Flight 404

by Simon Petrie

To solve the mystery of the Bougainvillaea 's disappearance, investigator/pilot Charmain Mertz must return to the conservative world of her boyhood.

Flight 404 is a novella blending elements of SF, murder mystery, and transgender fiction.
In July 2013, Flight 404 won the 'Best Novella / Novelette' category of the Sir Julius Vogel Awards, New Zealand's annual speculative fiction awards.

103 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 20, 2012

About the author

Born on the South Island of New Zealand and now living on the North Island of Australia, Simon Petrie is a Canberra-based research scientist and writer of speculative fiction (SF, fantasy, and occasionally horror). Since 2007, his stories have appeared in various magazines, webzines and anthologies. He has been shortlisted several times for Ditmar, Sir Julius Vogel, and Aurealis Awards, and has won the Sir Julius Vogel Award three times (in 2010 for Best New Talent and in 2013 and 2018 for Best Novella / Novelette).

Simon is a member of the Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild and of SpecFicNZ. He has served on three different judging panels for the Aurealis Awards, in the SF Novel, Anthology & Collection, and Fantasy Short Story categories. He has also edited several issues of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, and has co-edited three anthologies.

Reviews

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half of this book seemed headed for two stars, but the second half was a solid four stars. A thinker's SF novel that doesn't make many concessions and requires the reader to pay attention. The first half happens mostly in the carefully drawn protagonist's head and in imagined conversations between this character and her old friends, played out through the intermediary of her android. In the second half, the action picks up and the story becomes a tense space mystery. Details of the protagonist's past are at times very convincing.