor of love for everyone involved. While the stories focus on life beyond Earth, they also help us to gain an appreciation for the beauty and complexity of life on this pale blue dot we call home.

4/5

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An Interview with Richard Swan

Fans of fantasy are unlikely to have escaped the deluge of rave reviews of Richard Swan’s Empire of the Wolf series. With the magnificent The Justice of Kings and The Tyranny of Faith being marketed as his debut fantasy trilogy, what his new legion of fans may not know is that he has a completed space opera trilogy called The Art of War (with prequels and short stories building off it) which, for this interviewer, read like a glorious mixture of The Expanse and Warhammer 40,000.

Book one, Reclamation, and I think you could argue the entire The Art of War series, is the story of the escalation of political conflict driven in a hundred directions by a range of competing factions. The series is a mixture of political intrigue, espionage, and brutal military conflict. It is a story about biting off more than you can chew, and of the large and powerful becoming rather small and weak. The galaxy is colonised, other species have been met and treated with, but even as humanity has grown into the stars, the things that make humans brilliant to write about because of the conflicts created by our arrogance, greed, and stupidity, remain.

Richard was kind enough to spend some time with me talking about one of the best sci-fi series I’ve read—and, conversely, the first trilogy I’ve back-to-back read and reviewed in a long, long time.

[GdM] When I reviewed The Art of War trilogy, I could think of no better comparison than The Expanse and the Warhammer 40,000 universes. The incredible layers of worldbuilding, history, politics, war, character arcs and the sheer awe-inspiring speed and scale of your battle scenes deserve no less comparison, in my eyes. While you have spoken about Warhammer 40k’s impacts on you, I know Reclamation was written before you had heard of Leviathan Wakes, and in my eyes that is the closest comparison. Can you describe the themes and influences for this series?

[RS] Well, first off thank you very much for the kind words! In terms of direct inspiration, as with many things it was the culmination of a lifetime of media consumption. I must have put pen to paper on Reclamation around 2012/13 and at that point I was very heavily influenced by a lot of videogames I was playing. Games like the Halo franchise (and especially Reach / ODST), Mass Effect (the third instalment of which I had only really just got round to playing) and StarCraft 2. I’ve also had a lifelong love of the Star Wars prequels which I think will always feed into my writing in one way or another. In terms of literary inspirations, I was very heavily influenced by the epic space operas of Peter Hamilton growing up (I’ve always been a Night’s Dawn / Confederation man, though I think the Commonwealth Saga is probably his more popular work), that sort of multiple POV, slightly martial, high-tech, breathless, galaxy-spanning hurtling-towards-war kind of narrative. And I was completely obsessed with Iain M Banks’ Culture series for the longest time, too. The themes Banks explores I think are writ large in the Art of War Trilogy; this idea of covert operatives, willing to take the low road, willing to get their hands dirty and do dreadful things in order that the majority can sleep easy at night, I’ve always been very drawn to the moral quandaries that that idea presents. And I think certainly during my formative years the Global War on Terror was in full swing, so this idea of liberal democracies compromising their own values so readily and comprehensively—values which they have fought and died and killed to defend—in order to defeat an enemy who does not play by those rules, that was a fascinating and rich seam of inspiration for me. I think in all of my fiction there is this exploration of the tension between societies with liberal secular systems and values, and what happens when those societies are faced with an existential threat which plays by completely different set of rules. It always comes back to the same moral dichotomy, consequentialism versus deontologism.

[GdM] The story spans the breadth of the galaxy, and features a united humanity addicted to connectivity and manipulating every aspect of the galaxy, the downtrodden Kaygryn trying to survive and claw their way out from under the Ascendancy’s direct bootheel and humanity’s indirect one, and the Provar Ascendancy as the dominant species in the Milky Way sending most of their military strength off to crusade beyond the boundaries of the galaxy against an unknown foe. What inspired each of these species and their drivers?

