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Skinship
Bearing the final remnants of humanity and its genetic archive, the last Skinship to leave a dying, distant-future Earth closes in on the Dragonhead Nebula and the prospect planet that offers resurrection. With Applewhite, the First Navigator, apparently in the process of psychic collapse, a conspiracy emerges to murder him before he can compromise the mission or destroy the ship. Resisting this conspiracy is Monamy, a nonhuman Archivist who alone understands the nature of Applewhite’s breakdown. Inside the uncanny ship, chilling violence and grotesque forms break out. Meanwhile, 1,500 years after the abandonment of the planet, the last man on Earth struggles to survive and, somehow, escape.
Cinematic and intimate, James Reich’s latest novel evokes a yearning for the future evolving into panic, and the contradictions of nostalgia for forgotten things. Like SILENT RUNNING and THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH before it, SKINSHIP penetrates the loneliness of an ecological crisis.
Cinematic and intimate, James Reich’s latest novel evokes a yearning for the future evolving into panic, and the contradictions of nostalgia for forgotten things. Like SILENT RUNNING and THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH before it, SKINSHIP penetrates the loneliness of an ecological crisis.
192 pages, Paperback
First published December 15, 2024
5 people are currently reading
149 people want to read
About the author
James Reich
18 books61 followersJames Reich is a novelist, essayist, and journalist. He is the author of The Moth for the Star (7.13 Books, September 2023), The Song My Enemies Sing, Soft Invasions, Mistah Kurtz! A Prelude to Heart of Darkness (Anti-Oedipus Press), Bombshell, and I, Judas (Counterpoint/Soft Skull). His psychoanalytic monograph Wilhelm Reich versus The Flying Saucers is forthcoming from Punctum Books. He is also the author of The Holly King, a limited-edition collection of poetry.
James is a contributor to SPIN Magazine, and his nonfiction has been published by Salon, Huffington Post, The Rumpus, International Times, Sensitive Skin Magazine, The Weeklings, Entropy, The Nervous Breakdown, Fiction Advocate, and others. His account of innovations in British science fiction is published by Bloomsbury in its ‘Decades’ series, The 1960s. His work has also appeared in the editions of Deep Ends: The J.G. Ballard Anthology, Akashic Books’ ‘Noir’ series, and various anthologies of fiction and criticism.
James was born in Stroud, Gloucestershire in the West of England, and has been a resident of Santa Fe, New Mexico, since 2009. He was greatly influenced by early exposure to the poetry of Dylan Thomas, and by a small book on dadaism, and later by Andy Warhol, the Beats, science fiction, psychoanalysis, punk rock, and the films of Ken Russell and Nic Roeg. Norman Mailer, Sylvia Plath, J.G. Ballard, Anne Sexton, Paul Bowles, D.H. Lawrence, and Lars von Trier are also vital constellations in his work.
James is a contributor to SPIN Magazine, and his nonfiction has been published by Salon, Huffington Post, The Rumpus, International Times, Sensitive Skin Magazine, The Weeklings, Entropy, The Nervous Breakdown, Fiction Advocate, and others. His account of innovations in British science fiction is published by Bloomsbury in its ‘Decades’ series, The 1960s. His work has also appeared in the editions of Deep Ends: The J.G. Ballard Anthology, Akashic Books’ ‘Noir’ series, and various anthologies of fiction and criticism.
James was born in Stroud, Gloucestershire in the West of England, and has been a resident of Santa Fe, New Mexico, since 2009. He was greatly influenced by early exposure to the poetry of Dylan Thomas, and by a small book on dadaism, and later by Andy Warhol, the Beats, science fiction, psychoanalysis, punk rock, and the films of Ken Russell and Nic Roeg. Norman Mailer, Sylvia Plath, J.G. Ballard, Anne Sexton, Paul Bowles, D.H. Lawrence, and Lars von Trier are also vital constellations in his work.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
January 14, 2025
Full Review
Skinship is an excellent, well-crafted, and intelligent work of science fiction. Reich is a great prose stylist who can also tell an intriguing story inside a fascinating and unique world. Had I finished this in 2024, it likely would have gone on my year-end best list. As it stands, I’ll be very surprised if this doesn’t make my 2025 list.
