01/08/2024
This fiercely original SF headspinner, Coles’s assured novel debut, opens with fledgling humans Kanan and Tei, eager to be born again into their “Final” skins, making sense of a tiny universe whose edge Kanan could run to in “17 minutes.” Kanan and Tei have been together since birth, living under the eye of a mentor, yet on the day of their “Finalization” their futures—and friendship—change forever when Tei is chosen to be Finalized as an interpreter and Kanan is destined for the archives, once her "service to humanity was finished." Kanan, instead, does what she does best—she runs. (“She” is used as a matter of expediency in this review; the pronouns shift in clever ways in the novel.) Tei's new position sets him on a path of discovery and enlightenment, as does Kanan's, as they both learn more about the Natchers, an extinct alien race “plotting their return to the human universe.” The more these "agemates" discover, the more they begin to question.
WIth prose touched with poetry and charged with feeling, Coles explores the human condition in literal and philosophical senses as Kanan and Tei uncover secrets about their existence, their history, and the structure of a society whose particulars will keep even seasoned science-fiction readers guessing. As Kanan and Tei find and rely on their talents, they unearth strengths within themselves to determine their own destiny outside of the stations they have been told await them in the future.
A captivating story of truth, good and evil, and what constitutes being "human", The Limits of My World lives up to its title, revealing that what the protagonists perceive as the parameters of their existence—including creepy inventions like the “butchery curtains”—isn’t the limits of their world at all. For all the provocative ideas and revelations, Coles prioritizes character and adventure, pitting his protagonists against hard choices (“You live skinless or you do not live”) and the most urgent of questions.
Takeaway: Fresh SF page-turner of identity, dystopia, and fighting for one’s place.
Comparable Titles: Brian Everson’s The Warren; Lauren Beukes.
Production grades Cover: B Design and typography: A Illustrations: N/A Editing: A Marketing copy: A-
★ 2023-12-27
In Coles’ SF novel, humankind has divided into two factions, dangerously separated from each other by incompatible languages and cosmologies, each claiming to be exclusively “human.”
The author plunges readers into a deliberately puzzling and cryptic environment known as the “universe,” an enclosed, apparently subterranean, mechanized structure. Its human inhabitants, when not ensconced in a limitless virtual reality called the “digiscape,” carry on daily duties within a culture that emphasizes cycles of test-tube births, maturation, and regular refittings of “skin,” actually high-tech, close-fitting exoskeletons that effectively render their wearers cyborgs. There’s a counterpart to this “underworld”—the seldom-visited “overworld,” where raw materials are funneled to the cyborgs by a largely nontechnological tribe of surface-dwelling, agrarian “Natchers,” humans so far removed from their brethren as to now be regarded as undesired aliens. Kanan, a young underworld resident, turns out to be one of the occasional aberrant nonconformists—he flees a painful skin-upgrading ceremony and ends up in the overworld, a captive of the tribalistic Natchers, who have grown to mistrust and resent the armor-plated folk from below and conduct periodic raids for dwindling supplies. Flashback chapters inform readers that this bizarre social construct began centuries ago as a hopeful, pioneering deep-space expedition from Earth to colonize a distant planet. Over generations it evolved into something terribly different. The author’s gradual revelation of the true nature of the “universe” is masterful, accented by themes of subjective perception, self-deception, and language; words in the underworld and overworld have gradually grown apart in meanings and intent, reinforcing prejudices that subvert and divide both sides (each of which stubbornly claims to be truly “human”). The author has written about LGBTQ+ topics in nonfiction, and it’s noteworthy that personal pronouns have become irrelevant and sexless in the confines of the “universe,” though this may not necessarily reflect a gender-fluid mindset. As one character observes, “Everyone is blind in their own way. And in their blindness, they see what those with different eyes are blinded to.”
Provocative and imaginative SF about space-going humans constrained by language and technology.
