The Space Between Worlds

I read this book five years ago, and thought I'd refresh myself before the #SFFBookClub read of the sequel this month. I'd forgotten just how much I enjoyed this story and world. The writing has a brusque, hardboiled tone from the cynical point of view of a survivor, and it really works for this particular kind of book.

This is a multiverse travelling story, where there is technology that can send people between similar worlds, but only safely to ones where their "other selves" are not alive. Cara is somebody who has fought to survive her whole life and thus has few other selves alive, so she gets a job as a "traverser" to be sent to other worlds to collect information. Because it deals with worldwalking between closely related worlds rather than wildly different ones (like Charles Stross' Merchant Princes series), it gets the opportunity to explore the same characters in different timelines where their lives had taken different paths.

The post-apocalyptic wasteland locale of this novel is split into the wealthy folks of Wiley City living behind a wall (literally and metaphorically the airquotes nice white people of this story), the religious Ruralites, and the survivors of Ashtown between them. Cara is constantly code switching and crossing borders, both locally and multiversally--she is pretending to be a Ruralite, is secretly from Ashtown, while she precariously lives in Wiley City (hoping to get citizenship). Thematically, I love how the book ends with doubling down on Cara's role as an intermediary between worlds.

Despite my edition's somewhat misleading tagline (380 realities; 8 chances to survive) this is not an interactive chooseable-path book, but an ordinary novel. But: it is a good novel! I'm most stricken by the strong voice and the tone of it: dark and gritty, with distinct Mad Max vibes: pretty much a (gritty) action film in book form. (This is not to say that it'd work better in videographic form; it does use the medium of prose effectively.) The protagonist is relatable in an irreverent sort of way - I'm somewhat reminded of Murderbot - and, again, has a good, strong voice.

And for all that dark-and-grittiness, it is in some ways surprisingly gentle and hopeful, which a) seems like quite a feat to pull off and b) makes it a comforting read inside a not-very-comforting (sub)genre, which is, well, neat.

A thing I especially liked was the way it dealt with sex work: a nuanced and wholesome depiction. A thing I was less sure of was the way it dealt with religion. There's not a whole lot of detail gone into as far as religious worldbuilding goes, but the impression I got was that in this future, all religion is kind of thrown onto the same pile - not even in a "morphed together into one big superreligion" sort of way, but in a "people of this subculture are super pious but the details of that are up to them" sort of way. Which is an interesting approach, for sure, but not one I find particularly convincing.

Selling points: astute social commentary in a fun actiony wrapper; gritty setting and cynical protagonist but with a hopeful core; queer rep, including a bi/pan narrator

Warnings: domestic violence, abusive power dynamic in the context of employment, class disparities + classism (by characters, not the narrative).

I am so mad at myself for putting this book off for as long as I did. I actually checked it out from the library TWICE and didn't get around to reading it either time. I picked it up during this slow work week to read at work since no one else is working, and I was absolutely gripped. Despite some questionable structural decisions I enjoyed this the whole way through.

We are following Cara, a woman living in the fictional, ultra prosperous Wiley City, one of the many walled fortresses surrounded by desolate wastelands which are populated only by the impoverished slums existing outside the city. Cara is originally from Ashtown, one of these slums, but due to extremely lucky circumstances, finds herself as a temporary resident of Wiley city working for the Eldridge Institute, a massively influential mega corporation founded by Adam Bosch which has discovered the secrets of the multiverse, and the secret to traveling to parallel worlds. Over 300 worlds similar enough to the original "Earth Zero" were identified as being traversible, but there's a catch. One can only travel to a world where they are dead. Because of this, the wealthy and privileged residents of Wiley City are generally not suitable candidates for traversal because their parallel selves likely have a similar upbringing and would never have died. This requires the Eldridge Institute to recruit individuals from extreme life circumstances that are likely to have died in other parallel worlds, like Cara who grew up amidst extreme gang violence, addiction, and devastating environmental conditions. In fact, she is dead in almost all parallel worlds, making her an ideal traverser. In this story, we dive into some of Cara's missions on these other worlds as we learn about her complicated relationship with her work counterpart Dell, a woman Cara is clearly in love with, and her mentor Jean, a former traverser himself. We also learn of Cara's home life, her existing family, and the vicious life circumstances that she's not quite escaped, and the life the failed to escape on so many other worlds. But after a botched jump to another world and being embroiled in gang drama she managed to escape in her own world, Cara gets thrown into a vast conspiracy that threatens her position an the Eldridge Institute and shakes her sense of identity as someone who is truly between two worlds.

The back of the book blurb does not do this story justice, it is chock full of dramatic action, deeply complex character arcs, conspiracy, and thrilling twists. And there's even a sapphic, slow burn love story in here too. While long, the book did a good job of pacing the story so it didn't feel like it dragged on too much with a loose three act story. With that being said, I did find the second act to be most compelling, and it was difficult to leave that arc of the story. There was so much information revealed at the end of the second act, it did feel at times like the story was being artificially extended just to wrap up an over arching narrative. In fact, it almost felt as if the author realized half way through the book that they wouldn't be getting a book deal for a sequel, so they rushed to wrap everything up nicely. But that's not to say that the final act wasn't good, I truly did love this through the end. This story also had a LOT to say about class which I think was very well done, and had something to say about race, which I would have liked to be explored a bit more than it was.