Skinship is an excellent, well-crafted, and intelligent work of science fiction. Reich is a great prose stylist who can also tell an intriguing story inside a fascinating and unique world. Had I finished this in 2024, it likely would have gone on my year-end best list. As it stands, I’ll be very surprised if this doesn’t make my 2025 list.
October 20, 2024
Some books and authors challenge me to write about without using hyperbole. James Reich is an author who I respect both personally and professionally. As a reader I have yet to read a novel by JR that didn’t impress me, honestly, they have blown me away. I worry that I will come off sounding like his mother telling you how fantastic he is. I mean every word and it is not spoken lightly.
James Reich is an author who defies most standard genre conventions. While he doesn’t have the literary reputation of Brian Evenson or Margaret Atwood, James Reich is writing some of the best Science Fiction in the underground indie movement. Skinship is a classic generation ship well written enough to hook those snobs who think they are above genre if they give it a chance.
I am beyond excited that James Reich has entered into the realm of writing a Generation Ship novel, a staple subgenre of the canon. From Heinlein’s Universe in the 40s to Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora in this century there are many classic examples. It is still a modern staple even getting mainstream saccharine movies like Passengers. In recent novels, the approaches have been diverse. Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora (which I consider to be a masterpiece) takes the hard science approach and River Solomon’s Unkindness of Ghosts is a surreal metaphorical fantasy. Skinship is about halfway between those two modern styles in that it borders on surrealism but doesn’t go fully into metaphor. The length of the novel and ideas seem to fit thematically with one of my other favorite 21st-century generation ship novels The Freezeframe Revolution by Peter Watts.
Reich doing this is nothing new to me. In 2019 Reich wrote a similar work of genius with the underrated “The Song My Enemies Sing.” challenged the entire genre of Science Fiction and the many modern realistic depictions of Mars by setting his novel on the red plant preserved in the amber of the science fictional imagination. Creating a novel both modern and retro. In 2017 the short but powerful novel Soft Invasions mixed meta-old timey Hollywood with counterfactual Japanese bombing air raids of California, UFO abductions, and the battle of the Midway. In 140 short pages of elegantly surreal prose James Reich gets wibbley wobbly with space-time and reality and creates a one-of-a-kind reading experience. It is perfect for anyone looking for something that gets on the level of weird.
Now Skinship packs an epic journey into 188 pages, the atmosphere of the novel feels a bit like the 70s Silent Running if it had been re-written and directed by a young well funded David Cronenberg. The point of view character is Applewhite the First Navigator, who is several generations into being engineered to replace his clones and pilot the ship. The Skinship left the dying long ago and the novel opens as they have reached a crossroads. Two planets are in reach and the factions are in conflict. If that is enough to sell you on this book which is still in the pre-order phase you can avoid spoilers in the rest of this review and come back if you want to go in totally cold
Let's get into this book…
The book opens with subtle but powerful world-building for both the ship and the dying Earth that highlights the strength of Reich’s prose.
“Now, the tommy studied the skinship hanging above it. This was the last vessel that would leave the hyperstation that cast its shadow on the dead planet. Entangled and the conspiracy of machinery that attended it, an Aurora of blue light shifted along the skin ship's massive tubular hull, suffusing the dermis with a strange energy. Calmly, the tommy observed the swarms of robots with their welders and sealants. The vessel was already miles long, a leviathan suspended in space. Whether the skinship’s dominant form was organic or mechanical, but Tommy could not have said.”
The skinship is technological sure, and it is also biological throughout the novel the nature of the is revealed and hinted at. The ship is a genetically living ark, giving the ship itself a gooey body horror feeling. The ship is often a character in the generation ship tale, but often through AI pilots but there is a subtle subtext here of the ship being soft and as fragile as skin. The novel hints at this on the first page, but it doesn’t knock you over the head.
