There's a lot of excitement online for this science fiction novel.

There's excitement also for the writer, Mur Lafferty.
She began as a podcaster, editor of "Escape Pod" (a Science Fiction podcast), then evolved into a novelist; this is her - I believe - second "real" book.

Since many have hailed it as a marvel, it seemed necessary for me to read it.

I should preface this by saying I am twelve years older than Mur, and, as happened with Wu Ming at that time, probably these twelve years create a gulf of certain depth between the writer and the reader.

Anyway.

The novel unfolds over six crucial days during the twenty-fifth year of the spaceship Dormire's (DoorMaiar) journey from Earth to the planet Artemis in Tau Ceti.

We won't learn anything more about Artemis, nor about the official reason for the journey, nor whether this is humanity's first interstellar attempt or not.

Here we are. At the beginning of a 400-year journey.

The ship hosts a few thousand men and women in stasis, and is crewed by six people - three men and three women - and an AI (Artificial Intelligence. Think of HAL from "2001").

The crux of the matter lies in the nature of cloning.

The six crew members are six clones, and there are hundreds of bodies in storage ready to be cloned should anything happen (and it will, and it has) to one or more of the staff members.

This is the idea behind which the six will be able to bring Dormire to the end of its 400-year journey: they will be cloned when necessary, and reintegrated with their energies and basic health.

But cloning creates problems, it creates tensions, it creates embarrassments, it creates paradoxes, above all.

A practice on earth tested and commonplace - though not generally accepted, especially by religion - is transported to a confined environment where it is no longer a choice but an obligation, and evidently, the cultural background of the six is not ready for this.

It must be said that the ecology of each of these characters is rich and careful; their individual backgrounds before boarding are described in great detail and are believable.

The limitation of the work is that it opens with a sextuple murder and immediately takes on the contours of a mystery: it's true that we're in space, it's true that everything centers around the how and why of cloning, and whether or not clones have the "human being" tag activated, but in reality, the entire novel proceeds along the lines of "Ten Little Indians" in search of the killer among suspicions, conflicts, sympathies, mutinies, and collective streams of consciousness.

The role of IAN is singular - the counterpart of HAL - who, like in Clarke's book, finds himself in bitter conflict between protecting the mission and the parental care of the crew members, and who almost never seems to have clear ideas on the matter, passing through a phase where he decides to end it, eliminate everyone, and return home.

IAN's final development is unique and perhaps (perhaps) refines HAL's fate.
Or perhaps it's just a ploy to add some "quirkiness" that is non-essential to what will remain in memory of the novel.

It's absolutely evident from the beginning how Mur Lafferty favors the female characters who naturally would be the ones to save the world if there were a world to be saved.

I find the story technically well-written. The plot is devised with some scientific competence (though several points are murky, in some cases unintentionally, in others intentionally because there is no rational solution to the generated inconsistency).
I expect something more than a "play to find the killer," no matter how well-crafted, from a science fiction novel.
I expect something more than a series of ideas somehow strung together from a novel that has created a buzz.

It lacks genius. It lacks the genius loci.

I conclude with the answer to the classic question with which I always end the reading of a book.
No, I didn't mind parting with it.

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