by Edward Ashton ★★★★☆
Last year I stumbled across a little book called Mickey7, and its lighthearted take on space colonization ended up making it my #13 book of 2022 . Antimatter Blues is its sequel. It's always a bit of a challenge to write about a sequel, especially if the events of the first book play a significant role in the story, but I'll do my best to keep this spoiler-free.
Set in the future, space colonization is at an all-time high, mostly due to the deterioration of Earth and the need to find other livable planets. One thing that has significantly enhanced the effectiveness of colonization is human cloning. While it’s not embraced by all, it’s viewed as a necessary part of expeditions to unknown planets. And thus, "Expendables" were created. Whenever there is a job that is highly dangerous (or outright suicidal), but requires humans for one reason or another, the ship calls in its Expendable to do the dirty work, knowing that if things go very badly, they can regenerate them.
Our main character, Mickey7, is the designated Expendable on one such mission. And based on the numeric in his name, you can probably guess: he’s on his 7th iteration, having already died 6 times on the colonization trip.
In Mickey7, after he is lost on a scouting trip and presumed dead, Mickey7 manages to survive and make his way back to base, only to find his bunk occupied by none other than "Mickey8". Duplicate Expendables are a giant no-no and universally loathed among colonists, and so after a heated debate about “who should throw themselves into the protein recycler”, Mickey7 and Mickey8 reluctantly enter into a delicate dance of secret co-existence. Regeneration is taxing and messes with some short-term memories, and so they can use that to their advantage up to a point. But the longer they go on separately interacting with members of the colony, the higher the risk becomes that someone will uncover their deception. In addition, the colony is suffering: food is in short supply, and the local creatures are becoming increasingly more dangerous.
At the open of Antimatter Blues, set two years from where Mickey7 concludes, Mickey is eeking out a tenuous existence in the colony. He has few worthwhile skills, but he's still consuming his share of the limited food supply and trying to find ways to contribute. The colony commander would like nothing more than to be rid of him, but Mickey's still around mostly due to some hard-to-prove but too-critical-to-dismiss claims he made at the end of Mickey7. Unfortunately for Mickey, those claims are lies. When events transpire that require him to take action based on those lies, things get hairy for our hero.
With both Mickey7 and Antimatter Blues, Ashton has created a world and cast of characters that provide an enjoyable escape for a few hours. There is a levity to the books, and even in moments of peril or the occasional gruesome death (it's a foreign planet -- there are bound the be weird creepy-crawly things that pop up out of nowhere), Ashton keeps it fun and light. While you could conceivably read Antimatter Blues on its own, it's far more enjoyable to read them in order. I suspect Antimatter Blues will end up with a similar rank in 2023 as Mickey7 did in 2022 (#13), making either an easy recommendation for some fun, different, unserious sci-fi.