As for the earth while the tommy is still at the dockland they look from the ship to earth and the contrast is beautifully expressed.
“On earth, great dunes of ash shrugged towards stiff oceans, glaciers of acid foregathered, glittering as they wiped the cities from the surface of the world. London dissolved. Berlin perished. Sydney earned. Abjua drowned. Poison washed over the tundra. It wove through red forests, sinister and final. The oceans were possessed by slicks of noxious algae clinging to the gyres of plastic, forming artificial islands of trash. Staring down through the mesh of the gantry between its feet the tommy watched the sublime and red relentless white curved of accretion and erosion, a deathly brine overcoming the final thin green tint of the land. Some of the dying must have been watching the sky and the hulk of dockland, black against the sun, or illuminated in the night.”
The interior of the ship lives in a zone of classical SF imagination with autotrams and the like. The ship got bigger as the journey continued with civilization and a style.
“The printers had fashioned the interior, and now it was a series of nostalgic districts, vertebrae along the spine where the railways of the autotrams ran. There was a concourse beneath the navigation bridge that was like an airport tournament terminal with boutiques and restaurants. There were more like this throughout the ship.”
Life on the Skinship is populated by a growing culture as you would expect. We see this through the eyes of many interesting characters. The Archivist, and the First Navigator play traditional roles, but they are effectively written. Applewhite the first navigator is like a classic PKD character born without a traditional relationship to reality or understanding for his creation. Sure Applewhite is the First Navigator, he pilots the ship like many Applewhites printed before him. As he is born into the job There is a conspiracy to kill and replace him.
“You understand,” he had said, crouching beside her, “that all of this will come to nothing if Applewhite remains First Navigator? You heard the rumors that he's hysteric, a neurotic, I'm sure.”
They believe they are saving the ship and want to take it to a planet named Snapdragon, while Applewhite maintains the original plan to go to the planet Wormwood. part of the deal when the three skinships left the passenagers were promised to be reconstituted on a new world, saved like biological data in the skinship. The conflict of course threatens all of it.
“The Skinships did not abduct. They were sanctuaries, made by humanity and its automatons, for humanity. Now she surrendered to the violence of space, like plain dead in a river current, drifting heavy with pollen and dreams under a bright sun, the heat on her face the sky blue and clean..”
The role the generation ship novel plays in the genre is to create micro-cultures that are divorced from the clear destruction we are heading toward. There is almost never a happy ending or a perfect new planet we call home. James Reich is focused on the traumatic damage this dying world left on the people clinging to an island of biology in the vast lifelessness of space. This is highlighted in the 20th-century design of the interior of the ship.
“The skinship had its roots, as it were, or its cellular origins in the greatest and hardest of all centuries. If -- as the dermis moved out from the dockland, extending into space towards the destination -- it had taken the 20th century with it, it had done so because Monamy had accepted that the 20th century had been the last century not overwhelmed with helplessness and mediocrity. This he shared with the printers. Ohh, yes, he recalled it had been terrible, but it had been the last century of beauty, the last where there had been hope of avoiding environmental collapse, in the last century of art and nature.”
I found this powerful. If this were a film I would say they designed the interior this way to save money on designing an alien environment. But Reich has the unlimited budget of his imagination and still he turned the 20th century design into a powerfully expressed message. I don’t know if that is the mission statement of the novel, but it could serve as one. The printers detached from any natural ecology represent an artificial future.
“Smiling contentedly, Katazome envisioned Snapdragon as a planet overgrown with white plastic, the inhabitants of the skin ship drowning, reaching from the wax-like figurines from Dante, trapped in the apocalypse of artifice.”
Skinship is the best new novel, I read this year. It is a deep ecological novel that combines genuine body horror with beautifully written prose. A story that mines the trauma everyone with open eyes should feel when facing a warming dying ecosystem. It deserves a place in the great canon of Generation novels. Pre-order Skinship now.
