Gritty and Adventurous

Other Systems by Elizabeth Guizzetti

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Elizabeth Guizzetti’s Other Systems is a lean, gritty immigrant’s story that also happens to be a sci-fi epic. And a coming of age story. And a kick-ass adventure. Fortunately, Guizzetti wields the author’s keyboard as deftly as her heroine Abby handles the stick and throttles of a Revelation shuttle, maneuvering through horrific obstacles and accelerating to escape velocity with split-second timing. While a degree in science fiction isn’t a prerequisite for this accelerated course in galactic exploration, the sci-fi intelligentsia will revel in the precision and granularity of Guizzetti’s futuristic universe. Those of us who are mere interns in the genre will be amazed by the mind-blowing new worlds and the fantastic plausibility of it all while we latch onto a gripping story as old as sentient life itself. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath come immediately to mind: folks in dire straits sacrifice everything for the promise of a new, beautiful world and then scrap and fight for their lives when the illusions fall by the wayside one by one. Life is vicious and brutal and even when you finally find folks willing to lend you a hand, you can expect a slap upside the helmet when you screw up. Even hardened veterans struggle to overcome daily challenges but Guizzetti tempts fate with an idealistic, sheltered heroine more comfortable in the safe stacks of a futuristic library than the dystopian streets of thirty-first century Seattle. And yet…deep inside the youngster beats the heart of an explorer whose intelligence and determination grab us by the our environmental suit collar and yank us out of our comfortable twenty-first century world into other systems.



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