UNIVERSE'S EDGE

Warden’s debut SF novel offers a tale of an outer-space mission and hidden agendas.

The people of early 22nd-century Earth, unified under a one-world government, look forward to the launch of an expedition to the distant reaches of Saturn, which has suddenly and mysteriously developed a polar ice cap. The surprise choice as captain is Courtney Voth, a 25-year-old Canadian science prodigy. She once underwent radical treatment for a brain tumor, which caused her to permanently lose her hair, and she anonymously posed for a steamy, unauthorized photo shoot at a museum meteorite exhibit, whose photos became famous. Cloistered conspiracy theorists suspect that Courtney could be the tool of theoretical aliens, assumed to have been secretly controlling mankind for ages. Courtney, meanwhile, notices that many of her Saturn crew have cloak-and-dagger backgrounds in the military; one is concealing his role as the recent assassin of an island-nation dictator who tormented her people with forced anorexia. Before the mission is through, it will encounter a pantheon of weird and whimsical aliens, and in the aftermath, Courtney receives a considerable gift. Readers who are well grounded in SF may recall The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension, the 1984 cult movie whose quirky style, so Hollywood legend goes, was due in part to numerous reshoots and re-edits. This narrative hops between the disparate characters, situations, and crises in a similar manner, seldom lingering long enough on any of them to find a sure footing or a consistent tone. However, as a comedy/satire, it feels like something from the lighter spectrum of Kurt Vonnegut’s work, and as a first-contact story, it’s something that’s notably unusual for the genre. However, readers may be distressed that, even in the future, social media stars are still ascendant.

A somewhat scattered SF adventure tale, but one that may appeal to nonlinear thinkers.