Cold People by Tom Rob Smith

Published by Scribner on February 7, 2023

Cold People might best be regarded as a fantasy, or maybe as a thought experiment. Its implausible plot rules out caregorization as science fiction. Regardless of how the novel might be classified, the story it tells is far from engaging.

Alien invaders fill the skies with their ships while broadcasting an ultimatum to humans: move to Antarctica within 30 days or die. Personally, I’d break into one of the homes abandoned by rich people and spend my last 30 days sampling their wine cellars, but I have a serious aversion to cold weather. The survivors in Cold People have a serious aversion to being disintegrated.

The aliens have disabled the world’s most destructive weapons, leaving nations powerless to resist an alien occupation. Having rendered humans helpless to resist, why not disintegrate them all instead of disintegrating everyone who fails to make it to Antarctica? It’s not like the aliens are doing humans a favor by turning the least hospitable continent into a reservation. The question is never answered. Sadly, I found the many unswered questions to be more pressing than those the novel addresses.

The politics of self-interest during the invasion might be the most interesting part of the novel. One fellow converts an oil tanker into a ferry and takes as many passengers as he can, provided they aren’t too young or too old to work for the group’s survival. Israel uses its military to occupy its airports, commandeers all civilian aircraft regardless of the nations from which the planes originated, kicks all non-Israelis out of the airport, and uses the stolen aircraft exclusively to transport Israelis to Antarctica.

Some nations use the thirty days to fight against each other, hoping to secure a national foothold in Antarctica by wiping out competing nations. The wars don’t amount to much in the absence of missiles and bombs.

It turns out that people need to pull together to survive in Antarctica and that religious, ethnic, and national differences are no longer of consequeence. At Hope Town, settlers have put aside differences and embraced everyone in their diverse communities. But the novel isn’t really a kumbaya celebration of humanity coming together, because people soon understand that no amount of cooperation will keep them alive after they drink all the brandy and when the survival gear they brought with them wears out.

We are told little about how humans survive at all. Nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers still have power, but they can’t house a million people. Catching enough fish and seals to feed a million people seems like a daunting task, but establishing microbreweries just seems like a misuse of scarce resources.

Maybe I could have lived with the absence of necessary detail if the story had not moved well beyond implausibility. A geneticist who was carrying out forbidden experiments in China decides the human survival requires newborns to be genetically engineered to withstand cold weather. Within a generation, the engineering has produced two versions of ice-adapted parahumans. Children like Echo are born in the usual way and live a relatively normal life apart from having scales and preferring the cold to a warm environment.

The other parahumans, torn from wombs after a brief gestation and then imprisoned in caves, represent a more extreme version of adapted humanity. They are freakishly strong and smart. One of them, Eitan, can make himself transparent to blend in with ice. Oh, and did I mention the snow gorillas with bright orange eyes? Is it remotely conceivable that a geneticist can achieve these results, even using military supercomputers on aircraft carriers, in a generation or two? Tom Rob Smith didn’t convince me.

The point of the novel seems to be that humans are willing to create creatures who aren’t actually human to perpetuate some version of humanity. How snow gorillas advance that cause baffles me. Why it never occurs to anyone that tinkering with genetics to create monsters might be a bad idea is even more difficult to understand.

Echo is the only parahuman we meet who isn’t a monster. Her adaptation is supposedly less extreme, but she learns that she can control temperature — for example, by freezing a gun that someone points at her. How is this a conceivable genetic adaptation? Don’t ask because you won’t get an explanation. Just as implausible is the telepathy with which the parahumans are endowed. Oh, did I mention they can alter the chemistry of ice? I’m surprised they don’t have x-ray vision or the ability to fly. The novel might make a good comic book or Marvel movie but it makes little sense as a work of literature.