James Reich is an author who defies most standard genre conventions. While he doesn’t have the literary reputation of Brian Evenson or Margaret Atwood, James Reich is writing some of the best Science Fiction in the underground indie movement. Skinship is a classic generation ship well written enough to hook those snobs who think they are above genre if they give it a chance.
I am beyond excited that James Reich has entered into the realm of writing a Generation Ship novel, a staple subgenre of the canon. From Heinlein’s Universe in the 40s to Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora in this century there are many classic examples. It is still a modern staple even getting mainstream saccharine movies like Passengers. In recent novels, the approaches have been diverse. Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora (which I consider to be a masterpiece) takes the hard science approach and River Solomon’s Unkindness of Ghosts is a surreal metaphorical fantasy. Skinship is about halfway between those two modern styles in that it borders on surrealism but doesn’t go fully into metaphor. The length of the novel and ideas seem to fit thematically with one of my other favorite 21st-century generation ship novels The Freezeframe Revolution by Peter Watts.
Reich doing this is nothing new to me. In 2019 Reich wrote a similar work of genius with the underrated “The Song My Enemies Sing.” challenged the entire genre of Science Fiction and the many modern realistic depictions of Mars by setting his novel on the red plant preserved in the amber of the science fictional imagination. Creating a novel both modern and retro. In 2017 the short but powerful novel Soft Invasions mixed meta-old timey Hollywood with counterfactual Japanese bombing air raids of California, UFO abductions, and the battle of the Midway. In 140 short pages of elegantly surreal prose James Reich gets wibbley wobbly with space-time and reality and creates a one-of-a-kind reading experience. It is perfect for anyone looking for something that gets on the level of weird.
Now Skinship packs an epic journey into 188 pages, the atmosphere of the novel feels a bit like the 70s Silent Running if it had been re-written and directed by a young well funded David Cronenberg. The point of view character is Applewhite the First Navigator, who is several generations into being engineered to replace his clones and pilot the ship. The Skinship left the dying long ago and the novel opens as they have reached a crossroads. Two planets are in reach and the factions are in conflict. If that is enough to sell you on this book which is still in the pre-order phase you can avoid spoilers in the rest of this review and come back if you want to go in totally cold
Let's get into this book…
The book opens with subtle but powerful world-building for both the ship and the dying Earth that highlights the strength of Reich’s prose.
“Now, the tommy studied the skinship hanging above it. This was the last vessel that would leave the hyperstation that cast its shadow on the dead planet. Entangled and the conspiracy of machinery that attended it, an Aurora of blue light shifted along the skin ship's massive tubular hull, suffusing the dermis with a strange energy. Calmly, the tommy observed the swarms of robots with their welders and sealants. The vessel was already miles long, a leviathan suspended in space. Whether the skinship’s dominant form was organic or mechanical, but Tommy could not have said.”
The skinship is technological sure, and it is also biological throughout the novel the nature of the is revealed and hinted at. The ship is a genetically living ark, giving the ship itself a gooey body horror feeling. The ship is often a character in the generation ship tale, but often through AI pilots but there is a subtle subtext here of the ship being soft and as fragile as skin. The novel hints at this on the first page, but it doesn’t knock you over the head.
As for the earth while the tommy is still at the dockland they look from the ship to earth and the contrast is beautifully expressed.
“On earth, great dunes of ash shrugged towards stiff oceans, glaciers of acid foregathered, glittering as they wiped the cities from the surface of the world. London dissolved. Berlin perished. Sydney earned. Abjua drowned. Poison washed over the tundra. It wove through red forests, sinister and final. The oceans were possessed by slicks of noxious algae clinging to the gyres of plastic, forming artificial islands of trash. Staring down through the mesh of the gantry between its feet the tommy watched the sublime and red relentless white curved of accretion and erosion, a deathly brine overcoming the final thin green tint of the land. Some of the dying must have been watching the sky and the hulk of dockland, black against the sun, or illuminated in the night.”
The interior of the ship lives in a zone of classical SF imagination with autotrams and the like. The ship got bigger as the journey continued with civilization and a style.
