Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite
Publisher - Tor
Published - Out Now
Price - £12.43 hardback £8.99 ebook
A mind is a terrible thing to erase... Welcome to the HMS Fairweather, Her Majesty's most luxurious interstellar passenger liner! Room and board are included, new bodies are graciously provided upon request, and should you desire a rest between lifetimes, your mind shall be most carefully preserved in glass in the Library, shielded from every danger. Near the topmost deck of an interstellar generation ship, Dorothy Gentleman wakes up in a body that isn’t hers—just as someone else is found murdered.
As one of the ship’s detectives, Dorothy usually delights in unraveling the schemes on board the Fairweather, but when she finds that someone is not only killing bodies but purposefully deleting minds from the Library, she realizes something even more sinister is afoot. Dorothy suspects her misfortune is partly the fault of her feckless nephew Ruthie who, despite his brilliance as a programmer, leaves chaos in his cheerful wake. Or perhaps the sultry yarn store proprietor—and ex-girlfriend of the body Dorothy is currently inhabiting—knows more than she’s letting on. Whatever it is, Dorothy intends to solve this case. Because someone has done the impossible and found a way to make murder on the Fairweather a very permanent state indeed. A mastermind may be at work—and if so, they’ve had three hundred years to perfect their schemes...
This week I plan to report on the Hugo novellas shortlist and I’ll be looking firstly at those not read previously. I’m starting with a science fiction cosy mystery Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite which I am afraid despite one really interesting idea left be very underwhelmed.
Dorothy Gentleman is startled to awaken in a new body which she realises is not her own. This is not too surprising as she is already familiar with being a personality encoded in various ‘books of memory’ and then gets a new physical body like many of her ten thousand passengers in the same starship. But she’s usually used to her own body. Clearly something is wrong and she finds the starship’s intelligence drunk, a woman murdered in her bath and she finds she is even suspicious of her beloved young nephew. Fortunately Dorothy is a detective and won’t rest until this case is solved.
Ultimately I did feel this was less a novella than an episodic introduction to a new series and sadly there is a lot less story here than set up for things to clearly be explained later and For me doesn’t really work on multiple levels.
The thing that is very interesting here is that Dorothy is one of HMS Fairweather’s Passengers and so able to make use of the ability to have your memory and experiences copied then uploaded and when required that copy enters a new body. It’s a great science fiction idea key to the story’s beginning and how the eventual crime is solved but the ramification of this don’t really get explored. The idea of people growing with experience and age isn’t suitable for this story so instead everywhere appears to be exactly the same as they have always been case in point Dorothy’s nephew is still portrayed as a silly young man. Even though logically he just himself would have now lived two lifetimes at least yet comes across exactly like a young man with no life experience would appeal . It’s allowed to show Dorothy chose to stay uploaded after a particularly bad series of events but even that makes little sense as you’ll still have all the pain and trauma quite fresh in your head when you eventually get uploaded. Waite isn’t really fleshing out this concept beyond this story and that really felt a waste of the concepts.
For me a lot of this feels quite a thin story . The jovial tone is very much a pastiche of the golden age detective novels which for me feels forced and not really explained why a space age society sounds this way. This is a shiny city of cocktails, sewing and people being artisans. It feels very designed for craft focused science fiction fans who like these things but for me feels like a set of bolted together activities rather than a cohesive world. Why are the ten thousand on this ship? Where are they going? What skills do these people actually have and why is money still a thing when there appears no purpose for it on board a ship with everything you’d ever want? That last point is a niggle as profit turns out to be key to the crime. take it away the story falls apart but I just never buy this world is just more than set dressing for ageless immortals who learn very little.
That’s not helped by the convenience of the story’s resolution. Dorothy solves the case but a set of coincidences mean that no one has to worry about that thorny problem of being brought to bear for their crimes. Indeed how crimes actually get dealt with makes little sense either as it seems you just have to try to avoid each other on the ship. Instead it feels more a way to quickly get to know the location, Dorothy’s immediate family, friend’s and potential love interest for future stories and a sense of some story to be unfurled but without any real tension as to why I should care.
Murder by Memory for all its golden age homages feels far more style over substance. It’s like getting dessert for a meal with a elaborately spun creation of crystallised sugar on your plate but if you strike it with a spoon gently it falls to pieces and at that point you realise there is no tasty cake or ice cream underneath but just a bland taste of burnt sugar. Disappointing and I suspect a series I won’t be coming back to.