[RS] Certainly I think the United Nations as it exists within the Art of War Trilogy is a fairly naked allegory of modern Western society. In fact, probably some of it and the epigraphs are a little heavy-handed; I’d be a bit subtler if I was to write the same trilogy these days. In a lot of my science-fiction I have humanity as existing in a pseudo post-scarcity society in which much of the manufacturing base is completely automated and everybody is entitled to housing and subsistence. So, I have the vast majority of society existing in these hyperconnected digital playgrounds which most of them are hopelessly addicted to and who spend their days doing nothing but indulging their desires. But I also like the idea of having a sort of confected labour market / economy, so that people who still want to have jobs and work (and these mostly exist around the civic infrastructure—legal, administrative, political, military) can do in order to earn more than their subsistence entitles them to, and these people tend to be the more motivated and driven as a result. Generally I think the UN in the books is the ‘good guy’ and wants to impose its way of life and values on the other races of the galaxy, but also whilst maintaining its own position of self-congratulatory superiority. It’s essentially addicted to intervention, and the series is about what happens when you meddle in something you really ought not to have—or perhaps, you ought not to have intervened in unless you could be assured of victory.

The Provar Ascendancy is your sort of classic theocratic fascist autocracy, whilst the Kaygryn are a race of aliens as you say just coming out of centuries of servitude (and that itself has been engineered by the UN in one of its back patting interventionist episodes—though they are also perfectly content to hang them out to dry as well). I think the Provar originally were inspired by the elites from Halo and certainly have that same aggressive honour-based warrior society. I also drew inspiration from real-world parallels, for sadly there are plenty of modern totalitarian regimes to take ideas from. The interplay between these societies is really just a reflection of the interplay between modern super states with different ideologies, and how political missteps and cultural misunderstandings can fan the embers of a conflict into outright war. In fact, now I cast my mind back to it, the very first kernel of inspiration for Reclamation was the Falklands War.

[GdM] Throughout the trilogy, you really get deep into expanding on some of the problems in today’s current human society. Things like our addiction to technology and the internet (and what happens when it’s taken away from the addicted, or introduced to the uninitiated), the impact on society of the removal of jobs and the introduction of a universal wage system, and our penchant for just straight up thinking we’re smarter than everyone and can manipulate everything with little-to-no consequence for those not experiencing the front lines. How did you choose which societal concerns to focus on, what was your approach to extrapolating them out, and at what point do you need to draw a boundary when you write about them?

[RS] That’s a very good summary of the UN as portrayed in the novels. I think you are absolutely right when you say that you kind of have to pick and choose which areas you’re going to focus on when writing a science-fiction novel, as of course everything as we know it will change in the future, and it is not clear now what any given invention could have on society as we know it. For example, I had one idea which basically extrapolated on the idea of memeing to the point where writing became practically obsolete and was instead replaced by very dense pictograms which were able to convey information much more effectively than sentences of text. Even something as simple as the idea of windows—as in physical, glass windows in a house—can be completely reframed (pun intended) in the future. I think it’s perfectly possible that one day houses will be completely sealed units because replicating a pleasant view with appropriate lighting and ambient sounds will be perfectly achievable using UHD screens. Even the idea of something like offices in their present form still existing hundreds of years in the future is probably ludicrous; it’s probably more likely that workspaces will be entirely virtual reality because the definition and interface will be so advanced. Replacing a physical workplace will have profound implications on labour-as-socialisation.

When it comes to societal issues, certainly there’s a fear at the moment of hyper-connectivity and addiction to the internet, smartphones, et cetera. My personal prediction (which is nothing unique or ground breaking) is that eventually technology will be fully integrated into our bodies—permanent HUDs grafted into our eyes, implanted computers in our brain that are controlled by our thoughts, sensors in our fingertips, et cetera. Whilst I think some people would find this horrifying, I also think that one of the corollaries of this absolute ubiquity of technology would be a huge drop in crime to the point where the incidence of certain crimes would fade almost into nothingness (e.g. it would be practically impossible to commit any sort of assault whilst the victim is able to record every part of it and upload it to a remote substrate in real time).

Things like this small morsel and other similar ideas I explored briefly in the Art of War book 3, when a character from a “Tier 2” world (a world that is technologically advanced but does not have faster than light travel capability) joins the UN and so is exposed to the UN way of life. It’s something which she quickly finds completely overwhelming to the point where she becomes depressed and alcoholic. However, the sociological impacts of ubiquitous technology are better suited for (and abundantly explored in) the cyberpunk subgenre so I did not set out to get into the guts of it in this space opera trilogy.

[GdM] The first book has been out for a decade, now. With ten years of hindsight alongside ten wild years of pandemics, wars, technology evolution, etc, if you could go back and insert one more societal theme into these books, what would it be?

