Successful Mimicry

Given the character’s adherence to logic and to the scientific method, Sherlock Holmes has long been considered at least liminally a science fictional character. In various guises, and with thinly-veiled references, Holmes lurks in the margins of almost every science fictional mystery tale.

(Image via Amazon)

But science fiction is a difficult setting in which to construct a mystery plot. Drawing readers in to an imaginary world involves providing information about the setting … which is at odds with the ways in which mysteries must keep a reader guessing. Offer too little information about a science fiction setting and readers will not know what’s going on, offer too much information in a mystery story and the whodunnit becomes trivial.

With her recent novella Mimicking Of Known Successes, Malka Older provides one of the few examples of navigating that philosophical tension successfully, providing a richly imagined world whose politics and conflicts hit close to home, while also drawing readers into a mystery whose solution isn’t immediately obvious.

Set on a network of floating communities in Jupiter’s atmosphere centuries after the Earth was rendered uninhabitable, the book follows an academic ecologist named Pleiti who is dragged into a missing person’s investigation by detective (and ex-girlfriend) Mossa. The detective is renowned amongst her peers for her ability to solve cases from minute pieces of evidence; she is the person that they consult when cases seem insoluble. The case grows more complex as items are stolen from Pleiti’s university laboratory, and the two get targeted by an assassin.

Any story with a master-detective who has a near preternatural understanding of evidence working alongside a non-detective friend will inevitably be read as a modernized homage to Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. It is a daunting mantle to bear, but Older carries it remarkably well.

Malta Older is known for policy-forward
and wonkish science fiction (which we've
enjoyed in the past). Mimicking of Known
Successes is a departure, but still excellent.
(Image via Robwolf.net)

Far too many of those who have sought to imitate or adapt Doyle’s stories have failed to grasp the centrality of the Watson-Holmes dynamic, often portraying Watson as a dullard sidekick who serves as a sounding board as Holmes expounds upon unfolding plot details. Older seems to understand Doyle’s work and character dynamics, imbuing the Mossa-Pleiti partnership with both a warmth and a mutual respect that fans of Arther Conan Doyle will appreciate. The fact that there’s romance between the two main leads is believable and more interesting because of that foundation.

When Mossa and Pleiti unravel the mystery, it is largely unexpected and yet makes perfect sense within the setting and the society that Older has presented. Just as importantly, the motivations of the primary antagonists are understandable, and easy to empathize with. It is an impressive piece of writing.

Given that Older is best known for her Hugo-finalist Centenal Cycle, readers might expect hard-edged and wonkish prose that delves into governance structures and alternate ways of organizing. However, Mimicking Of Known Successes provides something more similar to Becky Chambers’ Wayfarers books; something cozy and inviting that has hidden depths for those who want it.

Mystery and science fiction are rarely this satisfying when mixed, and rarely this much fun.

Far From The Light Of Heaven - Review

One of Thompson’s great strengths as a writer is his ability to balance poetry and prose for a science

Far From The Light Of Heaven
balances modernity and tradition
within the science fiction genre.
(Image via Goodreads)

fiction audience, providing vividly visceral visuals that don’t slow down the narrative or distract from the characterizations. It’s a skill that’s on full display in Far From The Light Of Heaven, Thompson’s follow-up to the Wormwoood trilogy that earned him both a Clarke Award and a spot on the Hugo Award shortlist.

And what a follow up it is.

Set on an interstellar transport named The Ragtime, first mate Michelle “Shel” Campion awakens early from suspended animation to discover that thirty-odd passengers on the enormous colony ship have been killed and dismembered. Since the ship is at this point relatively close to their destination of Bloodroot, local detective Rasheed Fin is dispatched to investigate, and becomes embroiled in Shel’s attempts to keep the rest of her passengers alive despite The Ragtime’s rogue Artificial Intelligence captain’s attempts to thwart them.

