A charming, lively space adventure, in which fashion requires advanced degrees in biochemistry
The truth is, many things ‘these days’ can match (and in my opinion, surpass) golden era SF. The duology Stars Uncharted and Stars Beyond is a fantastic example of modern science fiction that feels very golden age, but lacks the misogyny and white supremacy and colonialist default thinking that plagues much midcentury SF. Even better, it evokes in me – me! A middle-aged nitpicker whose ability to overlook problematic issues in fiction declines evver further with every passing year – that same sense of adolescent awesome! that forms the basis of golden-era SF nostalgia. These books are just fun.
The setting: the future, in space. Humans have expanded throughout the entire galaxy, in the simplest possible way. FTL travel is achieved by jumping through ‘null space’ and landing anywhere you want, in seconds. FTL communications is achieved by . . . calling someone on a comm link. How does the signal travel fast enough for real-time conversation? Who knows? Who cares? Jam the comlinks or throw in a space anomaly if you want to interfere with communication or transport. Maybe an asteroid broke your engines. Not important. This is not hard science fiction. This is fun science fiction. These are the rules of the game, and if you’re not willing to accept them and go for a ride, then go back to Greg Egan. (This is not a slight on Greg Egan. I thought the Orthogonal trilogy was fantastic. But you can't deny that his SF runs rock-hard.)
One spaceship, a cargo freighter, picks up a new engineer, Josune Arriola, as part of the crew. But this engineer is not all she seems. In fact, she’s a spy! She’s actually a member of the crew of an exploration vessel, whose captain is convinced that the captain of the cargo freighter, Roystan, knows a secret. Eighty years ago, a young explorer named Goberling discovered a vast trove of transurides, incredibly rare and valuable metals that live in a pocket of stability waaaayy up the periodic table. Arriola’s captain is convinced that Roystan can help her track down the path to Goberling’s lode. Unfortunately, word gets out, and evil corrupt Big Company bad guys destroy Arriola’s vessel, leaving her stuck on Roystan’s ship, with Big Company baddies chasing her.
A second plot thread follows Nika Rik Terri, a body modder. Body modding is exactly what it sounds like. In this future, fashion goes beyond hair and clothes and makeup. Trained professionals can re-make your entire bodies to suit the prevailing fashions, sculpt your physique, look younger, look older, change your gender, add bright blue scales – whatever you can imagine, a body modder can make you look it.
Naturally, the same technology behind body modding is at the heart of modern medicine too. But doctors? Pfft. Anyone can become a doctor. The machines do all the work fixing damage to the body. To be a modder, you must be an artist. It takes six years of training at the best academy to be certified as a body modder, and the best ones are famous all over the galaxy.
Nika Rik Terri is the best body modder. The most exclusive, sought-after body modder in the galaxy. She has the best brands of custom-made body mod machines; her designs are featured in body-modding museums. Unfortunately, she has discovered how to use her body mod machinese not only to change appearances, but also to switch consciousness, and that brings unwanted attention from evil corrupt Big Company baddies. So she has to desert her beautiful studio and go on the run. Naturally, Nika ends up with Josune on Roystan’s ship, and shenanigans ensue from there.
To be honest, most of the main plot is not terribly novel. As I said in the first paragraph, it’s got your pretty typical spaceships and plasma cannons and aliens and shoot-outs. Pretty soon things got to the point where I could tell, with each set piece, when to expect things to go wrong, and when the shoot-out and capture (or, after capture shoot-out and escape) would start. There’s a romance that is harmless, but in the end proves entirely snoozeworthy. Neverthelesss, the perspective of body modding gives everything about this book a delightful, unexpected sheen.
Nika sees everything in terms of body modding. She looks at everyone she meets with a critical eye: That’s an awfully nice hair colour, I should take a reading for future mods. That’s an excellent body, which would look very nice if I modded it using X design. Oh, good grief, those teeth are much too white, you must have gone to Samson Sa’s studio. Sa always overdoes the teeth. Well, you’re wearing a Rik Terri design, but I never modded you, and I can tell from the blotchiness around the hairline that whoever ripped off my design didn’t do it as well as I would have.
She also has very strong opinions about machines. The best, of course, are the Songyuns, and there’s a substantial amount of plot that revolves around getting her one, to do plot-critical body modding that is impossible in any other machine. But Songyuns must be custom-ordered, and when evil corrupt Big Company baddies who want to capture you will know the instant you place an order to buy one, you have to make do with other brands. Deckers are awful, but they come with nice air cushion transport trolleys, which is useful if you need to use it as a battering ram when evil corrupt Big Company baddies show up at the salvage shop and start chasing you. Deedles are very common in hospitals, but they leave ugly pink streaks on your skin, and Nika Rik Terri would not be caught dead in a Deedle. Netanyus are perfectly serviceable, actually, but they don’t allow you to design your own add-ons for the most advanced work, the way a Songyun does.
The centrality of body modding, and body mod supplies, and body mod machines in the plot and characterization of this book reminds me of how other SF books might give loving descriptions of space ships, or armaments, or combat training. It’s incredibly refreshing to see a futuristic SF industry that feels so fully developed, is as charming and engaging as this, rather than the much more familiar let me tell you about my space guns. I had a wonderful time reading these books, and I hope that you will too.
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Nerd Coefficient: 7/10. An enjoyable experience, but not without its flaws.
Highlights:
- Body modification
- Body modification machines
- Body modification snobbery
- Classic-feeling space adventures
References:
Dunstall, S. K. Stars Uncharted [Ace, 2018].
Dunstall, S. K. Stars Beyond[Ace, 2020].
CLARA COHEN lives in Scotland in a creaky old building with pipes for gas lighting still lurking under her floorboards. She is an experimental linguist by profession, and calligrapher and Islamic geometric artist by vocation. During figure skating season she does blather on a bit about figure skating. She is on Mastodon at wandering.shop/@ergative, and on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/ergative-abs.bsky.social
