 | |
| Author | Jeff VanderMeer |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Rodrigo Corral Alycia Rainaud |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Published | 2019 |
| Publisher | MCD/FSG (US) |
| ISBN | 978-0-374-27680-5 |
Dead Astronauts is a 2019 science fiction novel by Jeff VanderMeer. It is a sequel to Borne but features different characters and a new narrative. [1] It was a finalist for the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel [2] and also a finalist for the Dragon Award for Best Fantasy Novel. [3]
The first half of the novel follows three part-human shapeshifters – Grayson, Moss, and Chen – as they travel through worlds to fight "The Company". Grayson, the leader, is a former astronaut that can see iterations of the future and information about others through a blinded eye. After exploring space and finding no habitable planets and no signs of life, she returns to "The City" and finds it transformed by the company. She flees the city and travels west where she encounters and falls in love with Moss. Moss is a sentient moss that takes the form of a person around her companions, but can shapeshift with ease and split into multiple selves. Together Moss and Grayson decide to return to The City and attempt to save it from "The Company". On the way they run into Chen, a creation of The Company who became disillusioned and horrified at the work he was doing and fled. Chen sees the world in equations and formulas, but is always on the verge of collapsing into a mass of salamanders. The three then set out across multiple timelines and versions of the world to try and stop the company. [4]
The second half of the novel follows a homeless woman, Sarah, as she seeks to understand the journal of Charlie X, a scientist of "The Company". [1]
Dead Astronauts received critical acclaim, even though some reviewers and readers didn't like the novel. Kirkus Reviews said the novel "may be (VanderMeer's) best book yet" [5] while in The Guardian , Nina Allan called Dead Astronauts "genuinely innovative." Allan added, "the author deliberately deconstructs the very concept of familiarity and forces us up against his subject matter in a way that demands we not only engage with it, but recognize its vast importance to our lives and futures.". [6]
Writing in Wired , Emma Grey Ellis said "the story, such as it is, is elusive, given to tangent, to mad jumps in time and universe and perspective. ... Not that that is a criticism, per se. Half-remembered and poorly understood is how VanderMeer’s characters live their lives. It's how they understand the flecks of Earth detritus they find." [7] Writing for NPR, Arkady Martine noted that "clarity is not the point of Dead Astronauts. Ecology is, and fragmentation; connection across species, times, mentalities." Martine added that "Dead Astronauts moves in shutterclicks, shifting points of view and moments in time. The experience of reading it is a compulsively absorbing confusion. Straightforward answers are not forthcoming. The reader assembles what remains of the history of Vandermeer's world by gestalt, layering snatches of imagery one on top of another." [8]
Publishers Weekly , however, called "lackluster" and that "This diffuse novel reads like unused notes from Borne and feels incomplete." [9]
Jeff VanderMeer is an American author, editor, and literary critic. Initially associated with the New Weird literary genre, VanderMeer crossed over into mainstream success with his bestselling Southern Reach Trilogy. The trilogy's first novel, Annihilation, won the Nebula and Shirley Jackson Awards, and was adapted into a Hollywood film by director Alex Garland. Among VanderMeer's other novels are Shriek: An Afterword and Borne. He has also edited with his wife Ann VanderMeer such influential and award-winning anthologies as The New Weird, The Weird, and The Big Book of Science Fiction.
The World Fantasy Awards are given each year by the World Fantasy Convention for the best fantasy fiction published in English during the previous calendar year. The awards have been described by book critics such as The Guardian as a "prestigious fantasy prize", and one of the three most prestigious speculative fiction awards, along with the Hugo and Nebula Awards. The World Fantasy Award—Anthology is given each year for anthologies of fantasy stories by multiple authors published in English. An anthology can have any number of editors, and works in the anthology may have been previously published; awards are also given out for collections of works by a single author in the Collection category. The Anthology category has been awarded annually since 1988, though from 1977 through 1987 anthologies were admissible as nominees in the Collection category. During the ten years they were admissible for that category they won the award seven times and represented 38 of the 56 nominations.
The New Weird is a literary genre that emerged in the 1990s through early 2000s with characteristics of weird fiction and other speculative fiction subgenres. M. John Harrison is credited with creating the term "New Weird" in the introduction to The Tain in 2002. The writers involved are mostly novelists who are considered to be part of the horror or speculative fiction genres but who often cross genre boundaries. Notable authors include K. J. Bishop, Paul Di Filippo, M. John Harrison, Jeffrey Ford, Storm Constantine, China Miéville, Alastair Reynolds, Justina Robson, Steph Swainston, Mary Gentle, Michael Cisco, Jeff VanderMeer and Conrad Williams.
