Netherspace Brings Space Opera to a Truly Alien Universe

In the far future, humanity makes first contact with three alien lifeforms: the Gliese, a race of traders with bodies like wet leather sacks; the Eridani, worms who smell faintly of spaghetti bolognese; and the Cancri, unnerving dog-maggot symbiotes. Unfortunately, all of the aliens are impossible to understand, save for their insatiable desire to trade their technology for random human objects. When the Cancri kidnap a group of colonists, it’s clear something has gone wrong, and Earth is forced to dispatch a three-person team to investigate. But with numerous agents hoping to hinder the mission and the colonists ready to revolt,  the mission is fraught with peril—even before the team attempts to answer the single most important question: what do the Cancri really want?
There’s a nice sense of otherworldliness and ambiguity to the aliens of Netherspace. None of them are remotely humanoid, and no one can figure out how to communicate with them; the best humanity can do amounts to a series of bizarre exchanges, none of which repeat, save for the exchange of humans for devices called N-space drives that allow for viable space travel; the world government tries to act like everything’s normal while fearfully hoarding all alien tech in the hopes of preventing unfortunate incidents like the botched trade that leveled part of Paris. Chapter after chapter, Lane and Foster actively resist the usual conventions of first contact stories— the alien behavior is obtuse, humans haven’t figured out anything except what they don’t know, and psychic prediction seems the best bet for understanding what the visiting beings might want with Earth.
The ambiguity extends to the mysteries that are solved. Even when the protagonists uncover clues that offer a glimpse of the bigger picture, it feels more like they’re trying to fit what they’re seeing into their own experience than the other way around. The most explanation we get—that the aliens are trying to imitate humans’ natural curiosity since their own has stagnated—is delivered by a character operating by their own agenda for the entire book, making it kind of suspect. Even the bureau responsible for managing human and alien contact admits it barely know what’s going on.

It all lends itself to a certain realism, even if the book tends toward the “soft” end of the science fiction scale. How likely are we to share common ground with beings from another world? There are strong parallels to Frederick Pohl’s Gateway in how interstellar travel works; the human pilots barely know how to use the technology, and have learned that much through trial and error. And even then, The average exploration mission requires a pilot, a navigator who knows the general position of stars, and a crewmember with precognitive powers to make the necessary jumps through netherspace. Even the time it takes to travel through netherspace is roughly estimable, at best. Some things never change, however: the spaceships look like upscale versions of terrestrial mass transit, because with a field generator and a netherspace drive, just about anything aerodynamic enough will fly.
All these unusual touches lend themselves to creating a view of inhabited space that appears truly alien; the humans try to explain what’s going on, but it requires immense effort and a ton of speculation. Lane and Foster’s imaginative aliens and a bizarre take on hyperspace only compounds this view, occasionally dabbling in cosmic horror and turning up the chaos of traveling outside the universe to eleven. It matches the high notes of Pohl (Gateway) and Peter Watts (Blindsight) while adding enough new ideas to sing its own dissonant song.
Netherspace is available now.