Book review: Murder By Memory by Olivia Waite

The cover of Murder By Memory by Olivia Waite; a library floats in space, with a librarian in a comfy chair in the foreground.

I received a copy of this novella via NetGalley.

I’ve been a fan of Olivia Waite’s romance for a while, so I was interested to see how much I’d enjoy her SFF. And the verdict is: quite a bit, actually. This is a murder mystery on a generation ship, where new bodies can be replicated when the old one wears out, and consciousness can be transferred from body to body. Consciousnesses are stored in the ship’s Library, on book-like hard drives between bodies, and much of the social and familial ties are demonstrated by where people get “shelved.” Individual memories can be re-experienced through cocktail-making.

This is a society where basic needs are (blessedly) collectively taken care of for everyone, so people are free to pursue professions and passions as they will, and encouraged in doing so to enhance the collective experience. Not only does this society have gardens and fabric designers, it has YARN SHOPS. This is the first example of a generation ship I’d plausibly be willing to exist upon.

And then our intrepid ship’s detective wakes up in the wrong body, and discovers another body, along with the clearly deliberate destruction of books in the Library, which erases those consciousnesses without backups. The game, as they say, is afoot.

Tonally, this is close to Mary Robinette Kowal’s The Spare Man (which I also recommend). The plot moves quickly and the characters are engaging; some you want to hang out with, and everyone is interesting. Waite continues to build worlds where queerness visibly exists without much comment (she does this in her romance as well), and good banter, only now it’s on a spaceship rather than during the Regency. The solving of the mystery itself is satisfactory.

Strongly recommended.