Antimatter Blues by Edward Ashton

Published by St. Martin's Press on March 14, 2023

Antimatter Blues is a sequel to Mickey7. We learned in the first novel that a colony of humans is struggling to survive on a world that is inhabited by large worm-like creatures they refer to as creepers. In Antimatter Blues, the humans discover that the worms have relatives living a hundred kilometers to the south. The relatives resemble spiders, but that’s a product of design, as the worms and spiders are ancillaries that serve a leader. Both the worms and the spiders have trouble believing that the humans are not also ancillaries, much less that they traveled from another star.

Mickey7 is the seventh iteration of Mickey’s body. He joined the colony as an expendable, the guy who performs dangerous jobs that might end in death. Mickey7 died six times, each time uploading his memories before the mission so that his body could be dissolved and printed anew. Is each new Mickey a continuation of the original or a different person entirely? It seems like every recent sf novel I’ve read uses the Ship of Theseus as a metaphor, but it doesn’t work well here. New Mickeys are more like a new ship with the same captain (kind of like Kirk taking command of a new Enterprise every time he destroys the old one).

At the end of the last novel, Mickey made an agreement that he would no longer be an expendable. He enforced the agreement by making the false claim that the creepers had seized one of the colony’s nuclear bombs. Mickey also claimed that he was in communication with the creepers, an exaggeration that kept him alive. Now, thanks to a mishap, the colony needs the bomb and its fuel or it won’t survive the upcoming winter. Mickey is tasked with finding it. That should be an easy task except the bomb is no longer under the rock pile where he hid it.

To recover the bomb, Mickey must alternately enter into alliances with the worms and the spiders. Humans aren’t always good at alliances (even with other humans), as the worms and spiders both discover. The novel delivers entertaining action scenes as humans, who have superior technology but much smaller numbers, find themselves fighting with or against worms and spiders. Yes, there is a shout-out to the Spartans at Thermopylae, although the Spartans didn’t have the benefit of superior arrows.

The story is amusing, as Edward Ashton intends it to be. The action is fun. Mickey is a likeable character, as are his friends Berto and Cat and Mickey’s girlfriend Nasha. Each character has a distinct personality with all the depth they require for a story of this nature. The colony’s leader is a jerk, playing the role of a foil who contrasts with the decency of the likeable characters, but even jerks can be redeemed, at least in fiction. The novel’s modest attempts at poignancy are modestly successful.

Antimatter Blues works because it doesn’t overreach. It’s meant to be a comedic science fiction action story and, on that level, it reaches its goal. I would suggest reading Mickey7 before reading Antimatter Blues, but Ashton provides sufficient background to fill in readers who don’t want to bother with the first one.

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Mickey7 by Edward Ashton

Published by St. Martin's Press on February 15, 2022

Mickey7 is the kind of book that science fiction readers don’t often see — an intelligent story of alien contact that suggests diplomacy is preferable to war. Edward Ashton assembles several familiar science fiction components (colonization of new worlds, storing consciousness and transferring it to an artificially created body, aliens that have a distributed intelligence) and assembles them into an entertaining story that seems fresh despite its familiarity.

The future Diaspora is a recurring theme in science fiction — the idea that humanity will develop the technology to colonize other planets and that (as history shows) plenty of people will be willing to risk danger for the chance to make a new life in a new place. In this version of the future, humans have little choice but to flee from Earth after nearly destroying the planet. Mickey7 takes a deeper-than-average dive into likely reality of colonization. It’s possible to identify planets in the Goldilocks zone that show evidence of having an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, but it’s impossible to know whether those planets will support human life, even after a hundred years of terraforming, until humans try to establish a colony. Occasionally colonies thrive. Usually colonists manage to get by or everyone dies.

The plot is fairly simple, with only a few significant characters and a straightforward storyline. In this case, simplicity is a virtue. Mickey got into some trouble and needed to get off a planet. He joined a colony ship in the only available position — as an expendable. His memories are downloaded and his DNA is recorded. When he dies — and that’s part of the job, because some jobs require human exposure to radiation or other deadly environments — a new body will be printed, his last-recorded memories will be uploaded to his new brain, and he’ll be good to go. Except for the dying part, which is usually quite unpleasant.

During one of his trips outside the dome, Mickey’s seventh incarnation falls down a hole and into a labyrinth of tunnels. His friend assumes that Mickey will soon be eaten by indigenous creatures called creepers. By the time Mickey makes his way out of the tunnels, Mickey8 has been printed. Having two versions in existence at the same time creates all sorts of problems with food rations, so at least one of them will have to go. When neither volunteers, they try to keep their dual existence a secret. That’s an entertaining premise for a story that explores the complications of two identical guys canoodling with two different women while each tries to make do on half the usual rations.

The story eventually leads to a confrontation between the Mickeys and their boss, as well as between the Mickeys and the indigenous life forms. The resolution suggests that creative people can solve problems without killing everyone in sight. I might recommend Mickey7 for that alone, but I also recommend it because the story as a whole is fun and the characters are likeable.

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