I read this novella on a short weekend getaway in the desert near Mono Lake. I had no idea what to expect, having read nothing about this book, but I saw the author speak at the Dream Foundry con earlier this year and I figured I would like her writing based on what I heard there. This is a space exploration story which is simultaneously optimistic and pessimistic about the future of the human race, climate change, and genetic engineering. I won’t give much away but will describe a bit about what the book is about, and what I liked.
There are 4 astronauts who have traveled to a nearby star system to explore the life that they thought would be there. There are some flashback scenes, done in an interesting way. The whole book is a communication from the voyagers back to Earth, as they are concerned that something happened to Earth and there may not be anyone there to receive their message (this is all in the first few pages so its not a spoiler).
Most of the rest of the book is the description of their visits to the several planets and what they find. Her descriptions of the planets, of the space travel, of the various forms of life they find, even the use of chirality of amino acids and sugars(!) is all very realistic–hard SF for sure. There is no magic FTL there are no humanoid life forms… its all done from an interesting perspective. The biologist gets center stage one mission, the geologist, another, and the weather person (climatologist?) and engineer both get their turns. And it shows that the crew needs to be able to work together and share responsibilities in a good way.
There is an awesome almost throwaway line in one of the sections where a character is revealed as trans, but its like “Dave liked pizza, was from Milwaukee, and trans,” like it is just a fact about the person, not their defining characteristic. And it was done an a very off-handed scientific way. I really liked the detail, even though it wasn’t that important for the story, to show inclusivity without tokenizing the character.
So, this was (in my opinion) Hard SF and I’m giving it 4 stars. It was a travelogue more than a story, which is fine, but i didn’t see a huge character arc. I tried to pay attention to craft and was very aware that it was written in first person, which really worked for the premise. I am definitely interested in reading more of her work (which I believe is more space opera).