Lightless Is a Compelling Locked-Spaceship Mystery
They say that in space, no one can hear your scream. In Lightless, the debut novel by C.A. Higgins, no one can hear you talking to your semi-sentient starship. Higgins crams dangerous characters onto the experimental military spaceship Ananke, setting the stage for interstellar intrigue. If that name makes you think about chaos and Greek creation myths, then you get a gold star. This novel pays homage to all of that and more.
People talk a lot about world-building in science fiction, but what they often forget is if you hit the ground running, careful scene-setting doesn’t always matter so much. Higgins plops us on the Ananke with our primary protagonist, computer scientist Althea, and before we know it, the ship is waylaid by terrorist space pirates. The mystery of who these guys are, and what they want with Althea’s ship allows for the fictional future to coalesce subtly around the characters while they’re still busy solving problems and pointing futuristic guns at each other.
Lightless
Hardcover $25.00
Lightless
Hardcover $25.00
Speaking of which, have you ever wondered why everyone on Battlestar Galatica is brandishing what seem to be traditional guns with regular bullets while hanging out on a pressurized spaceship? Higgins, who holds a degree in astrophysics, has figured out a way to explain that and many many other science-minded details. From temperature, to pressure, to probabilities, real and abstract applications of science help drive the narrative. That’s she’s done the homework renders the world-building not only subtle, but also plausible in a way that will make real sticklers (relatively) happy. If there is an ongoing renaissance in hard SF, C.A. Higgins is certainly part of it.
That’s not to say the novel is all physics and numbers; there’s a human element, too. Althea is a a fallible, relatable protagonist, tripped up by the basic hotness of Ivan, a maybe-terrorist with all kinds of secrets. Far from a pulp-novel crush, Althea is at once a normal, intelligent person and unique—because if there’s anything that trumps her feelings for the interloper who appears on the Ananke, it’s her affection, or perhaps involvement, with the ship eventually itself.
Emergence of sentience from an artificial mind is hardly a new trope in SF, and its portrayal here is colored by shades of everything from Arthur C. Clarke to Star Trek: The Motion Picture. But instead of feeling like just another intelligent starship story, Higgins uses the reliable aesthetics to create something truly unique: a combination of locked-room mystery and study of emergent A.I. The sense of place is highly claustrophobic. This is a novel in which every locked door matters and every turn into another corridor or conduit can change the course of the story; think of the tension of Alien, though with higher ambitions: in Alien, Ripley is running from a monster. In Lightless, Althea is battling intelligences both human and machine.
As engaging as the science is, in fact, the book truly succeeds as a twisty, turn-y cat-and-mouse mystery, a high-stakes frenetic plot that involves interstellar intrigue and a power-play spanning planets. It’s one part political thriller, one part outer-space epic, one part solid science. It presents us with the sorts of things SF readers love: complex plotting and big, big ideas about our place in the universe, mixed nicely with a few of the oldest (and most effective) literary tricks in the book: an intriguing mystery, high stakes action, a little romance, and propulsive prose.
Lightless is the first in a new series from a talent to watch. Grab it now and get sucked into the chaos.
Lightless is out now from Del Rey.
Speaking of which, have you ever wondered why everyone on Battlestar Galatica is brandishing what seem to be traditional guns with regular bullets while hanging out on a pressurized spaceship? Higgins, who holds a degree in astrophysics, has figured out a way to explain that and many many other science-minded details. From temperature, to pressure, to probabilities, real and abstract applications of science help drive the narrative. That’s she’s done the homework renders the world-building not only subtle, but also plausible in a way that will make real sticklers (relatively) happy. If there is an ongoing renaissance in hard SF, C.A. Higgins is certainly part of it.
That’s not to say the novel is all physics and numbers; there’s a human element, too. Althea is a a fallible, relatable protagonist, tripped up by the basic hotness of Ivan, a maybe-terrorist with all kinds of secrets. Far from a pulp-novel crush, Althea is at once a normal, intelligent person and unique—because if there’s anything that trumps her feelings for the interloper who appears on the Ananke, it’s her affection, or perhaps involvement, with the ship eventually itself.
Emergence of sentience from an artificial mind is hardly a new trope in SF, and its portrayal here is colored by shades of everything from Arthur C. Clarke to Star Trek: The Motion Picture. But instead of feeling like just another intelligent starship story, Higgins uses the reliable aesthetics to create something truly unique: a combination of locked-room mystery and study of emergent A.I. The sense of place is highly claustrophobic. This is a novel in which every locked door matters and every turn into another corridor or conduit can change the course of the story; think of the tension of Alien, though with higher ambitions: in Alien, Ripley is running from a monster. In Lightless, Althea is battling intelligences both human and machine.
As engaging as the science is, in fact, the book truly succeeds as a twisty, turn-y cat-and-mouse mystery, a high-stakes frenetic plot that involves interstellar intrigue and a power-play spanning planets. It’s one part political thriller, one part outer-space epic, one part solid science. It presents us with the sorts of things SF readers love: complex plotting and big, big ideas about our place in the universe, mixed nicely with a few of the oldest (and most effective) literary tricks in the book: an intriguing mystery, high stakes action, a little romance, and propulsive prose.
Lightless is the first in a new series from a talent to watch. Grab it now and get sucked into the chaos.
Lightless is out now from Del Rey.