Pioneers by Allen Stroud
Publisher - Flame Tree Press
Published - out now
Price - £2.49
Two minds, one body, only one can save the crew.
Out in the unknown, aboard an alien ship. Natalie Holder’s identity is disintegrating in the mind of Alison Wade. Wade never chose to remain on the alien ship and struggles to fit in with the rest of the travellers heading out of the solar system. When the ship encounters a new threat, Wade must find a way to get Holder out of her head so she can save them all
Nb - this is part of the Fractals series and this does require some previous knowledge of the other books as there will be spoilers
Science like any good demon contains multitudes. We can have SF focused on problem solving, dystopias and utopias, new technology, climate change or first contact to name but a few. You can mix these up and in endless combinations you can create endless stories. In Allen Stroud intriguing science fiction novella Pioneers we enter a strange tale of consciousness, matter and exploration which reminds us science fiction does not have to be normal.
After the events of Vigilance (reviewed here https://www.runalongtheshelves.net/blog/2024/9/12/vigilance-by-allen-stroud ) a mysterious alien craft was found entering the solar system. It was an unexpected factor in a battle for who will determine the future of humanity starting to develop the solar system. After those events a small group of individuals from all sides agreed to stay on board with a spaceship named gateway. Now the crew are finding out mysteries about themselves and what the next step of this journey will entail.
Have I told you the one about the clone, the downloaded consciousness, the hijacked concourses and the amoral scientists? Fear not no jokes await but this book I think is very much not one to start the Fractals series with unless you like diving in the deep end. This for me was a very engaging and satisfying rounding up of some plot strands for key characters in the series to date but also really opens up a new direction for the series to come but a knowledge of the backstory as to how we got here will help.
A key theme of the book is what is consciousness and we have here on the side of ‘humanity’ an eclectic mcollection. Natalie Holder is very much in the wider series a character who with great operative skills was once more an assassin and spy but now seeks her own life again. However she is sitting quietly in the mind of civilian Alison Wade who is not letting anyone know that this swap had happened. We have a clone named Daniel Rocher who has often been a key antagonist of the stories but this version is possibly the most approachable so far. We also have Doctor Genevieve Astor who pioneered the mind science that led to what Holder is and Doctor Sarandon who was sent to do science far away from government eyes and finally Irina a woman with an illness that became a key experiment for consciousness that Astor develops, now finally back in a human form.
It’s an unusual group who don’t really know each other at all and until recently many were on opposite sides. Placing this group on an alien spaceship that is preparing to go to an unknown location is a fine mystery and what exactly is their alien host’s agenda? Who can we trust and what is it all for are the stories key questions. For me this is Stroud in quite a philosophical mood using all these unusual character to discuss consciousness and the moral issues and unusual situations the emerging science is creating. Are these personalities clone or upload a real person? Then we throw into this an alarming discovery as to what is happening elsewhere. Sone mild body horror also enters the mix and it nearly circles back to the idea of transformation. Can we trust such a process? What benefits could it offer us and how weird can mindscapes get?
This episode has a path but it does feel like it’s setting up a future storyline and not everything is explained in detail. Bit the direction the novella points to makes me keen to read more. Expecting fans of the series should enjoy how this story takes on these recurring ideas of the wider series and what it likely means for the future of us and also the series itself.