“The printers had fashioned the interior, and now it was a series of nostalgic districts, vertebrae along the spine where the railways of the autotrams ran. There was a concourse beneath the navigation bridge that was like an airport tournament terminal with boutiques and restaurants. There were more like this throughout the ship.”
Life on the Skinship is populated by a growing culture as you would expect. We see this through the eyes of many interesting characters. The Archivist, and the First Navigator play traditional roles, but they are effectively written. Applewhite the first navigator is like a classic PKD character born without a traditional relationship to reality or understanding for his creation. Sure Applewhite is the First Navigator, he pilots the ship like many Applewhites printed before him. As he is born into the job There is a conspiracy to kill and replace him.
“You understand,” he had said, crouching beside her, “that all of this will come to nothing if Applewhite remains First Navigator? You heard the rumors that he's hysteric, a neurotic, I'm sure.”
They believe they are saving the ship and want to take it to a planet named Snapdragon, while Applewhite maintains the original plan to go to the planet Wormwood. part of the deal when the three skinships left the passenagers were promised to be reconstituted on a new world, saved like biological data in the skinship. The conflict of course threatens all of it.
“The Skinships did not abduct. They were sanctuaries, made by humanity and its automatons, for humanity. Now she surrendered to the violence of space, like plain dead in a river current, drifting heavy with pollen and dreams under a bright sun, the heat on her face the sky blue and clean..”
The role the generation ship novel plays in the genre is to create micro-cultures that are divorced from the clear destruction we are heading toward. There is almost never a happy ending or a perfect new planet we call home. James Reich is focused on the traumatic damage this dying world left on the people clinging to an island of biology in the vast lifelessness of space. This is highlighted in the 20th-century design of the interior of the ship.
“The skinship had its roots, as it were, or its cellular origins in the greatest and hardest of all centuries. If -- as the dermis moved out from the dockland, extending into space towards the destination -- it had taken the 20th century with it, it had done so because Monamy had accepted that the 20th century had been the last century not overwhelmed with helplessness and mediocrity. This he shared with the printers. Ohh, yes, he recalled it had been terrible, but it had been the last century of beauty, the last where there had been hope of avoiding environmental collapse, in the last century of art and nature.”
I found this powerful. If this were a film I would say they designed the interior this way to save money on designing an alien environment. But Reich has the unlimited budget of his imagination and still he turned the 20th century design into a powerfully expressed message. I don’t know if that is the mission statement of the novel, but it could serve as one. The printers detached from any natural ecology represent an artificial future.
“Smiling contentedly, Katazome envisioned Snapdragon as a planet overgrown with white plastic, the inhabitants of the skin ship drowning, reaching from the wax-like figurines from Dante, trapped in the apocalypse of artifice.”
Skinship is the best new novel, I read this year. It is a deep ecological novel that combines genuine body horror with beautifully written prose. A story that mines the trauma everyone with open eyes should feel when facing a warming dying ecosystem. It deserves a place in the great canon of Generation novels. Pre-order Skinship now.
February 15, 2025
Reich has a literary and curious writing style with some interesting takes on the generational spaceship concept, but buries the plot in local color, camouflages characters’ actions and motivations with tics and obscure ruminations, and severely rushes his confusing ending.
November 3, 2024
It seemed absurd to pretend that the universe was anything other than what it was.
Earth has been left behind for a several-centuries-long journey to a new planet that will, hopefully, be inhabitable. On board of one of the Skinships bound for a new home for humanity, robotic intrigues are spun in order to ensure the species's survival - or its demise. The spaceship is populated with scheming and desperate automatons, an archive of the dead who will be revived upon landing on new soil, and humans intent on making it to their destination. Skinship is packed with figurative language, thought-provoking religious allegory, and a number of curious twists.