So does the novel have any actual humans a reader might care about? Some chapters focus on an Israeli soldier named Yotam Penzak. He expects to be left behind in Israel because he is not among the smartest or most politically connected. He’s chosen because he is a witness to a failed Russian strike at the airport and will presumably defend the Israeli settlement on Antarctica with vigor. In the absence of nationalized settlements, Yotam is instead tasked with assisting the Chinese geneticist despite having no background in science. Yotam was apparently chosen for his job because he was capable of loving without regard to individual differences. Yotam ends up falling in love with and becoming an advocate for an extreme parahuman.

The novel also focuses on an American woman named Liza and her Italian lover Atto. They fell in love in Italy when Atto invited Liza on a boat tour. Atto was so enamored with Liza that he didn’t try to shag her, which only angered Liza by depriving her of vacation sex with a hot Italian. Simplistic themes borrowed from romance fiction being what they are, Atto and Liza end up together on Antarctica, where they conceive Echo. A normal human boy named Tetu overlooks Echo’s scales and falls in love with her. I guess there aren’t many women to choose from after most of humanity is wiped out.

Perhaps Yotam and Atto fall for parahumans as a metaphor for relationships that are not cisgendered. To make sure no reader misses the point, a character asks, “Why does love have to be just one thing?” Fair enough. If a normal human and a parahuman want to love each other, why is that anyone else’s business? My problem is not with the theme but with the absurdity of ice-adapted parahumans who develop superpowers.

We also meet Kasim Abbas, an Iraqi who is now charged with transporting ice-adapted kids to McMurdo Station where the most extreme parahumans are developed, leaving their parents behind. And we meet Jinju, who escaped from a dictatorship in China. These characters are reminders of humans who live in varying states of subjugation, designed to make the reader think about the morality of creating parahumans and immediately imprisoning them. The more salient question might involve the morality of creating parahumans at all.

I suppose the novel might prompt book club discussions of the morality underlying the creation and enslavement of parahumans, although I doubt that many book clubs will take an interest in a story that makes no sense. If humans are going to die out because they can’t adapt to life in Antarcica, is it better for some monstrous version of humans to endure even if parahumans resemble a mixture of telepathic fish and the Incredible Hulk? I’m not sure the question is worth pondering.

While Cold People could be read as a story about the need to embrace diversity and reject the horrors of subjugation, the ultimate themes are “love conquers all” (although it didn’t conquer the aliens) and “humans aren’t so bad” (an ahistorical view that seems to be contradicted by the creation and subjugation of genetically altered servants). Near the end, a character says “the only way to survive on this continent is to find someone to love.” I guess snuggling might slow the length of time it takes to freeze to death, but learning how to fish and building shelters would be a better survival strategy.

I was particularly inspired (to laugh) by the deep conversation that Echo has with Tetu about what it feels like to be in love, a question posed in the midst of an inevitable battle between humans and parahumans. It’s always good to pause and discuss the philosophy of love while what little is left of humankind is under attack.

I enjoyed Child 44 and its progeny, in part because Smith created a strong atmosphere of realism in an unlikely story. His utter abandonment of reality in Cold People is disappointing.

NOT RECOMMENDED

Alligator Alley by Mike Lawson

Published by Atlantic Monthly Press on February 7, 2023

Joe DeMarco is not the leading character in this Joe DeMarco novel. DeMarco is the “fixer” for John Maroney, a corrupt congressman, but only a small part of the story follows DeMarco as he does his job. With relative ease, DeMarco sniffs out the reason why a defecting Democrat voted against an environmental bill that Maroney supported.

Maroney and everyone in Washington respects Henry Cantor, an employee of the Inspector General’s Office who is in charge of Department of Justice oversight. Cantor sent one of his bright new underlings to look into the abysmal job performance of two FBI agents in Florida. The employee, Andie Moore, is murdered in a swamp. Cantor suspects she was murdered by the two agents.

Cantor knows that DeMarco and a woman named Emma solved the murder of a congressman, a story that was told in House Arrest. Emma, retired from the Defense Intelligence Agency, did most of the work after DeMarco was arrested and accused of the murder. Cantor would like Maroney to ask Emma to team up with DeMarco to solve Andie’s murder. Maroney agrees despite the mutual animosity between Maroney and Emma.

