Reading: Planetfall
Apr. 18th, 2019 07:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
white_hartEmma Newman's Planetfall is set in a human colony on a distant planet. Over twenty years after its founding, the colony is contented and comfortable, supported by advanced technology (including 3D printers which are capable of producing anything the colony needs), but that changes when a stranger arrives, claiming to the the only survivor of a group of colonists whose pods crashed at original planetfall.
The novel is narrated by Ren, an engineer and the person responsible for maintaining the 3D printers, with frequent flashbacks both to the events surrounding planetfall and her life before that, on a dystopian Earth controlled by corporate government and troubled by conflict over declining water resources. It's clear from the start that Ren and the colony's leader, Mack - a charismatic figure who was an advertising executive before joining the colony project - share a secret relating to the "accidental" loss of the colonists at planetfall; Newman's careful plotting allows the reader to uncover the truth gradually through the course of the novel, each revelation building on the last without ever giving away enough information to spoil the surprise of the next.
As much as the plot, though, Planetfall is an exploration of Ren's character, and this was what I really loved. I'm always happy to find SF with middle-aged women as protagonists (Ren is actually seventy, but in the context of a society where life expectancy could be double what it currently is I think that counts as middle-aged); Planetfall's protagonist is also bisexual, a woman of colour, and suffers from an anxiety disorder that is portrayed in an absolutely realistic and relatable way (I understand that Newman was drawing at least in part on personal experience). I was really happy to see mental illness portrayed so well in an SF setting; it really does make a difference to be able to see an aspect of myself that's normally absent from fiction reflected in a character.
Planetfall was the first of Newman's books I've read, but I don't think it will be the last.
The novel is narrated by Ren, an engineer and the person responsible for maintaining the 3D printers, with frequent flashbacks both to the events surrounding planetfall and her life before that, on a dystopian Earth controlled by corporate government and troubled by conflict over declining water resources. It's clear from the start that Ren and the colony's leader, Mack - a charismatic figure who was an advertising executive before joining the colony project - share a secret relating to the "accidental" loss of the colonists at planetfall; Newman's careful plotting allows the reader to uncover the truth gradually through the course of the novel, each revelation building on the last without ever giving away enough information to spoil the surprise of the next.
As much as the plot, though, Planetfall is an exploration of Ren's character, and this was what I really loved. I'm always happy to find SF with middle-aged women as protagonists (Ren is actually seventy, but in the context of a society where life expectancy could be double what it currently is I think that counts as middle-aged); Planetfall's protagonist is also bisexual, a woman of colour, and suffers from an anxiety disorder that is portrayed in an absolutely realistic and relatable way (I understand that Newman was drawing at least in part on personal experience). I was really happy to see mental illness portrayed so well in an SF setting; it really does make a difference to be able to see an aspect of myself that's normally absent from fiction reflected in a character.
Planetfall was the first of Newman's books I've read, but I don't think it will be the last.