Unfortunately, I was unable to focus on this one for more than a few minutes at a time. I felt blindsided by a lot of the plotlines and had a hard time following the twists and turns. The premise and the setting were extremely enticing to me, but I found the execution lacking in a lot of aspects. I don't mind a more subtle type of worldbuilding that hints at things rather than elaborating on every detail, but the structure and society of the ship deserved - and demanded - more explanation. One aspect in particular that remained unclear to me and kept be from being fully invested were the stakes of the story. It's not that the stakes weren't high; they were just nebulous to me. At some point the antagonists reveal their intentions and plots, but it took way too long for this to happen, in my opinion.
I also felt like I was kept at arm's length by the omnicient narration, as it kept me from feeling close to the characters. I enjoyed Applewhite's character, as well as Renard and Vic, and would have loved to get to know the group of Printers more. This distance also mystifies me, somewhat - the writing style is quite introspective and philosophizes in conjunction with the characters and their impressions. But I simply did not get to spend enough time with them and their motivations to truly connect with them.
The ending was also a little too aprupt for me. I understand what it was intending to do, but I felt like a proper climax was missing to the serpentine plot that had unfurled.
Thank you to Netgalley for providing a digital copy of this book for review consideration.
Earth has been left behind for a several-centuries-long journey to a new planet that will, hopefully, be inhabitable. On board of one of the Skinships bound for a new home for humanity, robotic intrigues are spun in order to ensure the species's survival - or its demise. The spaceship is populated with scheming and desperate automatons, an archive of the dead who will be revived upon landing on new soil, and humans intent on making it to their destination. Skinship is packed with figurative language, thought-provoking religious allegory, and a number of curious twists.
Unfortunately, I was unable to focus on this one for more than a few minutes at a time. I felt blindsided by a lot of the plotlines and had a hard time following the twists and turns. The premise and the setting were extremely enticing to me, but I found the execution lacking in a lot of aspects. I don't mind a more subtle type of worldbuilding that hints at things rather than elaborating on every detail, but the structure and society of the ship deserved - and demanded - more explanation. One aspect in particular that remained unclear to me and kept be from being fully invested were the stakes of the story. It's not that the stakes weren't high; they were just nebulous to me. At some point the antagonists reveal their intentions and plots, but it took way too long for this to happen, in my opinion.
I also felt like I was kept at arm's length by the omnicient narration, as it kept me from feeling close to the characters. I enjoyed Applewhite's character, as well as Renard and Vic, and would have loved to get to know the group of Printers more. This distance also mystifies me, somewhat - the writing style is quite introspective and philosophizes in conjunction with the characters and their impressions. But I simply did not get to spend enough time with them and their motivations to truly connect with them.
The ending was also a little too aprupt for me. I understand what it was intending to do, but I felt like a proper climax was missing to the serpentine plot that had unfurled.
Thank you to Netgalley for providing a digital copy of this book for review consideration.
October 1, 2024
A really fantastic concept with lots of great (blatant and subtle) nods to the forebears of sci-fi, but not executed as well as it probably could be. There are more knowledge-gaps than there should be; many things are left unexplained, underexplained, or outright ignored. There are also multiple "reveals" that feel unearned--Reich, for instance, brings in lots of characters very late in the game who either don't need to be there or should have been given more "screen time," so to speak, before their abrupt intro and exit. I think this book would need to be at least 50-150 pages longer in order to really give the world he's created the detail it deserves. Otherwise, this is a fantastic book. His writing is excellent, and the world he has created is fascinating, making this a highly entertaining read.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC of this book.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC of this book.
March 18, 2025
This is stunning. The concept of the far-future lives of humans is well realised, but I was even more impressed by the exquisite mastery of the written word.
A flawless interrogation of where we might be headed, and what our current direction means for humanity. Plus adventure and invention.
Anyone who can make me care this much about a robot is a writer to revere.
For lovers of sci-fi, and those pondering the future of humanity post-Earth.
A flawless interrogation of where we might be headed, and what our current direction means for humanity. Plus adventure and invention.
Anyone who can make me care this much about a robot is a writer to revere.
For lovers of sci-fi, and those pondering the future of humanity post-Earth.
