Space Week

Gathering Edge, Sharon Lee & Steve Miller. 
The Countdown Conspiracy, Katie Slivensky. 
Killing Gravity, Corey J. White. 
Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir. 
Last Day on Mars, Kevin Emerson. 


Completely unintentionally, I looked up last week to realize that the majority of my completed books had their characters journeying through outer space. One was a novella from Tor, one from a series I've enjoyed for decades, one a Hugo nominee I read (belatedly) for Sword and Laser and two were Cybils nominees from 2017. SF (which I consider to stand for both Science Fiction and Fantasy) is a genre that I love so it's not surprising that I read any of these books, but so many in one week gives me a chance to see what I like and dislike in my space travels.

My first impression is that it's important not to tell me the details. The two more realistic books (the middle grade ones) spend some time talking about orbital paths and how to make their rocket ships catch up with other ships or to match orbits or whatever. Unfortunately I know a tiny bit about that stuff, which was enough to make what they said sound very wrong, but not enough to figure out what they could have really meant. On the other hand, the adult books did completely impossible things (wormholes, hyperjumps, bone magic) but since they never tried to explain it to me in a way that I would not accept I just accepted it. The lesson is that it important to not engage my science brain unless you meet it exactly right. And for the kids books, I expect my level is higher than a fifth grader's (although probably not as high as an 11th grader who took AP Physics).

My second thought is rather obvious -- it's really all about the characters. Gathering Edge is set in a long established story with people from highly varied cultures that mix across different planets and specifically in our little space ship, which has a crew made of of people from many different flavors of background. It brings interesting complexity both to the setting and the characters; there is a Liaden culture and on the ship we have someone from the main homeworld, someone from a less prestigious planet where she grew up as a minority, and a captain who only recently found out her father had been a high ranking member of that culture. They way they approach each other and the other members of the crew shows a lot about them as individuals and deepens the world building of the setting.

Since I've read over a dozen books set in this world, it's easy for me to see these distinctions. I know what it means to be of Clan Korval, how people across the universe see Liaden culture and the planet itself, and how much emphasis is placed on subtle acknowledgements of status or respect. I'm not sure it would be as much fun for a newcomer, but they'd probably get the general ida.

Killing Gravity and Gideon the Ninth have to build their settings and characters from scratch. Killing Gravity is a novella, so it has only a few pages to give the reader an idea of what the setting is like and who the characters are and why I should care. I thought White did a good job with the opening scene -- the viewpoint character is in dire peril, and seeing her thoughts about it told me about the technology and the society (there are rules for rescue and scavenge, and they will most likely be observed), and laid trails for the more detailed explanations of what she can do and why that will complicate her life. I also got a sense of her independence and her prickliness. I felt Gideon was less interested in telling me about the world; there was bone magic and space shuttles and a space army to join, but no one really cared about how it worked. And Gideon herself felt like an anachronism -- she grew up alone in a strange world but still knew all the latest memes. The danger Gideon started in felt more contrived and less sympathetic; and the end of the scene I was hoping she would fail rather than pulling for her.

The words "hard" and "soft" are used to describe science fiction, although they are a lot fuzzier than they seem. Much like the distinction between science fiction and fantasy, the extremes are clear but the middle is more of a hazy blur than a sharp line. The Cybils finalists are clearly hard SF, although traditionalists might be shocked at the emotional and communitarian subplots that run through The Countdown Conspiracy. Gideon waves spaceships around mainly to indicate that the bone magic is a real science -- the characters will need vast intelligence to figure out the theorems, and us readers can skip the details without feelings inadequate; you need a doctorate to know that stuff and our schools didn't cover skeletons. And both Killing Gravity and Gathering Edge have no concern for how things works, and the reader isn't expected to worry about it either.

So I guess I don't need science in my science fiction. I want characters who are competent, who expect to deal with problems by solving them. I like when they are also emotionally realistic people who are dealing with themselves while dealing with these problems. And I like these problems to be solved -- I go to science fiction for optimism, so if you plan to go dark and despairing there had better be powerful writing and catharsis to justify it; otherwise I'm not nearly as forgiving as I would be with a story that has a lot of plot and character action. And finally, if the author explains things, I can't think the explanation is wrong, either because of my (limited) understanding of the real world or because it seems internally contradictory. And I'll forgive the first a bit if I'm clearly not the target audience and you entertain me otherwise. But I'll feel a little smug on the inside.