Runaway Humanity

by Joshua Valentine

As the Earth died out from worsening climate change and heightened global conflicts, so did humanity, along with everything that once defined Earth as the only planet in the universe known to harbor life. All life known to exist to man died out. Or, at least, it was assumed to by every member of the human race. Thirty years after the roughly one hundred million humans still alive on Earth mass-migrated to Mars and colonized the red planet, this conventional wisdom is suddenly challenged when signs of life are detected on the once-dead planet. It’s not extremophiles, microorganisms able to live in extreme weather and environmental conditions; so, what is it that is being detected? Faced with a corrupted space agency and a colony of humans risking total extinction, Doctor Shelby Hilton, along with her husband Drake, must travel back to Earth to find out what's still alive on the planet, and what it means for the future of humanity. Even if traveling to that dangerously unknown planet meant risking their lives, and their reputations in the dying Martian colony they now called home.

A note to readers: This book contains scenes depicting graphic sexual and physical violence; death; suicide; stillbirth; infant abuse.

339 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 15, 2022

About the author

Joshua Valentine is the drag queen superstar author; the commodification of the intersecting lines between the mainstream drag queen and the mainstream author; the face of the marriage between the serious, introspective nature of writing, and the campy, flamboyant nature of drag. His written works (mainly ranging from science fiction to mystery) is not just a reflection of his psyche and talents, but also a vessel for transporting his image. When consuming Runaway Humanity, you are not only consuming a story written by the author, and inspired by countless other works, but also an image, architected by Mr. Valentine and inspired in much of the same way.

If you would be interested in following Joshua Valentine and his publishing journey, you can also follow him on Twitter (@authorjoshuav) and Instagram (@joshuavalentine1).

Reviews

[Lisa Grønsund]

I've received an advanced digital copy of this book, courtesy of the author and publisher, via Netgalley, for review consideration.

RTC

[Maggie Burns · Rating 3 out of 5]

To start with the positive I’ll say this book was clearly a labor of love. I found the concept was really interesting and I was really curious to explore it. There were a lot of moments that really caught my interest and I was eager for the story to expand on those things, but each time I was left a bit wanting. The downfall for me was redundancy and pacing. It was slow to get into and then the second half felt very rushed. Many moments felt very abrupt and jarring as a result of it. Had this book been edited for redundancies and spent more time explaining and exploring the things that happen in the second half, it would have been top notch. Realistically, I think this could have been made a duology to include all of the detail and information I would have liked to see. Overall, it read as if the author was so excited to tell their story that they didn’t slow down enough to give the reader a chance to pick up all of the information that it seemed like Shelby was able to just know, almost as if she were omniscient. Though it had its flaws, I enjoyed it and it certainly didn’t put me off of reading more work from Joshua Valentine in the future.



**and as a side note, I loved the inclusion in the beginning about women in stem and all of the content warnings which definitely should be taken into consideration before reading!

[Renee Taylor · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received this ARC and I am providing my honest review. The plot of the book was intriguing. Mankind has settled on Mars after catastrophic events have taken place on Earth. It was thought all life had died on Earth, however, a sign of life has been seen on Earth and a few scientists have been tasked with the job of returning to Earth to investigate and determine what this means for humanity. I really struggled with reading this as based on the description I thought a lot of the story would deal with the investigation on Earth and dealing with what they found. Two-thirds of the book, however, dealt with activities on Mars and how women were relegated to second-class citizens. Although spending a lot of time on this aspect in the book, the characters still felt shallow as there was no real character development. Then when they got to Earth, instead of providing a narrative of what and why the sign of life occurred, you are given shocking descriptions of sexual brutality, abuse, and depravity. At this point, I was through with the book and then just skimmed to the end. Appears that the author was trying more for shock value than writing a story that could have had a lot of potential.

[Trisha’s Library Reads and Reviews · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was drawn to this book the moment I saw it and was very happy to receive a paper copy. I was excited to start this book and it definitely did not let me down. To say I loved this book would be an understatement.
Joshua Valentine’s writing was engaging, fresh, and the sentence flow was clean. The characters were very well done and had depth that kept you caring about their journeys the whole way through.
The story line was thought provoking and a full of engaging twist and turns while being very original. The underlying message was profound.
If I could give this more than five stars I would.

[Matthew Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed reading a book by a first time author. Gave it four (4) out of five (5) stars since the author is still developing his craft and Sci-Fi is not my favorite genre. Told the story from an interesting perspective though, an older woman dealing with themes many women experience throughout their lives: motherhood, marriage, women in STEM, their lack of agency imposed by a government, reproductive rights, climate change. Although this writing style seemed redundant at times, the author does well creating a world not too distant from the one we are currently living.

[Anneke Du · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you enjoy Scifi and/or fantasy with a specific interest in space then this is the book for you. It's very well written.

I was interested in the book because the description sounded amazing and what I did read was good. However I did not finish the book as it is too scifi and spacy for me. I don't normally read this genre but was taken in by the premise

[Magnus · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book should come with a warning, seriously about 63% into the book there was so brutal and disgusting actions that I felt ill.

Aside from that the story was inferior and not believable at all.