Martha Wells is an American writer of speculative fiction. She has published a number of fantasy novels, young adult novels, media tie-ins, short stories, and nonfiction essays on fantasy and science fiction subjects. Her novels have been translated into twelve languages. Wells has won four Hugo Awards, two Nebula Awards and three Locus Awards for her science fiction series The Murderbot Diaries. She is also known for her fantasy series Ile-Rien and The Books of the Raksura. Wells is praised for the complex, realistically detailed societies she creates; this is often credited to her academic background in anthropology.
Ann VanderMeer is an American publisher and editor, and the second female editor of the horror magazine Weird Tales. She is the founder of Buzzcity Press.
Clarkesworld Magazine is an American online fantasy and science fiction magazine. It released its first issue October 1, 2006, and has maintained a regular monthly schedule since, publishing fiction by authors such as Elizabeth Bear, Kij Johnson, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Sarah Monette, Catherynne M. Valente, Jeff VanderMeer and Peter Watts.
Mary Robinette Kowal is an American author, translator, art director, and puppeteer. She has worked on puppetry for shows including Jim Henson Productions and the children's show LazyTown. As an author, she is a four-time Hugo Award winner, and served as the president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America from 2019-2021.
Angela Slatter is a writer based in Brisbane, Australia. Primarily working in the field of speculative fiction, she has focused on short stories since deciding to pursue writing in 2005, when she undertook a Graduate Diploma in Creative Writing. Since then she has written a number of short stories, many of which were included in her two compilations, Sourdough and Other Stories (2010) and The Girl With No Hands and other tales (2010).
Ken Liu is an American author of science fiction and fantasy. Liu has won multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards for his novel translations and original short fiction, which has appeared in F&SF, Asimov's, Analog, Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, and multiple "Year's Best" anthologies.
Karin Margareta Tidbeck is a Swedish author of fantasy and weird fiction.
Liz Gorinsky is a publisher and editor of speculative fiction, founder and former publisher of Erewhon Books, a former editor for Tor Books, multiple Hugo Award nominee, and 2017 Hugo Award winner in the category of Best Editor.
The Southern Reach Trilogy is a series of novels by the American author Jeff VanderMeer first published in 2014—Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance. The trilogy takes its name from the secret agency that is central to the plot. In 2013, Paramount Pictures bought the movie rights for the series, and a film adaptation of Annihilation was made with Alex Garland as writer-director. The film was released in 2018.
Some Kind of Fairy Tale is a 2012 novel by the British author Graham Joyce. A work of speculative fiction, it won the British Fantasy Society's Fantasy Novel of the Year award in 2013, and was nominated for the 2013 August Derleth Award for best Horror Novel, and the 2013 World Fantasy Award for best Novel.
PodCastle is a weekly audio fantasy fiction podcast. They release audio performances of fantasy short fiction, including all the subgenres of fantasy, including magical realism, urban fantasy, slipstream, high fantasy, and dark fantasy. As of 2022, Shingai Njeri Kagunda and Eleanor R. Wood share editing duties with support from Assistant Editor Sofía Barker and audio producers Devin Martin and Eric Valdes, and the show is mainly hosted by Matt Dovey, with occasional guest hosts.
Annihilation is a 2018 science fiction horror thriller film written and directed by Alex Garland, loosely based on the 2014 novel of the same name by Jeff VanderMeer. It stars Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, Tuva Novotny, and Oscar Isaac. The story follows a group of scientists who enter "The Shimmer", a mysterious quarantined zone of mutating plants and animals caused by an alien presence.
Borne is a 2017 novel by American writer Jeff VanderMeer. It concerns a post-apocalyptic city setting overrun by biotechnology.
Exhalation: Stories is a collection of short stories by American writer Ted Chiang. The book was initially released on May 7, 2019, by Alfred A. Knopf.
AnnaLinden Weller, better known under her pen name Arkady Martine, is an American author of science fiction literature. Her first novels A Memory Called Empire (2019) and A Desolation Called Peace (2021), which form the Teixcalaan series, each won the Hugo Award for Best Novel.
A Memory Called Empire is a 2019 science fiction novel, the debut novel by Arkady Martine. It follows Mahit Dzmare, the ambassador from Lsel Station to the Teixcalaanli Empire, as she investigates the death of her predecessor and the instabilities that underpin that society. The book won the 2020 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
Vivian Shaw is a science fiction writer.