Calypso by Oliver K Langmead

I would like to thank Titan for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher – Titan

Published – 2/4

Price – £12.99 paperback £6.99 Kindle eBook

A ground-breaking, mind-bending and wildly imaginative epic verse revolution in SF. A saga of colony ships, shattering moons and cataclysmic war in a new Eden.

Truly unforgettable and richly lyrical eco-fiction, for fans of Kim Stanley Robinson, Adrian Tchaikovsky, and Jeff VanderMeer.

Rochelle wakes from cryostasis to take up her role as engineer on the colony ark, Calypso. But she finds the ship has transformed into a forest, populated by the original crew’s descendants, who revere her like a saint.

She travels the ship with the Calypso’s creator, the enigmatic Sigmund, and Catherine, a bioengineered marvel who can commune with the plants, uncovering a new history of humanity forged while she slept.

She discovers a legacy of war between botanists and engineers. A war fought for the right to build a new Earth – a technological paradise, or a new Eden in bloom, untouched by mankind’s past.

And Rochelle, the last to wake, holds the balance of power in her hands.

Science fiction comes in many forms – novel, film, tv show, song and yet poetry can feel weirdly inappropriate. That very ancient form of using words for something that is so futuristic and often technologically focused. How do they world together? A recent acclaimed example is Deep Wheel Orcadia by Harry Josephine Giles which used the unique ancient language of Orkney dialect to tell an epic SF. In Oliver K Langmead’s epic verse Calypso we now have poetry used to frame a tale of new worlds, new life and yet questions often as old as time itself.

Rochelle is an engineer awakened upon the generational starship Calypso but finds the ship feeling a lot emptier than she was expecting. She was hired centuries ago by the enigmatic genius Sigmund to be the person expected to challenge his decisions when they finally arrived at an empty world to start a new wave of human life. But the first person she meets is not quite human – a woman named Catherine who is actually designed to bring life to the planet below them. Rochelle and Catherine will explore the mysteries of Calypso and what this means for the planet below about to be changed forever by humanity.

This was a hugely impressive reading experience and for me what jumped out as the key advantages of using poetry are the immersiveness of the verse that is translating a very unusual science fictional issue-based plot into something that by turns is epic, heartfelt, and often providing a unique sense of wonder. Langmead has focused on four key characters visited throughout the story. With Rochelle she is a fascinating character – often the most human we meet. She tells us her tale directly. An engineer yet from a religious background and has also decided against any technological enhancements in her own body. Yet she is very pro-science and in favour of the mission. As well as being a witness to Sigmund’s plans with Rochelle’s sections get to witness the creation of a new world and in a rather beautifully bittersweet suite of verses she finds out what happened to her children after she left Earth. It’s a fascinating science fictional idea of the adult learning the entire lives of her children when she is not even that much older than she left. Sad yet warm that really packs an emotional punch as Langmead described with vividity the lives that were lived that their mother never witnessed herself.

In Catherine we get a different voice and appropriately a helix shaped suite of verses used. Here we have someone not quite human react to Rochelle and Sigmund but the phrasing creates a veil of alienness in how she is processing the world. She is able to create life from her limbs – such as providing grapes for others to eat and yet she seems to have other missions in store to serve Sigmund’s overall goals. In one case Catherine is the means to deal with a perceived threat of rogue engineers who have created their own base in opposition to Sigmund. Here Rochelle’s tale is more cyberfantasy with the engineer living in baths of protective chemicals and yet the biological nature of Catherine proves quite a formidable opponent. But for me the jaw-dropping highlight is Catherine arriving on the planet below to bring life itself. Langmead paints in Catherine’s descriptions someone creating rapid evolution of a new planet; transforming the world by every step they tale walking or swimming the new planet. It’s a genesis wave effect in language and science as we watch evolution take place in minutes not millennia and the verse really makes you feel the speed and wonder that Catherine is experiencing as she turns her body into all the life that this world needs.

We get two other perspectives. The Calypso has a being named the Herald whose task is oral history and in a very old-school type of verse get the tale of the Calypso’s travels in space and its dividing factions told more as epic poetry of two sides, kings and betrayals and battles. It very percussive with key beats across the language to help instil the feeling of a key myth to those on the Calypso and provides a great bridge between the two parts of the take.

The final character is one we don’t really get to see their thoughts but more their history taking them to this final destination. Sigmund is fascinating and rarely tells us anything outright. Instead, we see key moments in his life – living in his mother’s shadow as she brought life to Mars millions of miles away from him this inspires him in different ways. We see him visit humanity on Mars and the Moon and see our future legacy and perhaps how little we change even if we change other worlds to suit us – the imagery of seagulls on mars eating new landfill is haunting. He feels enigmatic and yet has more than one agenda going at once. He dons the traditional SF role of wise scientist with secrets, but the reader is unsure if his motives are good or not. We see in an epic series of scenes the creation of a whole new world where Sigmund is more like the conductor of an orchestra turning a planet into sea, air and creating a climate with waves of his hand but also in the latter half we get a fascinating ethical SF question of if you’re starting a world from scratch how much of our world should you put into it. This creates a tension with Rochelle that culminates in a dramatic and again suitably epic finale which has some almost biblical overtones but at the same time is firmly SF based and again raises a powerful question on what is the right thing to do next.

Calypso is a really fascinating exploration of how SF can translate to science fictional ideas and themes and for me delivers it incredibly well. It’s a very different way of feeling and experiencing a n SF tale that Langmead’s use of language helped me experience afresh. Very refreshing and strongly recommended!