The System is the governing body of the solar system, they have total control of the populace. One of their experimental military space vessels – the Ananke – is boarded by two hostile men. These men, Mattie and Ivanov, are known to be thieves (Space Pirates!) and are suspected to be allies of the galaxy’s most infamous terrorist. Ivanov is caught, Mattie escapes. But before he escapes, Mattie does something to the Ananke. At the center of Lightless, C.A. Higgins debut novel space is computer scientist Althea.
The crew of the Ananke is quite small. Surrounding Althea are Domitian, ship’s captain and Gagnon, the senior scientist. The crew grows by one when Ida Stays, an interrogator from the System, arrives to determine Ivanov and Mattie’s links to Mallt-y-Nos, a galactic terrorist…well, just Ivanov now since Mattie escaped (or was killed according to Althea’s superiors aboard the Ananke). After that chess-board is set-up (about ¼ to 1/3 of the novel), Higgins begins to maneuver her characters in expert fashion. Her characters begin to question what they have come to know and how they view their situation – especially Althea – which makes for a great puzzle of a novel to decipher.
Higgins plays these characters off of each other extremely well with all the interactions floating on an undercurrent of distrust and anger. While Domitian plays a very authoritative figure, he becomes a shadow of a man in the presence of both Ida and Ivanov. He treats Althea as little more than an inexperienced child throughout much of the narrative, perhaps because she is the only person over whom he can hold power.
When Ida is “on stage” she demands attention and fear from the members of the Ananke with her words and reputation. Higgins pulled off the character plausibly, which could have come across as a cardboard authority figure, very well with subtle peeks into Ida’s internal thoughts. Ivanov comes across as a calculated and charismatic figure, going toe to toe with Ida during their interrogation scenes.
The computer at the heart of the Ananke is highly advanced, but is not behaving. As Ida’s interrogation of Ivanov continues, the computer of Ananke becomes less responsive yet Ida stresses to Althea that the computer engineer must fix Ida’s ship. Althea is torn between her connection to the Ananke’s computer, keeping away from the charming Ivanov who may have some clues about the problems of Ananke’s computer, fixing Ananke’s computer quickly, and following Ida’s directives. If the computer is at the heart of the ship, then Althea is the heart of the story. Althea comes across as a smart young woman who grows into her own confidence, despite a captain who treats her as a child nuisance, and a superior (Ida) who is very dismissive of her. Even though Domitian is the ship’s captain, he is far outranked by Ida, a fact her actions and words most definitely convey. Although Ivanov seems fully in control of his situation, as the novel progresses, Higgins reveals how critical Ivanov’s mother and his girlfriend are to his plans and the man he is and projects. In other words, the women/ladies are at both the forefront and heart of the power dynamics of Lightless.
Higgins is an astrophysicist, having recently graduated from Cornell University. Impressively, she also wrote this novel whilst studying for her degree. While at the heart of the novel is a science fictional trope that has been part of the genre for many years, Higgins extrapolates the science of today well enough in the details to make it a plausible question to consider. Equally impressive is that, like a blanket over the hard science fictional core of the novel, is some deft characterization, plotting, and story pacing. Another element of the story that Higgins evoked very powerfully was claustrophobia – both in terms of the confined atmosphere of the space vessel and the urgency of the timing of everything. Althea is under a very imposing deadline to repair the computers of two space vessels and Ida is feeling a great deal of internal pressure from her own superiors to prove that Ivanov and Mattie are connected to the terrorist Mallt-y-Nos. Even if there isn’t a xemomorph hunting the crew of Ananke the way one hunted the crew of the Nostromo, Higgins captures that same claustrophobic, confined feeling just as well.
Lightless is a remarkably impressive tightly woven debut novel from a new voice in the genre that will hopefully have many more stories to share with readers.
Recommended
© 2015 Rob H. Bedford
Hardcover, 304 Pages | 9780553394429
Published by Del Rey, September 2015
Review copy courtesy of the publisher
http://www.cahiggins.com/
