Planet Sickness

by Kat Giles

28 year old archivist Alexandra Lawrence always dreamed of spaceflight, but her chronic illness left her grounded working in an archive for a defunct space exploration company. After she has an unsettling encounter with an alien specimen from the Tereus expedition, Xandra digs into the mission records and learns some of the crew never made it home. Xandra is used to being sick, so she can't tell if the lingering effects of her exposure are something to worry about or one more way her body is letting her down. With multiple fatality notices in front of her, she needs to fine out--fast. As Xandra explores the records, she discovers more secrets buried in the archive: betrayal, violence, and crewmembers' growing suspicion that something about Tereus isn't right.

190 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2025

Reviews

[Jon Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I purchased my copy of this book in paperback from the author at a local author fair at the the Woodneath Library Center in Kansas City, MO in November of last November. After finishing the book, I wanted to review in on Goodreads but found it wasn't in their listing, so I sent a request to the Librarians Group to get it added. Now that it's been added, I guess I'll get to provide the first review. It's a science fiction tale set somewhere in the future (I don't recall a date being given) when mankind has developed interstellar travel, and private space companies are sending out survey ships to explore habitable planets and identify those suitable for colonization. This surveying has been going on for decades, and some of the space companies sending out the ships have gone out of business or been purchased by others. Thus we find Xandra Lawrence, an Earthbound archivist working for a Hipplolyta Space Corporation, a space company that has bought out Outer Bounds, a defunct outfit that 70-some-odd years ago had sent a survey ship to planet Tereus. The records of this expedition are in the Hippolyta archives, and in the course of cataloging these records, Xandra is exposed to an alien lifeform from Tereus. This encounter causes some disturbing mental effects, and Xandra begins to go through the papers and recordings from the expedition to try to learn more about the source of the alien life form. A story begins to unfold - interpersonal conflict among the crew of the survey ship, strange occurrences once the ship reaches Tereus, and the eventual deaths of two crew members. To avoid spoilers I won't say more, but eventually the mystery leads Xandra to travel to Tereus, which now hosts a colony that harvests lumber, to get to the bottom of what happened. This is a fairly short book at 190 pages, and it made for a quick and enjoyable read. I liked that fact that most chapters begin with a set of archivist's notes about the records from the Tereus expedition. It's a nice touch. I also like the fact that, unlike so much sci-fi written in the 21st century, this book is not filled with foul language. I'm not squeamish about foul language; it just seems that way too much is used in today's writing. I do have a couple of minor quibbles; first, the records in the archive seem to contain a lot of paper. I know that a "paperless society" has been promised for at least 50 years now and has failed to arrive, but surely an interstellar civilization would have gotten to a mostly paperless state. Second, the export from the Tereus colony is wood, which is shipped to Earth. You'd think that if wood was so precious on Earth, even if the planet's climate had been wrecked, it would cost less to genetically engineer wood producing trees that could survive in the wrecked climate rather than shipping planks and plywood across light years of space. But these are just quibbles. Four out of five stars.