This bracing SF series opener delivers thorny jargon and equally challenging and bold cultural ideas.
Centuries after a war and science breakthroughs reconfigured humanity, a space-based, dominant race of gender-fluid elites investigates apocalyptic rumors and cultlike revelations spreading among the masses subsisting on Earth.
Whitlow opens a multivolume SF saga with this mind-stretcher set mainly on a far-future Earth (aka Erdos) about 300 years after a ruinous war that practically redesigned humankind. An advanced race of elites—the “Meritorians”—adopted existence on the moon, Mars (aka Marda), and outer planets. They are (mostly) the benevolent and ultraprogressive masters of the solar system, low gravity, and their own medicine, which altered their physiologies to the point of being a new species. Their very thoughts are interlinked by “cognos,” a descendant of the internet, and they regard unaltered Earth dwellers as aberrant troglodytes. The Meritorians are friendly and collaborative with an upper caste called “Consumers” but have little regard for the peasant masses that teem in underground cities and settlements and still communicate verbally, among other offenses. Now, these low-borns are alarming Meritorians with a cultish movement offering vaguely apocalyptic and seditious pronouncements of an approaching individual/entity called “Javeh.” Surveillance scans prove the validity of Javeh’s beatific visions and whisperings, but Meritorian superscience cannot decipher the code or how the messages are being transmitted. In advance of an important Meritorian conference on Erdos, the terrorism begins. Readers will be tested by a dense, future-speak argot largely (but not entirely) related in the Meritorian vernacular, which replaces all personal pronouns with gender-neutral ones (“Se draws serself up and puts ser weight into the comp suit, which mercifully supports ser as se totters away to the stairs”). The lingo indicates that the main dogma of Meritorian society comprises transgenderism and the overthrow of the “binary fallacy,” which the civilization believes brought humanity to ruin. Readers who can peer past the opaque curtain of the author’s peculiar language will be rewarded by intellectual puzzles and troubling questions, largely unanswered by the open-ended climax. Is Javeh a reactionary rebel mastermind or a wrathful (and transphobic) God who is returning? This is heady stuff for the adventuresome who like SF that does not give up its secrets easily.
This bracing SF series opener delivers thorny jargon and equally challenging and bold cultural ideas. (science fiction)Pub Date: Dec. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7349098-2-1
Page Count: 196
Publisher: James Perry
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An ambitious but plodding space odyssey.
Having survived a disastrous deep space mission in 2038, three asteroid miners plan a return to their abandoned ship to save two colleagues who were left behind.
Though bankrolled through a crooked money laundering scheme, their original project promised to put in place a program to reduce the CO2 levels on Earth, ease global warming, and pave the way for the future. The rescue mission, itself unsanctioned, doesn't have a much better chance of succeeding. All manner of technical mishaps, unplanned-for dangers, and cutthroat competition for the precious resources from the asteroid await the three miners. One of them has cancer. The international community opposes the mission, with China, Russia, and the United States sending questionable "observers" to the new space station that gets built north of the moon for the expedition. And then there is Space Titan Jack Macy, a rogue billionaire threatening to grab the riches. (As one character says, "It's a free universe.") Suarez's basic story is a good one, with tense moments, cool robot surrogates, and virtual reality visions. But too much of the novel consists of long, sometimes bloated stretches of technical description, discussions of newfangled financing for "off-world" projects, and at least one unneeded backstory. So little actually happens that fixing the station's faulty plumbing becomes a significant plot point. For those who want to know everything about "silicon photovoltaics" and "orthostatic intolerance," Suarez's latest SF saga will be right up their alley. But for those itching for less talk and more action, the book's many pages of setup become wearing.
An ambitious but plodding space odyssey.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-18363-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
The best kind of science fiction: mind-blowing and wildly thought-provoking.
One person’s quest to find meaning in life—and the universe.
The pseudonymous North’s latest is a deeply philosophical standalone SF epic that brilliantly and subtly utilizes elements of cosmic horror to complement its metaphysical speculations. Mawukana na-Vdnaze is a laborer on a world ruled by a star-spanning regime that purports to reward hard work with increased socioeconomic status, called Shine. In fact, those who cheat and lie get ahead—so long as they don’t get caught. When a godlike machine known as the Slow sends messengers to multiple star systems warning that they have approximately 100 years to prepare for a supernova event that will obliterate everything in its path, the corrupt leaders of Maw’s planet attempt to cover up the Slow’s warning, essentially sentencing their subjects to death. Amid the ensuing chaos, Maw is wrongfully arrested and sent off-world to a labor camp. He volunteers to pilot a space-jumping arcship, generally a short-lived job as most die shortly after interfacing with the ship’s navcomm systems. A jump goes wrong, and everyone on the ship is killed except Maw. Though completely unharmed, something is irrevocably changed deep within him; he’s a copy of himself, “a monster made in the dark.” As the end of the world looms for billions of people, Maw sets out on a jaw-dropping journey of enlightenment by charging into the darkness of space and his altered mind. The character development isn’t particularly noteworthy, but adept worldbuilding, grand-scale storytelling, and philosophical speculation more than make up for it. Maw’s conversations with various characters and his thoughtful introspection about the seeming meaninglessness of it all will leave readers—somewhat surprisingly—invigorated: “We are the seeds of the forest, are we not? Where we fall, others may grow. So live…Before all is dust: live, and blaze bright.”
The best kind of science fiction: mind-blowing and wildly thought-provoking.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780316586306
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Orbit
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
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