Part 4 of 6. En route from the moon to Mars three storylines play out, one on Earth with a mysterious rogue statelet on the Isle of Man, one on board the transport to Mars and one on the rogue shuttle with a team of ‘exodenizens’ (virtual characters downloaded into autonomous stillsuits) on board who don’t realise they’re outside their simulation.
Tag: sf
Denizen 43 by A.E. Currie
Protagonist goes to the moon to investigate a potential murder. A VR persona, denizen, has been downloaded into a smart still suit and is on the loose. Part 3 in a series about VR tied to surveillance and real world simulation and its consequences post climate collapse.
System Collapse by Martha Wells
The 7th part of the Murderbot series. Pretty straightforward story, not much development on the part of Murderbot themselves. A new twist is that they leave the knowledge to free themselves in the system of other SecBots, implying their liberation from corporate control might go viral at some point in the future.
2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson
Came across it browsing the site of Fantask, my fav SF bookstore in Copenhagen, then ordered the ebook. Older novel, from 2012, 575 pages. Three centuries from now the earth is still reeling from climate collapse but has in the mean time actively spread out through the solar system. Politics and trade between the various planets and bodies in the solar system, and a group of quantum computer based AIs in humanoid shape are bent towards a dangerous interpretation of a human service demand made of them. Some of the notions in this book, such as rewilding return in The Ministry for the Future that was published 8yrs on.
Bridge by Lauren Beukes
Another good one by this South African writer, this one mixing a body snatching drug/parasite activated by psychedelic images and sounds with the multiverse. In the middle the story stretched a bit long I thought, but fun enough to finish. The notion of a multiverse serial killer was fun.
The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas
E bought it at the great Fantask book store in 2021 while in Copenhagen. Fantask is one of my favourite bookstores. This was an enjoyable story about time travel, focusing on the psychological impact on time travelers in combination with a whodunnit with a twist. None of the paradoxical stuff time travel stories usually suffer from. Not very well written however, which is the most grating at the start, further on the story carried me forward. Liked the introduction of so called genie objects, items that are given by an older time traveling self to a younger self, which in turn at some later stage are then handed gifted to a later self. No previous existence but circle of causality still intact. The objects have various oddities due to probabilistic aspects.