Of course, a locked-room mystery on a spaceship is not a new set-up (notably implemented in Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty, which was a Hugo finalist in 2018), but the combination of Thompson’s agile pacing, worldbuilding rooted in Yoruba culture, and evocative prose make Far From The Light Of Heaven a standout. Weirdly improbable scenes such as the appearance of a wolf and flashbacks to a mining town are drawn out with convincingly detailed and precise language that manages to be both clear and evocative.

Mr. Thompson quit Twitter
earlier this year. 
(Image via The Guardian)

Thompson allows the tension to build slowly, and doesn’t play his hand too quickly, which lets the mystery provide both a compelling plot and a device with which to strategically introduce pieces of the setting to the reader. This includes themes of economic justice, leading us to believe that Thompson recognizes that imbalances of power exist across myriad cultures and that these imbalances metastasize in especially destructive ways in environments of unmitigated capitalism.

Far From The Light Of Heaven also provides some of Thompson’s best character work. As the two primary protagonists, Shel and Racheed’s disparate backgrounds and motivations lead to tensions and conflict that feel natural and believable.

Astute readers will, however, find some slight plot hiccups. An “experimental” section of the spacecraft is mentioned in passing at the beginning but only explored midway through the book even though it seems as if a place filled with dangerous life forms would be the first place any fatality investigation should start. Likewise, the fact that the richest man in all the cosmos is aboard would seem like an early lead, rather than a later one.

We might also note that the alien “Lambers” add very little to the overall narrative other than confusion about what they are. Whatever they are, and whatever their relationship to the colonists on Bloodroot, it doesn’t really affect the story.

But these are minor quibbles, Far From The Light Of Heaven is a superb book that deserves your attention.

Six Wakes - Review

Mur Lafferty’s contributions to the science fiction community are laudable. Her work as a podcaster

(image via Goodreads)

is worth celebrating. Some of her previous books have been entertaining, particularly the Shambling Guide To New York. And her advocacy for new and emerging artists is something that deserves significant recognition.  

It is a shame, therefore, that Six Wakes — a novel with significant flaws — may be many peoples’ first introduction to Lafferty’s work.

Early last year, when Six Wakes first hit bookshelves, several members of our book club picked the book up in anticipation of a fun mystery in space. At that time, we decided it was not a book we wanted to review, or to put on our nomination ballots.

Clearly, enough members of the World Science Fiction Society disagree with that assessment. To boot, those who select the Nebula shortlist also disagree with us. Our lack of esteem for this book appears to be a minority opinion.

So as we returned to the book for a more in-depth look after it was shortlisted, we struggled to ascertain why it had received this level of acclaim. While the world-building has interesting elements, and the set-up for the mystery is promising, Six Wakes suffers from structural issues, logical gaps, and stylistic blandness.

Lafferty’s decision to tell so much of the narrative in the form of flashbacks undermines the locked-

Lafferty (left) and Alasdair
Steward (right) at the Hugo
Awards in 2017.
Image by Henry Soderlund 

door mystery setup. Rather than offering us competing stories from unreliable narrators, we see definitive “true” versions of the past from an omniscient point-of-view. During the novel’s climax, this deflates much of the narrative tension.

The story’s set-up, which imagines a world in which the wealthy can live near-immortal lives through memory storage and cloned bodies, has enormous potential. But the “Codicils” which govern cloning make very little sense. It beggars belief to suggest that these extreme laws were created almost overnight, that those laws have withstood challenge, and that the wealthy and privileged wouldn’t use their societal power to prevent their voting rights from being stripped.

It feels like Lafferty has neglected to fully answer basic questions about class and societal privilege — which is surprising given how informed and nuanced she has been about these issues on her podcasts. She tries to explore these questions in Six Wakes, but her world-building is so perfunctory and built in service of the plot's conceits that it runs into logical inconsistencies under any scrutiny.

Finally, and most problematically, the sentence-by-sentence prose in Six Wakes is not up to the standard that one would expect from a Hugo Award-shortlisted work. At best, the writing is repetitious.

It pains us to be as negative about a book written by a person we like so well, and who we believe is capable of better work. Six Wakes will be at the bottom of most of our Hugo ballots, and for some of us, below ‘No Award.’