January 14, 2025
4.5 stars
I already know SKINSHIP will be near the top of my hit list for 2025.
A revolt on a generation starship is an engaging premise, one that has become its own subgenre.
Reich’s stellar execution of SKINSHIP kept me engaged, whether through his exquisite prose, plot mystery, and /or world building. SKINSHIP is rich with story. This book could have been 2-3x its length, but even with its richness, the economy of storytelling is remarkable. I felt like I was reading a classic of the genre.
If pushed to give comparisons, style-wise it is PKD at his most lucid and JG Ballard at his most thematic with enough mystery, intrigue, and pulp to keep those pages turning. Guin, Huxley, and Lem would be proud.
I savored this book. Highly recommend for readers of smart old-school sci-fi/slipstream.
NOTE: I bought this book on a lark and do not know the author.
I already know SKINSHIP will be near the top of my hit list for 2025.
A revolt on a generation starship is an engaging premise, one that has become its own subgenre.
Reich’s stellar execution of SKINSHIP kept me engaged, whether through his exquisite prose, plot mystery, and /or world building. SKINSHIP is rich with story. This book could have been 2-3x its length, but even with its richness, the economy of storytelling is remarkable. I felt like I was reading a classic of the genre.
If pushed to give comparisons, style-wise it is PKD at his most lucid and JG Ballard at his most thematic with enough mystery, intrigue, and pulp to keep those pages turning. Guin, Huxley, and Lem would be proud.
I savored this book. Highly recommend for readers of smart old-school sci-fi/slipstream.
NOTE: I bought this book on a lark and do not know the author.
December 31, 2024
I loved this book. I loved slowly figuring out what was going on. How it flows from one person to another without really knowing who these people are, slowly figuring everything out. It really worked for me. It is slow, it was a really interesting idea, it was great. I feel like it is a hard book to talk about without spoiling anything and also I don't know how to put into words the feeling of reading it. It was my first book by this author but definitely won't be my last.
Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for a copy of this book
Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for a copy of this book
February 16, 2025
In the strange sub-genre of generation ship books comes this strange, short novel. At times, the feel is contemporary UK hipster, with designer clothes, plenty of bevvies, soundtrack by Sun Ra and background paintings by Warhol. There's espionage on board, some very cool guns, and terrorist activity. Clones, or something like that, getting repeated over and over. Little memory cards inserted into the skull. The sentences are great, with off kilter metaphors and images only adding to the general obscure vibe.
February 17, 2025
A story of intergalactic amoeba-like transit first, and human futility second. A masterpiece of invention (or quite possibly, recollection, the memory of a future, projected). A reflection upon the lies that are necessary to keep living, the lies that sustain, and keep going, and which, thereby, are the lies that are doing some of the killing too.
[reviewed in full here: https://www.erratumpress.com/recollec...]
[reviewed in full here: https://www.erratumpress.com/recollec...]
November 11, 2024
needed to be a LOT longer to have the characters really shine. the homages make sense, but the world is still confusing to me, and the characters needed more. 2.5~3 stars. tysm for the arc.
July 1, 2025
Consumed this in 3 days. One of the best "new" SF books I've read since The Three-Body Problem.
December 24, 2025
Great mood and atmosphere in this well-crafted generation ship tale.
January 14, 2026
Superb book
November 18, 2024
Dear Author,
What imagination! I was immersed completely and immensely happy with this book. Intimate, thought-provoking, intelligent, mysterious and Science Fiction readers wet dream. I look forward to reading more of your works.
Yours Truly,
J.D. McCoughtry
Thank you, NetGalley and RDS Publishing | Anti-Oedipus Press, for the chance to listen to this audiobook arc.
What imagination! I was immersed completely and immensely happy with this book. Intimate, thought-provoking, intelligent, mysterious and Science Fiction readers wet dream. I look forward to reading more of your works.
Yours Truly,
J.D. McCoughtry
Thank you, NetGalley and RDS Publishing | Anti-Oedipus Press, for the chance to listen to this audiobook arc.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews