A disorganised dystopia, rather than one of those strictly
enforced crowded dystopias, can be found in THE SPACE
BETWEEN THE STARS. Humanity, in a common science fiction
prediction, has become too populous and has been spread,
in some cases forcibly, onto new planets far from Earth.
Jamie Allenby is one of these people, emigrating with her
veterinary certificate in hand, hoping to aid new
settlements. But disaster strikes and as we meet Jamie we
learn that a deadly plague has spread invisibly, wiping out
all but a minute proportion of humanity.
Jamie, understandably, takes some time to believe she has
survived the illness, then heads to the space dock. The
well-described tale takes a turn to women's fiction, with
our protagonist obsessed with where she wants to go and
with whom she wants or doesn't want to make a new life,
rather than helping humanity to recover.
I think a few points which Jamie learns the hard way were
so obvious that only someone this self-obsessed wouldn't
have been consciously aware of them. Young women would be
needed to repopulate planets; qualified scientists,
engineers, and doctors would be in demand for teaching
skills. Survivors would need to be brought together by some
organisers for a chance to find new partners and share
skills. Jamie thinks if she wants to get on a spaceship and
go back to Earth, just to check if her family made it, well
a ship must be available with fuel, pilots, and supplies.
Not that she's important or anything, but since she's got
one of those upper echelon marks on her finger, well
perhaps that's just how she grew up.
One very good comment made by a space pilot on Jamie's
attitudes is that there is a fine line between having space
and having nothing. The tale takes us to a few different
planets and, finally, to an almost empty Earth. Though for some
it's not empty enough. We feel the underlying suspense
thread, tugged by some of Jamie's misfit fellow travellers
whose reasons to go to Earth seem no more understandable.
I must mention that unlike other plagues, victims become
piles of dust. So we are spared any description of bodies
or zombies. This device relieves the characters of a lot of
work and further disease, and makes the plot move faster.
To compensate, we get moody reflections and backstory in
italics, which are hard on my eyes. Anne Corlett is from
the United Kingdom and THE SPACE BETWEEN THE STARS is her
debut novel.
In a breathtakingly vivid and emotionally gripping debut
novel, one woman must confront the emptiness in the
universe—and in her own heart—when a devastating virus
reduces most of humanity to dust and memories.
All Jamie Allenby ever wanted was space. Even though she
wasn’t forced to emigrate from Earth, she willingly left the
overpopulated, claustrophobic planet. And when a long
relationship devolved into silence and suffocating sadness,
she found work on a frontier world on the edges of
civilization. Then the virus hit...
Now Jamie finds herself dreadfully alone, with all that’s
left of the dead. Until a garbled message from Earth gives
her hope that someone from her past might still be alive.
Soon Jamie finds other survivors, and their ragtag group
will travel through the vast reaches of space, drawn to the
promise of a new beginning on Earth. But their dream will
pit them against those desperately clinging to the old ways.
And Jamie’s own journey home will help her close the
distance between who she has become and who she is meant to
be...
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