Alligator Alley isn’t a whodunit as the reader knows from the beginning that the FBI agents did, in fact, kill Andi just after they murdered a crooked doctor they were extorting. Another party was involved in the extortion, one who was much brighter than the FBI agents. Emma spends much of the novel figuring out how to prove that the agents are guilty and identifying their accomplice. DeMarco tags along but, as in House Arrest, leaves the thinking to Emma. DeMarco would rather be playing golf anyway.

Alligator Alley is another of Mike Lawson’s fun, easy reads. Lawson sets up a surprise ending but telegraphs the outcome. Other novels and at least one movie have ended in the same way, making the outcome easy to guess. The resolution is fitting even if it isn’t surprising. Recent DeMarco novels have all been entertaining beach reads. This one is no exception.

RECOMMENDED

Critical Mass by Daniel Suarez

Published by Dutton on January 31, 2023

Combine a geopolitical thriller with a science fiction novel that extends geopolitics into space and you get an astropolitical sf thriller. Critical Mass (a sequel to Delta-v) captures the spirit of adventure and exploration while providing a roadmap to futuristic solutions to humanity’s most pressing problems. Political and ideological strife (not to mention greed) would likely make the roadmap impossible to follow, but it’s good to imagine a better future when disaster looms.

As the novel opens, Adedayo Adisa and Isabel Abarca are on the Konstantin, a ship that is orbiting the asteroid Ryugu. They have been mining the asteroid and sending automated tugs full of minerals back toward Earth’s moon, but the ship is breaking down. The main engines cannot be engaged. Some of the crew have died. To avoid depleting food supplies, three crew members volunteer for a desperate attempt to return to Earth on a spacecraft that wasn’t designed for Earth reentry. Skilled or lucky piloting sends the craft into Earth orbit, where it is promptly claimed by China.

The three returning crew members — Jin Hua Han, James Tighe, and Pria Chindarkar — spend the first part of the novel trying to convince Earth’s nations and private enterprises to build another rocket to rescue Adisa and Abarca. Soon after they departed the Konstantin, however, the ship was boarded by North Koreans. Communications were cut and nobody knows whether anyone is still alive on the Konstantin. The three are nevertheless resolved to find a way back to Ryugu when its orbit next brings it within a reasonable distance from Earth.

Political issues dominate the early chapters. Following the startup model of Uber, Nathan Joyce built the Konstantin and sent it on its mining mission without asking for permission. Joyce’s company theoretically owns the minerals that were launched into a lunar orbit from the Konstantin, but the company is now owned by its creditors. A clever lawyer comes up with a new quasi-legal scheme to operate a business as if it were an unregulated offshore business by operating it off-Earth.

The scheme is too complicated to describe here but if Uber worked, it seems to me Daniel Suarez’s model for off-Earth enterprises might be plausible. It certainly wouldn’t surprise me to see someone try it. The key to attracting investors is the creation of new cryptocurrency that will be backed by resources in space. Everyone knows that governments haven’t been able to regulate cryptocurrencies; that’s why they exist when dollar bills are easier to understand. And a cryptocurrency backed by goods and services has got to be better than a cryptocurrency backed by dream dust.

Most of the novel is devoted to the construction of a space station in orbit around the moon’s L2 Lagrange point. “Hard” science fiction is dedicated to making sure that plots are scientifically plausible and often feature characters who “science the shit” out of problems as they devise solutions. Critical Mass is devoted to engineering more than science. It turns out that it isn’t easy to build a space station, although it certainly helps to have tons of raw materials in lunar orbit. After building a shell, the next step is to build a mass driver on the moon, so that regolith can be mined and shot into orbit where it can be refined into essential materials.

