Feb. 4th, 2018

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Malka Older’s second novel in the Centenal Cycle, Null States, is set a few years after the first novel, Infomocracy. The new global Supermajority - the Policy government - is in place in those parts of the world that have opted into the microdemocracy system, and specialised teams from Information have been waking overtime to restore confidence in microdemocracy itself, which has become precarious following the almost successful attempt to steal the last general election.

Null States opens in Darfur, where a new government has joined the microdemocracy movement and is making the transition to the centenal system. On hand to aid in the transition is an Information SVAT team led by Roz, one of the Information troubleshooters we met during the first novel. She’s not expecting this to be a particularly difficult assignment until the governor of one of the centanals, and the leader of the resistance to the former traditional government, is assassinated. What’s even more troubling, is that he’s not the first leader of a region new to microdemocracy who has died in suspicious circumstances over the past year.

While Roz leads the investigation into the murder, Mishima, who has been freelancing as an analyst since resigning from Information after the election, is asked to return for a vital intelligence assignment. Heritage, the disgraced government that had formed the previous Supermajority, has threatened to secede from the microdemocracy system, turning all the centenals it governs into an independent state. Mishima is tasked with infiltrating Heritage headquarters to find out what their plans are.

Adding to the instability is the looming threat that war between Kazahkstan and Kyrgystan, two “null states” - nation states not part of the microdemocracy - in Central Asia will spill over into neighbouring centenals. And two of the most powerful of the null states, the core regions of China and Russia, are moving toward involvement in the dispute. The last thing microdemocracy and Information need is a land war in Asia.

Null States has the same flavour as its predecessor; it’s a tightly written techno-thriller that at the same time engages in a sophisticated exploration of new approaches to global governance. The stakes have increased from the first nivel, globally and personally, and the future of microdemocracy itself is in the balance. I can hardly wait for the next chapter in the story.

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Stories about multigenerational starships and the ways societies develop in them over these many generations are almost as old as stories about space travel, and as varied. From Heinlein’s Orphans of the Sky to Elizabeth Bear’s Jacob’s Ladder trilogy to Stanley Kim Robinson’s Aurora, it’s a rich environment for all sorts of speculations on how closed societies function.

In Rivers Solomon’s debut novel, An Unkindness of Ghosts, the ship is called the Matilda. As is common in many such stories, society aboard the Matilda is stratified by deck. The divisions between decks are rigidly enforced, resulting in different dialects, adaptive technologies, even ideas about gender identity, varying from deck to deck.

This is a society which recapitulates the plantation culture of colonies built on slavery. The upper decks belong to white people, who enjoy comfort and relative material wealth. The lower decks are the places where brown and black people struggle to survive, their existence policed by overseers, their environment set to minimum standards for survival, their labour coerced and exploited for the benefit of the upper decks. Matilda is a world of great cruelty, like the historical period of chattel slavery it reproduces. It’s also a world full of courage and resistance, of secret accomplishments away from the eyes of guards.

The protagonist, Aster, is an outsider among outsiders. Orphaned at birth, darkskinned like the other lowdeckers, Aster is neurologically atypical, and presents as intersex while identifying as a woman. She has some medical education and moves more freely between decks than most, healing where she can, operating with some protection from one of the members of the elite, Theo, the white-passing Ship’s Surgeon - though it’s not enough to free her from field labour, or the cruelties of overseers and guards.

Aster has secrets. She has a botanical and pharmaceutical lab hidden on a deserted deck, and she has her mother’s notebooks. Lune Gray was a mechanic, who worked on the maintenance of Baby Sun, the source of Matilda’s energy, heat and light. Before she killed herself, Lune had discovered more secrets - something was wrong with Baby Sun, and something was going wrong inside her.

Twenty-five years later, Baby Sun is having energy blackouts again, and the Sovereign is dying from an unknown illness that sounds very much like what was happening to Aster’s mother. In the midst of the casual horror that is the fabric of life on Matilda, Astor, with Theo’s help, must unravel her mother’s secrets to find a path toward freedom.

This is a book that I had to read without stopping, and one that left me breathless at the end. Solomon has created a story that keeps the reader deeply invested in these characters and their fate. I am eager to see what they create next.

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