If you read to escape, and I know I do plenty of that, then you can't get much further out than Mars. There were many temptations in my December prompt list (and many thanks for the recommendations!), but in the end I have picked up Emma Newman's Beyond Mars. I think it beckoned so strongly because it is not too 'out there' in terms of setting and story. I think I shy away from science fiction because of the foreignness that I feel must come with the stories. It is both appealing and maybe a little disconcerting to me. Science fiction seems so very otherworldly to me, quite literally a different world and different habits and languages and life forms and rules. It makes me feel a little off balance.
But Emma Newman's novel is both familiar and foreign and makes me want to perhaps reach more often for books in this genre. I think what tipped me over for this book is the idea that it is both science fiction but also psychological suspense. The latter I am very familiar with when reading crime novels and thrillers, yet there is definitely a foreignness to the story, too.
Anna Kubrin is a geologist who also happens to be a talented artist. Her work is good enough to garner her a position as one of the team of scientists who work on the red planet, sent there by a small but extremely wealthy corporation. When the story opens she is nearing the planet after six months travel alone on a ship. She begins to wonder if she has made the right choice to leave her husband and small daughter back on earth, but it was an opportunity she could not resist pursuing. She had tried many times to get a place there but each time never made the cut. It was her painting in the end that sold the CEO.
She arrives, with a small niggling doubt in the back of her mind about her journey and job, but mostly she is looking forward to working with the other scientists. But when she finally disembarks and meets with the others already working on Mars she is more than unsettled. In her room she finds a small piece of paper, written in her handwriting warning her against the staff psychiatrist. She has no recollection of having written it, is even more certain she has never even been there before, and to top it off she has never liked the idea of having to interact with or work with a psychiatrist. Things are not what she expected them to be and she finds that some of the staff are outwardly hostile to her arrival. We have a classic unreliable narrator, who is not sure what is real and what is not. Is she confusing actual memories with moments of immersion--technologically induced experiences. Paranoia sets in.
I'm not too far into the story but I am intrigued and curious and find the little technological stretches really very interesting. Humans are micro-chipped to give the ability of connecting with a computer and a personal AI assistant. Of course on Mars there is a massive computer/AI controlling every aspect of life on the planet, which is lived mostly underground. There are strange things like food is printed on a printer and tastes mostly like what it would taste like if made from scratch. Along with our regular pronouns there are some that or less gender specific like 'ze'. We are definitely not on Earth any longer!
So, a little teaser to give you a taste of this world. Like this one which seems to take place inside Anna's mind/head.
"I open my settings for my APA, needing to focus on something I can actually fix. The voice interface is definitely off. I can't turn off MyPhys, but I can reduce the number of notifications. There's no option to stop the data from flowing straight to the Mars Principia AI. I try not to think about it."
So, it's not so far outside the realm of our own normal really, but just strange enough that I can imagine interplanetary travel! I think I would hate being connected to a massive AI that watches everything. I wonder what is going to happen to Anna . . .?