REVIEW: Future’s Edge by Gareth L. Powell
Future’s Edge is the latest offering from sci-fi author and space opera veteran Gareth L Powell, and features some of his trademark poignancy balanced with humour in the face of dire odds. This book is billed for fans of James SA Corey and Becky Chambers and finds a nice balance between sweeping epic stakes and intimate found-family vignettes.
Set in the near-ish future, mere decades after humanity joined the space faring age, Future’s Edge is set as our galaxy faces the annihilation of all sentient life by a mysterious race of physics-defying beings known as the Cutters. The last remnants of multiple species (including humanity) have fled to the edge of the galaxy in the hope of escaping to the next spiral arm before the Cutters find them. This is where our protagonist Ursula Morrow has been held up for two years, running some semblance of a bar, in the refugee camps waiting for the man who got her off Earth just in time.
Ursula was once an archaeology student on an extrasolar dig, investigating Precursor ruins that dated back to before the dinosaurs were wiped out. On that excursion she met Jack, and spent all her free time with him. In her distracted, love-struck state, she made a mistake and got herself infected by an ancient alien virus that made her almost indestructible.
When Jack shows up at her bar – married to someone else – and tells Ursula she may be the key to a galaxy-saving weapon, she’s not exactly jumping for joy to shoot off across the stars with the happy couple, into certain danger and almost-certain death. Circumstances, however, leave her little choice but to save the day.
Future’s Edge comes with more of Powell’s humanising takes on ship AI and the exploration of human-AI relationships that could arise. There’s plenty of contemporary commentary on the divisiveness of “AI” in our current society and in a few years time I’m sure this will be an easy way to date the novel.
While not as dark as some of Powell’s other work, the grimdark fans out there will doubtless enjoy the key feature of the genre that is hope in the face of desperation. This is a story of desperation, and the price of failure is the destruction of all sentient life forms, so the stakes are pretty high. The characters have sacrifices to make – willingly or otherwise – to give everyone else the best possible hope of survival.
At just over 300 pages, Future’s Edge sets a swift pace and, at times, could have benefitted from slowing down a little to allow for a bit more exposition. If you’ve read To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, then Future’s Edge is a bit like that playing on double-speed. Future’s Edge offers a neat little space opera package without the epic page count. It’s compact and punchy, with great ideas and themes that are worth diving into; with some beautiful cover art to boot.
Read Future’s Edge by Gareth L. PowellThe post REVIEW: Future’s Edge by Gareth L. Powell appeared first on Grimdark Magazine.