[RS] It’s a really good question. When The Justice of Kings was published I actually did go back to the original word files of the Art of War trilogy with a view to editing them and bringing them up to my current writing standard. I didn’t want readers going through my back-catalogue to think that they were necessarily reflective of my current ability. But apart from a few excisions, I was actually fairly happy with the Art of War trilogy (I didn’t reread the whole thing, I got about halfway through book 1 before stopping). I certainly wouldn’t write it in the same way now, but it absolutely was not worth the time and energy investment in editing half a million words because the qualitative gains would have been fairly minimal.

Given unlimited time, inspiration, and inclination, I think certainly I would have explored the characters in a little more depth, which is something I was at pains to do in the Empire of the Wolf trilogy. The Art of War is a very plot focused story and the characters I think are probably a little archetypal and, really, vehicles to carry the plot forward rather than necessarily beguiling or intriguing people to read about.

In terms of themes, as I said earlier I think I’d have been a little more subtle in my examination of modern Western societies. Some of the left-wing handwringing is a bit overdone, especially in the epigraphs—some of which make me wince to reread. But generally speaking, I think I covered the thematic ground I wanted to; I have just done it in a more nuanced and interesting way.

[GdM] There is no doubt in my mind that sci-fi fans are going to absolutely love the sheer range of technologies integrated into your character’s experiences: from the mantix combat suits, to impact gel, to the IHDs in every UN citizen’s head that enable you to perceive time differently. What are your favourite bits of Swan-tech you’ve invented, and how much of those were pure cool factor, or required for parts of the story?

[RS] I think I enjoyed the technology around space combat the most. A lot of science-fiction in popular culture has these sort of pseudo aircraft-carriers-in-space type combat ships—and I actually love that aesthetic—but what I love less is the idea of having all of your officers standing on a bridge with windows out to space, ordering guns being fired at an enemy a few kilometres away. To my mind these engagements would be three things: they would be very quick, because most of it would be dictated by computers; they would be conducted over huge distances, many hundreds of thousands of kilometres apart; and they would be very violent.

In order to contrive to have humans in this process, I had to do a number of things. The first was to get them as far away from the outer hull of the ship as possible. So the officers are in an armoured core in the very centre of the ship. As well as armour plating made of various fictional alloys, I also encase them in a sphere of ‘nanogel’, which is a non-Newtonian ballistic impact fluid, like a womb. Each officer is in a capsule like this, with their brains then linked to a virtual reality command sphere, which visually would be like standing in a bubble of glass in space surrounded by HUD graphics. And then as you have already alluded to, their implanted computers are able to alter their time perception, so that they can make decisions in the space of picoseconds and keep up with the computers who are doing the heavy lifting during the engagement.

So, I think I had a lot of fun in coming up with ways of including humans within the combat and maintaining their agency in what should really be the preserve of computers and machines.

[GdM] When I first read this brilliant, un-put-downable trilogy, one of the things that blew me away the most was when I found out they had been self-published. The quality of these books is so good, I actually had to pick my jaw up off the floor when you told me you hadn’t pitched them to publishers. Can you talk me through what the journey for these books has been like, from when you first published them, to now, when your fantasy trilogy is on everyone’s TBRs?

[RS] I think I probably first started conceiving of the idea of Reclamation after university. I finished university in 2010, and from about 2007 I had been heavily involved in the official black library fanfiction forums. For the uninitiated, Black Library is the publishing wing of Games Workshop and is responsible for producing novels set within the Warhammer 40,000 Universe. Over the course of three years I must’ve written about five novels of fanfiction plus innumerable short stories, novellas and group stories. And then those forums were disbanded to be replaced by a very early prototype of what is now the modern-day Warhammer community website.

So, after they went down I was feeling a bit listless with my fiction writing. The fanfiction forum had consumed me and my writing for years and almost overnight that community was completely dismantled. So, I didn’t write anything for a little while, until probably a year or two later when I was getting really into Mass Effect and wanted to write a novel that was reminiscent of that. By the time I finished Reclamation it must have been 2015, and the idea of pitching it to publishers (I didn’t know what agents were at that time) didn’t really occur to me. I definitely thought that the book was much too generic, just a fairly run-of-the-mill space opera, to be suitable for traditional publication. So, I never actually attempted to get it published in that way. Around the same time I became aware of KDP, the Kindle self-publishing platform, and that was extremely attractive to me. I could completely control the direction of the novel, and most excitingly the cover art (the first piece of artwork for reclamation was a John Harris piece which I had licensed), and I became completely consumed with the self-publishing process. Looking back, I actually had much more success than I really should have done. I did almost no marketing beyond a bit of amateurish social media stuff, expecting readers simply to seek me out and find me (ha!) and expecting the book to simply just begin selling. The Art of War Trilogy actually did moderately well over the course of three years or so, but it was when I self-published a MilSF novel (Earth Remembers), which I expected to succeed simply because my previous space opera had, I had a much more classic self-publishing experience—which was that absolutely nothing happened. In fact, I de-published that novel recently because to date it had still only sold about twenty copies.

