psocoptera

The Deep Sky, Yume Kitasei, 2023 novel. I am picky about space (specifically, like, astronaut attitudes and practices) and at first I was struggling with this one. Why did they seem so ill-prepared? Why didn't they have better contingency planning? But I kept with it because I really liked a couple of Kitasei's choices (the set-up where, like, half of these astronauts are pregnant and some of them are hugely pregnant is such a delightful contrast to the whole thin-people-in-bodysuits space aesthetic. and I appreciated the matter-of-fact implication that if you wanted your whole crew to be able to bear children but also wanted various kinds of diversity, you'd end up with a bunch of trans/nb people for gender diversity). And as we learned more I did end up feeling like there was narrative justification for a lot of what bugged me. I still felt like there was a certain amount of the plot driving the bus (like, a lot of background choices that were made to set up the story Kitasei wanted to tell and not because that's what anyone would actually do) but it was a fun take on space colonization/extended duration space travel stories, and super aesthetic. I mean, would make one heck of a movie, not that Hollywood is going to put space-SFX money into a movie with an entirely AFAB cast half of whom are in pregnancy prosthetics. But I think Kitasei had a very cinematic approach to the visuals and pacing, and some of the more dubious bits made a lot more sense if I thought of them as movie-logic rather than novel-logic.