Stack Overflow: Fabulous Fiction

Geek Dad

9 hours ago

Today I've just got three books: two novels and a collection of short stories.
An Oral History of Atlantis by Ed Park
I haven't read Ed Park's Same Bed Different Dreams (which was a finalist for the Pulitzer), but I gave this one a shot based on a description of a few of the stories included, and I'm glad I did. There's a lot of variety in the stories in terms of subject matter, length, and even format: one story is presented as an audio transcript of a Blu-Ray commentary track. Another is a list of prompts used to create secure passwords. A couple stories are presented as letters. Although the stories are all individual pieces, at times there are overlaps—a name mentioned in one story pops up elsewhere; a small town called West Eucalyptus appears more than once.
'The Wife on Ambien' is a list of things that the narrator's wife does while she's on Ambien: posting on Facebook, playing online poker, hailing Ubers that she has no intention of taking. 'The Gift' is a letter to the alumni of a community college about a strange professor and his class about aphorisms—none of them really understood any of it until one magical night at a nearby Chinese restaurant, leading to a moment that none of them could forget. In 'Well-Moistened with Cheap Wine, the Sailor and the Wayfarer Sing of Their Absent Sweethearts,' eighteen women all named Tina are stationed on a remote island, attempting to translate scraps of an ancient writing.
There's a weirdness to the stories: for the most part, they take place in our world, mostly in the recent past (though some take place a little further back), but there's also something a little off, a little unsettling. People behave strangely or have odd motivations. Some of them feel a bit like alternative history—a world where a particular focus on breathing became a fad, a virus that caused Manhattan to destroy all its bridges as a quarantine. I thoroughly enjoyed it! If you're looking for some fiction that you can digest in small portions, it's definitely worth adding to your list.
Infinite Archive by Mur Lafferty
This is the third book in the Midsolar Murders series—I've previously written about the first two books, Station Eternity and Chaos Terminal . Mallory has a weird knack for solving murders, but also just seems to be coincidentally in the vicinity of a lot of murders (the reason for this is explained more fully by the end of the first book). Her solution was to flee Earth and live on Station Eternity, a space station that is primarily populated by aliens—though people keep showing up and, whaddya know, getting murdered. She makes a living by writing up the cases she has solved and publishing them, to some success.
In this book, some more humans are arriving at Station Eternity, and Mallory smells disaster. It's a murder mystery convention taking place on Metis a massive, one-of-a-kind spaceship that has some capabilities that nobody can quite explain. On top of that, Mallory's agent has arranged for her to be the keynote speaker. A bunch of people obsessed with murder, all coming to the space station? Well, time to figure out who's going to die.
On top of the actual murder (because of course that happens), the other big mystery is Metis itself. The spaceships (and space station) in this series are sentient creatures, but Metis is unlike any ships that Mallory (or her friends) have ever encountered. Figuring out Metis' origins is a whole other challenge that Mallory has to untangle, all while trying not to die or let anyone else get killed. And, hey, no spoilers, but the secret to Metis turns out to be really weird—but also very funny.
This is another series that I really like so far, so it was great to see Mallory back in action. I recommend this one for folks who love both sci-fi and mysteries!
The Martian Contingency by Mary Robinette Kowal
This is the fourth book in the Lady Astronaut series, which is an alternate history of the space program. You can read more about the first book here; in this version of history, a meteor impact destroys much of the east coast of the United States, and climate scientists predict that temperatures on Earth will rise to unlivable levels. That really kicks the space program into gear as a way to find an alternative place for humanity. I read the first three books in 2022 and they made my list of favorites—but at the time I thought the fourth book was going to be published that year. Well, as it turns out, it took a few more years before The Martian Contingency finally arrived on the shelves.
We've returned to Elma York as the narrator of the story. The second expedition to Mars is in progress, with a goal to expand the habitat so that the third expedition will actually bring families to live permanently. But Elma, who stayed in orbit during the first expedition, keeps finding evidence that some sort of conflict occurred and nobody seems willing to explain what really happened. On top of that, one of their supply drops was destroyed, and it's not clear whether it was a faulty landing or deliberate sabotage. Either way, it will interfere with their ability to prepare for more inhabitants … and that could put the future of the Mars expeditions at risk.
As before, the book covers both the engineering aspects of creating a habitat on Mars and the politics of sustaining an international coalition that will keep funding such programs. It also continues to dig into some of the prejudices from that time period: Elma is doing her best to listen to her colleagues who come from different backgrounds and haven't had the same privileges as her, but she's also subject to sexism and the assumption that the women on the mission need to be protected and sheltered. I think the book does a great job of revealing the world as it was (and often still is), while also giving an example of somebody who is willing to learn and grow.
Many of the chapters (as with previous books) include short news snippets from Earth that hint at other trends and events taking place around the world. It often reflects a world that is still hesitant to accept the idea of climate change even while suffering the results of it. I haven't quite finished reading The Martian Contingency , but it's reminding me why the Lady Astronaut series made it on my best books of 2022, and it's pretty likely you'll find it on my list at the end of this year.
Disclosure: I received review copies of these books. Affiliate links to Bookshop.org help support my writing and independent booksellers! Liked it? Take a second to support GeekDad and GeekMom on Patreon!