At the same time sales for the Art of War Trilogy were drying up to a trickle and I decided to turn my back on independent publishing in about 2018. My goal in life had always been to get one book in print with a Big Five publisher, and so I turned my mind back to that task (and started writing what would become The Justice of Kings). One of the very welcome corollaries of the publication of The Justice of Kings and The Tyranny of Faith is that people have now been going back to the Art of War trilogy, and so after several years of zero sales I’m shifting a couple of hundred copies a month—and that number keeps going up. So, these books are finally getting their moment in the sun!

[GdM] I remember those Warhammer forums! Do you remember your name on there, and what some of your favourite works were about?

[RS] I do indeed! My handle was Firefox and I used to write about a military investigator called Vandemarr. The books were Auxiliary, The Source, Last Testament, Fallen City, and Deathwatch. It is difficult to overstate how much of my brainpower and creative energy those novels monopolised. I was completely consumed by them. Those three years were absolutely formative for me in honing my craft.

[GdM] I also find it very interesting that The Earth Remembers did not reach the light over the last year-and-a-bit through people finding it in much the same way as they did The Art of War trilogy. Do you have any thoughts on why it might have remained in the sales hall of darkness?

[RS] I never really pushed it or marketed it and I think even in the three or four years it took me to write and publish the Art of War trilogy, the nature of KDP changed fairly drastically in terms of how the algorithm was structured. I don’t think Earth Remembers was (is) a bad book, but it was just completely invisible, which is the default state of any self-published novel (and indeed published novel). It was also very different from my ‘UN-iverse’ (the Art of War Trilogy, Hadan’s Reach and the two Ascendancy War novellas); it’s a much pulpier, dieselpunk World War II in space novel, pure MilSF, and yet I was publishing it as an indie space opera author, so I don’t think there was much pull through for my audience. It’s something I do intend to revisit at some point as I have always loved military science-fiction, but I think it needs a new cover and a bit of a rebrand!

[GdM] You once told me you were a science fiction author masquerading as a fantasy author. Can you elaborate a bit on that, and let me know what aspects of your authorial skillset built in science fiction helped you deliver the absolutely magnificent The Justice of Kings?

[RS] Essentially, I’ve always written science-fiction. The Justice of Kings was the first fantasy novel I ever wrote. The first stories I wrote when I was twelve were military science-fiction, and then I wrote a very long novel with a friend which was more military space opera. My first crack at a proper multiple POV space opera solo project was when I was about seventeen, and that formed the blueprint of how I approached fiction ever since. From there it was 40K fanfiction, then the Art of War trilogy. Even now I have science-fiction trilogy idea I’m 50k words into writing, and a sci fi standalone called Prophet about a space fighter pilot which I really must do something with (that could well be my favourite ever book I’ve written). So, for as long as I’ve been writing, fantasy is very much an aberration for me.

I saw a reviewer once compare The Justice of Kings to the Star Wars prequel trilogy and the collapse of the Republic (with Justices being a bit like Jedi), and, whilst that was certainly not my intention, I really love that comparison—the idea that The Justice of Kings is a secret science fiction novel masquerading as a fantasy trilogy. But I think for me the authorial skillset wasn’t necessarily built by writing science fiction per se; rather it was built just by writing so much. Ultimately the only way any of us get good at anything is by practising, and so all the books I wrote prior to The Justice of Kings all helped to hone that narrative voice.

[GdM] With The Empire of the Wolf soon coming to its society-collapsing conclusion, can you tell me what you’re writing next?

[RS] I have three projects on the go at the moment. The first is a flintlock fantasy trilogy set several centuries after the Empire of the Wolf Trilogy and centres around a diplomatic mission to an enigmatic and violent race of sea dwellers. The second is a short post-apocalyptic novel set in London; and the third is a contemporary crime novel set in Sydney which revolves around a sequence of shark attacks. So, fingers crossed something happens with these in the near future!

Read The Art of War Trilogy by Richard Swan

This interview was originally published in our Sci-fi / cyberpunk special issue: Grimdark Magazine Issue #34.

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