Apart from tackling engineering, economics, and politics, Critical Mass offers a complex solution to global warming. Part of the solution allows ordinary people to remove carbon from Earth’s atmosphere in exchange for the new cryptocurrency. Part of the solution involves solar collectors that beam energy to the Earth’s surface, reducing the demand for fossil fuels. All these ideas depend on mining asteroids or the moon for materials needed to build the space station rather than transporting them from the Earth, but as the novel demonstrates, governments will likely oppose private ownership of a space station that they can’t devote to their own selfish purposes. Again, the solution lies in the questionable practice of asking forgiveness rather than permission. Heinlein would have loved this novel.

Before she goes to Ryugo, Isabel Abarca proclaims that “unless we test our limits, we will never know what we are capable of.” That was a common theme in classic science fiction novels before readers and writers grew jaded. Another reason why Heinlein would have enjoyed Critical Mass.

For a book that details innovative (if unlikely) solutions to existential problems, Critical Mass doesn’t feel expository. The explanations come from briefings and conversations that integrate well into the plot. Suarez imparts a ton of information while avoiding science lectures. He seasons the novel with tense moments (space isn’t a safe place, even for occupants of a space station). Characterization was clearly not Suarez's priorty, but stock characters serve their required purposes. The story moves quickly and creates the excitement of a thriller without dulling the reader’s mind with shootouts and fistfights.

Critical Mass is good read for fans of older science fiction. The novel is a throwback to the days when the word “science” in science fiction actually mattered. It combines traditional themes of human ingenuity with modern fears of environmental catastrophe and governments that will never cooperate to solve world-spanning problems.

RECOMMENDED

Children of Memory by Adrian Tchiakovsky

First published in Great Britain in 2022; published by Orbit on January 31, 2023

Children of Memory is the third book in a trilogy. While the books are connected by a shared history and a few characters, they tell independent stories. It isn’t necessary to read the first two novels to enjoy the third.

After a very long journey from Earth, a ship full of sleeping humans arrive at Imir. The ship is on its last legs. Some of the pods in which humans sleep are ruined, but most passengers are still alive. Unfortunately, the terraforming seeds that were planted on Imir long ago have only barely taken root. The planet has no predators because it has no life at all, apart from the primitive algae and such that the terraformers seeded. Imir might sustain a small settlement that works hard to grow the right crops and breed the right animals, but it won’t sustain the thousands on the ship.

All but a handful of settlers are left in orbit in the hope that they can one day be brought to the surface. That hope dims when the landers that operate between the surface and the orbiting ship break down. The survivors who make it to the planet must live with the guilt of leaving so many behind.

That’s a great concept for a story, but it’s only one part of Children of Memory. Before they travel to the surface, the colonists detect a radio signal. They pinpoint its origin and decide to build their settlement nearby, but they are too busy with the struggle for survival to investigate it. When they finally establish a foothold, the captain goes into the hills to find the signal’s source. What happens to him? Three hundred years later, nobody is quite sure.

In an earlier novel, a terraforming project gone wrong caused spiders with uplifted intelligence to evolve on another planet. The uploaded mind of the woman behind the terraforming (Avrana Kern) and one of the spiders, as well as a pair of birds and additional aliens that appeared in the second novel, make their way to Imir on a grand tour of planets that were seeded with life. What they find on Imir is puzzling.

A woman named Miranda, who thinks of herself as human but is something more than that, is dispatched to investigate. She plays the role of a teacher and befriends a young girl named Liff, who somehow remembers witnessing the entire history of the planet, including events that occurred long before she was born.

Miranda realizes that the colony is falling apart. Crops are failing, animals are not reproducing, machinery has broken down. She wants desperately to help while the colonists, wary of outsiders who have suddenly appeared, don’t trust her. A mythology of “others” has evolved during the colony’s brief existence. In tough times, it is always good to blame your problems on others. Perhaps the others managed to escape from the orbiting ship and set up a competing civilization. Perhaps the other are indigenous. Miranda claims to be from an outlying farm but she’s the only obvious evidence that “others” exist. She’s in danger of being lynched because lynching “others” is what humans do. The society’s development of an “us versus them” mindset, even in the absence of a “them,” is a smart take on human nature.

