DEEP LIGHT

An enormous space station/laboratory orbiting Jupiter faces dangers from within and without in Martineau’s SF debut.

Sometime in the future, the Parallax—a vast space station—orbits Jupiter. For 15 years the facility has developed a technology dubbed Deep Light, intended to generate, investigate, and control the first human-made black hole. The International Conglomerate for Expeditions and Explorations is backing the project. They are an all-powerful military-industrial agency staffed by “a bunch of cruel, heartless bastards.” Many ICEE employees succumb to “space madness” and become homicidal or die in grisly workplace mishaps. ICEE dispatches manager John Roberts to Parallax to oversee Deep Light’s activation. The Parallax’s crew of thousands has been reduced to a skeleton staff of 40, and Roberts has orders to kill anyone who impedes the project…or who knows more about it than they should. Other hidden ICEE assets have a similarly lethal mission to steal Deep Light for potential weaponization. When surveillance cameras fail, technicians start going missing or are found dead and savagely dismembered. Have the ICEE assassins grown impatient? Or are there more monstrous threats afoot? Fans of cinematic SF will immediately note the plot’s resemblance to the setup of the 1979 film Alien: There’s a big, creepy, deserted space outpost, foul and taloned creatures, and imperiled characters obliviously and endlessly wandering the corridors. The author provides a quasi-religious/occult explanation for the horror reminiscent of the movie Event Horizon’s (1997) premise. Dialogue ranges from flat-footed declarations (“That’s probably from when the thing ripped off Kevin’s head”) to wisecracking snark (“Talk about a cleanup on aisle one”). The science—much ado about energy fields and wormholes—isn’t too taxing, and the action will please bloodthirsty fans with H.R. Giger “Xenomorph” posters lovingly tacked up on their walls.

Ravenous demons at large on a sinful space outpost, aimed at a readership looking for familiar interstellar thrills.