This Alien Shore
★★★★★
After the first wave of interstellar expansion resulted in extensive genetic mutations, Earth abandoned spaceflight and its fledgling colonies. Now, humanity has returned to the stars via the Ainniq, a rift in space that only mutated Guerans can navigate, giving their guild a stranglehold on space travel.
Jamisia is on the run, hunted by seemingly everyone after her home on Earth’s Shido corp station was destroyed. She carries secrets that tie her own fragmented identity to the fragile balance of power. But in the outworlds, pilots are dying as a mutating virus spreads rapidly across the digital networks. The guild hires the legendary security expert Dr. Kio Masada to find its source before it’s too late.
Friedman’s space stations evoke the space opera of Cherryh’s Alliance–Union universe, expertly melded with modern cyberpunk. She foresees a humanity always online through neural brainware, with conscious control of their bodies and emotions through implants. Reality is augmented and saturated with advertising and spam, and hackers roam virtual spaces in deadly combat with security and defensive systems. It’s remarkable how little it’s dated, considering it was written in 1998.
Her outworlds are a diverse mix of mutated humanity, contrasting with Earth’s stagnant conformism. Most interesting are the Guerans, who exhibit a range of behavioural and mental mutations - from savant syndrome to sensory processing disorders to dissociative identity disorder. Rather than being seen as disabilities, differences are embraced, celebrated for the talents that counterpoint their drawbacks. Their culture has evolved social conventions signalled through facepainting, respecting, for example, the desire for no bodily contact or aversion to small talk. I love this acceptance - so many times in the workplace I’ve been asked to conform to some arbitrary ideal of ‘normal’. To be extroverted, to make eye contact, to be more physical. I wish we had this kind of respect for difference.
I loved Friedman’s storytelling and the universe she has created, and I’m eagerly hunting down her sequel.