It's hard to identify any one thing that this book did best, it was very strong throughout. The characters were all fantastic, each compelling in their own way. But what was particularly impressive was the author's ability to write characters across parallel worlds different enough based on their life circumstance, but similar enough to remind you that they are in fact the same person. I found it extremely well done. The complex world building was also expertly integrated into the narrative with minimal blocks of exposition. There is a particular funeral scene that very nearly brought me to tears with how much love and gentleness in exuded despite it being a completely fictionalized ceremony within a fictionalized culture.

There's so much here that any fan of science fiction will find to love. If you enjoy Blake Crouch (particularly Dark Matter) or Jeff VanderMeer, you'll likely enjoy this. And this is a specific comparison I wanted to make because I couldn't help thinking of it the whole time, but if you liked This Is How You Lose The Time War but you wish it were a bit more narratively comprehensible with a more straightforward story, this is exactly the book for you.

Multiversal travel has been invented, but not only can it only reach the 380 worlds most closely aligned with ours, anyone who visits a world where their alternate self lives, dies painfully on arrival. 
Thus the scientists must turn to the most disadvantaged, lowest mortality people in their society to travel. Those whose odds are so stacked against them living it is a miracle they’ve survived on this world. 

Cara is dead on 372 out of 380 worlds. Her survival here is a miracle that brings her out of the gangs in the wastelands to a job in the city with the chance of citizenship. Between flirting non-stop with her distant boss, she is on a path to security. But one of her remaining doppelgangers dies mysteriously opening up another world that uncovers dangerous truths about her own.
It’s an interesting take on the multiverse trope and is a good read. It gives focus to privilege, identity and the chance of happiness.. 

Dimensional travel is possible, but only if your doppelganger is dead. The MC travels to a world where her double was recently murdered, and the plot gets going in earnest from there. I was pleasantly surprised by how deliberate the pacing is, it doesn't rush to get us to that very important journey. Instead we linger in the setup, getting to know the hub world and at least one other before she goes to the plot-important one for the first time.

The MC is mostly a reliable narrator, but when she travels she can be very wrong about what’s happening in a particular world. This is used to its full advantage, creating subversion and surprise as she discovers mistakes in her assumptions and the new possibilities opened by those gaps. The plot which I thought would take the whole book to tell turned out to just be the first half before twisting all that was set up before to tell an even more interesting story. I would have been content with the story I thought I was getting, but I love what it turned out to be. This even included two of my favorite things: heists and interpersonal politics. So much of this book is built on understanding people, cultures, and how shifts in either between worlds change what can and cannot be done, what words to use, and how things will go down once they’re in motion.

The world-building (heh) is really good! It focuses on two main places and then gradually describes them by talking about how things (and people) are the same or different in the parallel worlds. It creates a feeling where every description of the background or a character is there for a reason. Would we normally care that this house is white? Maybe, maybe not, but if it’s a different color on most worlds and this time that indicates something important because of the knock-on effects of changes like [pick whatever spoiler you want], that makes it feel like the details matter. And, hey, even if you won’t remember what that house color was it still did its job and informed the world. This could have been and info-dumping nightmare of a book and instead it uses everything to make the worlds feel significant with its focus. It keeps the number of frequently referenced worlds low enough for the important ones to be memorable, but also giving little tidbits about ones we won’t actually get to see. I love parallel worlds and time travel stories and this was fantastic. The number of secondary characters whose variants I had to track was mercifully short, letting me enjoy the machinations without getting confused about which versions did or said which thing. 

The backstory (and, increasingly, the main story) is chock-full of trauma, for the MC and most of the secondary characters as well. Check the CWs, because the book’s MC is dead on over 370 worlds and we find out many of the common reasons. It’s a steady drip of sometimes horrific details that fit the story and matter to current events, but none of the worlds are kind to children, and many of them were especially rough on the MC. It’s a great premise, and I appreciate how the book uses it to comment on the classism and racism inherent in a system which requires people who are dead elsewhere, which means they’re probably not privileged in the main world either. Little details like that are used really well throughout the book and I loved every minute of it.

This is a novel of alternates worlds set on post-apocalypse Earth. On Earth Zero, as he calls it, an inventor-entrepreneur safely ensconced in a gated city shielded from the harsh conditions of its planet has found a way to reach alternate versions of the planet. Crossing over is risky, so the task devolves to the expendable: the citizens of the wasteland ruled by warlords outside the city gates. Like Cara.

I’m not sure anyone could care enough for Cara, or her tech megalomaniac boss with a dark past, to carry a novel, were it not for a simple fact: This is not a novel of alternates worlds set on post-apocalypse Earth.

What Micaiah Johnson has created instead is something that takes the form and background of its genres and uses them for a meditation on inequality, violence – carried out on others and self-inflicted –, and all forms of exploitation, all couched into a simple, slow burn thriller. And as if this were not a small miracle alone, Johnson’s writing – wry, personal, sharp and human – will get you into the head of her protagonist in a way only the best can. This is more Red Harvest in speculative 21st century costume than anything you’d want to call “sci-fi”, and I for one can’t wait to read what she writes next.