The hope of space

I often don’t have time for full epic novels, so often turn to science fiction short stories and graphic novels. They can blow my mind with intriguing premises and characters. Unintentionally I kept turning to space stories that explored future possibilities for humanity. I like how novellas and short stories allow dipping my toes into the works of some heavy hitters of sci-fi. Arca is a graphic novel written by Van Jensen and illustrated by Jesse Lonergan. In this story, we meet teenage workers who live in a spaceship that escaped a dying Earth. There are different classes with the ruling-class adults full of scientists and thinkers working to keep humanity going. Children are given the hope to join the ruling class. They just have to put in the time and work for these rulers. Our protagonist is a curious girl named Persephone who starts pulling at some things threads about their society that don’t make sense to her. There are secrets the adults don’t want them to know, which have the power to turn their fledging colony upside down. This was a super quick read as I wanted to unravel the dark history the rich class didn’t want to be revealed. The truth is a doozy! Persephone wants to know the truth, but not all of her friends are willing to rock the proverbial ship to find out. This is a common theme of humanity ruining the planet and forcing us into space exploration. I liked the teen dystopian angle. It was a fresh way of exploring what it’s like to live crushed by society with the promise to one day be an adult with no cares in the world. But of course that’s never the truth. I received an arc, which I only realized halfway through didn’t have the final colored pages. Thankfully, Hoopla came to the rescue to show me the rest in color. I didn’t manage to read All Systems Red by Martha Wells before for our Cannon Book Club Zoom in October. I never needed much convincing. The fresh raving about the series was simply a good reminder. I finally had time for the audiobook during my recent road trip. It totally lived up to expectations! In the first entry of the Murderbot diaries, we meet the titular character and learn they don’t like interacting with humans more than needed. Murderbot has no gender because they are a robot. They were created to protect humans and kill when necessary. They’re on assignment to help a group of mainly scientists from a progressive colony complete a planetary mission. It’s a lot of red tape to get it sanctioned by the Company, which required them to get a Murderbot to be with them. Murderbot would like to be left to watch downloaded TV series and interact with them only when their body armor is on. We meet Murderbot after a recent rescue mission when a member is injured on their desolate planet. The humans are impressed with Murderbot’s skills and start paying more attention to them. What they don’t know is Murderbot doesn’t have the governance chip forcing them to follow commands. They want to mostly be left alone, so they help humans with their little tasks to make sure no one discovers they’re a freelance sort of renegade robot. Everyone assumes that Murderbot wants to kill humans, but they don’t really care one way or the other. They just want to exist and hermit with their TV shows. The mission gets a hiccup when they discover the survey maps are fishy with the help of Murderbot. All signs point to sabotage and the leader enlists the reluctant Murderbot to help them. Dead clients would mean more hassle, so they do. The story unfolds as everyone is in over their heads, including Murderbot. Don’t be like me, don’t wait and read this hilarious and action-filled series. It muses on what it means to be human and space exploration. I’ve somehow never read any Veronica Roth. I stumbled across the Forward story collection on Amazon. It’s curated by Blake Crouch who wrote Dark Matter, which had high praise. So I decided to give her a whirl. Ark is set on Earth and is technically space exploration adjacent. This time there’s an asteroid coming and it will absolutely hit Earth. The previous generation discovered its trajectory and set into motion a space program to launch humanity into space to escape the devastation. There is a massive program to collect plant and animal specimens. Our protagonist Sam is a botanist who grew up always knowing the Earth wasn’t gonna make it. Her dad didn’t take the news well especially after her mom passed. She’s in the Arctic working at a giant station to get as many samples as they can. But they’ll never get them all. She befriends one of the older scientists who is an expert on Orchids. Through flashbacks and their encounters, the story digs into whether it’s better to stay on Earth to ride it out or bet everything on the unknown in space. I really liked the idea of a planetary Noah’s Ark of animals and plants. The story is a little depressing but there is a glimmer of hope since humanity will likely survive amongst stars. Read this if you like the vibes and questions about humanity explored in 28 Days Later or The Girl With All the Gifts. James S.A. Corey is another popular sci-fi author I’ve been curious to read. How It Unfolds is a short story part of The Far Reaches collection on Amazon. The first in the series follows Roy who trained as an astronaut and joins a mission to explore other galaxies. But it won’t be him, it’ll be a copy of himself stored in a database. With the power of cloning, crews can settle on a planet and then trigger duplicates to search somewhere else if things go awry. At the heart of the story is a breakup between Roy and the mission leader. They used to be married and through flashbacks, we see their dissolution. He keeps a ring to propose to her again in his pocket. Across time and space, he’s still thinking they might reconcile and the what-if of it all. She has a different take on the situation. He wanted kids, but she didn’t. Her work was more important. It was sad but hopeful because they go through the same motions hoping for a new result. And eventually, they both find what they’ve been searching for in the stars. It was interesting reading all these new authors this year. I also saw Christopher Nolan’s space epic Interstellar for the first time this year. I have a renewed obsession with space stories that aren’t really about what’s up there, but more about why humans need to go there and how would they survive if we did.