After some time passes, Kern loses track of Miranda. She sends the birds to find her. The birds excel at solving puzzles but are baffled by what they find. Nothing on Imir is what it seems to be. Liff thinks Kern is a witch but the truth is more complicated.

The story jumps around in time. That’s a common literary trick, but here the shifting time frames have a larger purpose. They make sense in the overall context of the story for reasons that won’t be revealed until the novel nears its end. A shift back to the day the colonists first landed on Imir, told in one of the novel’s concluding chapters, provides a satisfying view of events from the reader’s new perspective. Mastery of plot development and storytelling is one of the reasons I keep coming back to Adrian Tchaikovsky.

The story’s most poignant moments surround the choice to leave thousands in suspended animation so that a relative handful have a chance to survive. A later decision to allow couples to reproduce taxes the colony’s limited resources, making it even harder to justify bringing more people down to the planet’s surface. I enjoyed thinking about the moral uncertainties of such difficult choices.

Scenes of pioneering, while abbreviated, give a sense of how difficult it would be to sustain life on a planet that has never supported life. Intermittent debates about the differences between instinct and intelligence, body and mind, sentience and artificial intelligence, simulation and reality, add the philosophical depth at which Tchiakovsky excels. Science fiction is a perfect showcase for such debates, and these are both intriguing and relevant to the plot.

RECOMMENDED

After Many a Summer by Tim Powers

Published in spring 2023 by Subterranean Press

Subterranean publishes nice print editions of old and new works by established writers in the fields of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. This novella will be available in a trade edition, but the more expensive limited and lettered editions include full-color endsheets. Here’s a glimpse:

As this novella begins, an unsuccessful screenwriter named Conrad is pretending to be a homeless drunk who has staked out a spot near a 7-11 parking lot. Conrad, who has some real life experience with homelessness and alcoholism, has accepted a studio’s offer to purchase and produce his screenplay if, in exchange, he takes a car from the 7-11 parking lot and transports a package in the trunk to a stated location. He’s supposed to change cars a couple of times along the way.

Conrad assumes that the package he’s delivering is some sort of ransom. Horror fans know that the cardinal rule in situations like this is don’t open the package. Horror fans also know that the story won’t get started until the protagonist opens the package.

Curiosity gets the best of Conrad before he arrives at his final destination. He discovers that the package contains a shrunken head attached to a stick. He presses a button on the stick and the head asks, “Pray thee sir, whose dog are you?” Other than asking Conrad to kill him, the head’s conversation doesn’t always make much sense.

The head is some sort of oracle. It calls itself Tithonus. In Greek mythology, Tithonus begged the gods for immortality and was granted his wish, but never stopped aging, making immortality a miserable state of existence. Tithonus is also the title of a Tennyson poem from which the title of the novella is drawn. Readers of Greek mythology, Tennyson, and horror fiction all know that immortality is a curse. That’s particularly true when you’re living your life as a shrunken head on the end of a stick.

The hostage victim explains the oracle’s powers and how her family acquired it, but as readers of such stories know, nothing good ever comes from learning the future from a shrunken head. Conrad’s adventure takes him through a series of repeating, time-distorted events. He saves the woman who is being held hostage, unless she dies. He shoots a man, unless he doesn’t. Life is confusing when you’re unstuck in time.

Tim Powers has a long history of writing entertaining stories that often feature supernatural themes. The novella shares some of the flavor and time travel themes of his most celebrated novel, The Anubis Gates. Still, this is a less substantial work. After Many a Summer lacks the detail, careful characterizations, and surprises of Powers’ longer fiction. Having said that, the story is fast and fun, a good way to kill an evening for readers who want to read something spooky and unchallenging.

RECOMMENDED