Stars and Bones by Gareth L. Powell
(Titan Books, 2022)
Reviewed by Stuart Carter
Gareth L. Powell has, it seems, spent his pandemic rewatching some classic science fiction cinema, in particular Alien, Aliens, Battlestar Galactica, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, to come up with his own unique remix. Beginning with a classic horror opener (but it is only an opener!) when a spaceship detects a strange signal and impetuous humans land to investigate, only to wake something not only unpleasant but eager to spread, using the vector of those impetuous humans.
However, Stars and Bones does a lot of heavy world-building before the unpleasantness properly kicks off. For instance, 200 years before the events of Stars and Bones, on late 21st century Earth, World War 3 had broken out. We were only rescued by the intervention of omniscient aliens, who stopped the rain of deadly nuclear missiles when, literally at the very last moment, they detected a Zefram Cochrane-style invention of warp drive. Impressed by our human smarts, they saved the planet. Despite our impressive brains (or, rather, one brain), they were deeply unhappy with the attempted global suicide, and so humanity, although saved, was banished from Earth. The entire population (along with some domestic pets) was moved into hundreds of gigantic space arks and set to travel the cosmos until such time as we might again be trusted to take proper care of a proper planet.
200 years later, and here we are, still living aboard those arks, the entirety of humanity, with all our basic needs provided for, thanks to fully automated luxury space communism. We even have some smaller spaceships to go out and explore the universe a little—although, only explore, mind you; not colonise or settle. Which is where we, at last, begin, with the captain of the Furious Ocelot, one of these little spaceships, out looking for her sister ship, the Couch Surfer—literally, her sister’s ship—which has gone missing while surveying a rough and ready little world called, no, not LV-426, but Candidate-623, a barely habitable windswept rock, which hides a crashed spaceship; one that’s neither human nor friendly.
I’m not giving too much away if I tell you that, shortly after, things go full-on Alien, and then they get even worse, as the Furious Ocelot is followed back to the ark ships that carries all of humanity, and something horrible launches an assault on the fleet. Savage and seemingly unstoppable, it begins to spread implacably, killing or assimilating everything it touches. This time, it might really be the end of the world, unless the crew who brought this alien menace to the fleet can find the man who saved humanity last time…
There is nothing not to like about Stars and Bones. It does exactly what it says on the cover, providing lots of stars and lots of bones! This is an author cutting loose and simply having some crazed and gruesome fun with classic horror and science fiction tropes. And who can blame him?
If anything, Stars and Bones might benefit from being a little longer, building more tension and dread, in the same way that, say, Peter F. Hamilton’s recent Salvation trilogy did so well. The sequences as the contagion spreads across the ark ship fleet are over and done with a little too quickly to really build the necessary sense of deadly menace that Stars and Bones deserves.
But I’m nit-picking! Actually, full marks to Powell for Stars and Bones’ brevity and pace—this is one novel that absolutely doesn’t outstay its welcome: it begins with a sort of horrible wet sound as things get immediately messy; this is then followed by a hollow clang as spaceships collide heavily; there are then lots and lots of screams, gasps of cosmic wonder, and then an exhausted goodbye.
It’s the reading equivalent of a Pot Noodle: full of flavour, easy to digest, and probably not very good for you, but you want one anyway. And as an occasional treat, why the hell not?
Review from BSFA Review 17 - Download your copy here.