Some books grab me by title alone. As someone whose life has been spent very emotionally involved with the fortunes of the United States’ space program, I felt positively yanked by David Wellington’s The Last Astronaut.
An actual last astronaut is something that I fervently hope never actually exists except in the extremely long-term “heat death of the universe” sense. The idea has haunted me since at least my teenage years when I grappled with Bruce Sterling and William Gibson’s melancholy short story, “Red Star, Winter Orbit.” In this story, there are still people going into space, but only for commercial gain; the tasks are finite, clearly defined, not even suggested if they don’t enhance shareholder value. Whatever the members of such crews are, they are not astronauts. They are not exploring the sea of stars. It’s a sad and all too plausible vision of the future of the space program.
The Last Astronaut has its own unique take on the future of human space travel. Just look at the cover!
The cover features a lady astronaut (and no, I still haven’t read those novels, but they’re in Mount TBR). And she’s no spring chicken. She’s got crow’s feet barely visible through her helmet’s faceplate and the tired expression of someone who’s not sure she should be hopeful but really would like to be. Interspersed with the title is this tagline: “We thought we no longer needed her.” I mean, shit, I had a whole complex brewing just seeing this on Netgalley. Orbit’s design team needs all the awards.
The big question: Can what’s within possibly fulfill such a devastating promise?
Well, yes and no. In the novel’s back story, Sally Jansen was the Mission Commander on humanity’s first crewed trip to Mars. The mission ended in mechanical disaster long before it could reach the red planet, and a member of the crew died before Jansen’s eyes. Thus ended NASA’s crewed space flights. Thus ended NASA — nearly. Jansen, as such, is world famous for a spectacular failure and, as the novel opens, has retreated into obscurity, not quite blamed for what happened but getting a lot of uncomfortable side eye when recognized. That is until, far away from her chosen place of exile on an abandoned and partially submerged Cape Canaveral, a private sector scientist flies the coop, defects to what’s left of NASA, and brings with him some startling news: a vast object reminiscent of ‘Oumuamua has entered the solar system, heading straight for Earth. And it has slowed down. When all efforts at contact from Earth fail, NASA honcho Ray Macallister, who has presided over the agency’s decline since Jansen’s disaster, summons her back to duty. The Last Astronaut and a crew of newbies are to fly out to meet the Object and make first contact.
But this isn’t just a redemption story; indeed, Jansen feels anything but redeemed as the realities of her situation start becoming apparent, starting with her crewmates. A hotshot Space Force drone pilot, military to the core, is not easy to get on with in close quarters. The two scientists aboard are maybe falling in love. Further complicating matters: a private sector spaceship on the same mission has beaten her to the Object. She’s not only losing a second chance at discovery, she’s probably going to be rendered irrelevant! But wait! When Jansen’s suddenly also-ran ship arrives, the crew of the private sector ship doesn’t answer hails. Their ship is just sitting there, docked to the Object. Convinced that the worst has happened, Jansen quickly bucks her orders from Mission Control, with results that lead her crewmates to think she must be cursed.
Author David Wellington has done a remarkable job of creating an alien presence that feels truly alien. Imagine a Shadow vessel from Babylon 5 but much, much bigger and more cigar-shaped, into which a tiny crew of puny humans has been mysteriously swallowed up and another party has to go in after them. What they find inside is as creepy as the reaction they provoke, a reaction which is potentially and existentially dangerous for the blue marble they represent. I was frequently reminded of the Earth at the end of Greg Bear’s chillingly fascinating Blood Music as the Object’s interior started to grudgingly reveal a powerful combination of jump scares, sensory distortion, body horror, and ATMOSPHERE.
So, yes, it does fulfill the promise of its cover, but not in the way I was expecting. The tension between my expectations and where the novel actually goes, though, seems to have been a deliberate authorial choice, as the character of Jansen herself clings even more strongly to these expectations than I did. Having re-framed her mission as one of rescue (maybe history will remember her for the lives she saved at this time, instead of the one she failed to save before), she fixates on this understanding no matter how many weird occurrences and startling revelations challenge it. This gives the novel a depth of melancholy and futility that contrasts nicely with the more conventional horror elements.
Equally, the expedition’s xenobiologist, Parminder Rao, carries a weight of expectations of her own that will resonate with another set of readers (and I am one of these, too): first contact fans. A lifetime of fantasizing what it would be like to meet and, with luck, communicate with Real Live Aliens, speculating about how other worlds’ evolutionary pressures will solve the basic problems of biology … little of that has prepared her for what they’re actually encountering.
Alas, there is also Hawkins, a stereotypical “kill ’em first, damn the civilians” soldier straight out of central casting. All he’s missing is the stub of a stinky cigar to clench between his teeth. It would be fun to see the cigar floating off in microgravity. He represents a layer of complication the story really didn’t need. It drags the whole narrative into the standard bad guy military vs. good guy scientists and explorers conflict in a simplistic and eye-rolling way. These stories don’t have to be this way (see my favorite example, many of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin novels), but, alas, they so often are.* By the time he was all but frog-marching the ladies toward his goal, I was hoping for him to meet an entertaining and gruesome end. You’ll have to read The Last Astronaut to find out if that expectation was met.
Oh, and this really is a horror novel. One that is closely modeled on the Bioshock style of video game narrative, complete with a trail of tantalizing and incomplete media recordings that serve to deepen the atmosphere of tension and dread without actually advancing the plot. There are also video game-ish puzzle/obstacles for the characters to solve and a video game’s illusion of expansiveness that still secretly railroads you through the plot. If you like novels you feel like you could play, this one should be topping your TBR list.
As someone who appreciates being surprised or fooled by fiction, I was gratified by a feeling that I was unraveling the story’s secrets at more or less the same pace as the characters, neither tapping my foot waiting for them to figure out what I’d guessed chapters ago nor scratching my head over how the hell they could have possibly reached the conclusions they did. Hitting this sweet spot is harder than it looks, and for this, I enthusiastically salute Wellington.
That being said, the tension and suspense would have been much greater if not for an authorial choice to intersperse the main narrative with flash forward first person accounts of various characters’ recollections of and justifications for actions taken. This gives a bit too much away for my taste, but your mileage may vary.
Is this a mind blower that’s going to change a reader’s whole relationship to genre fiction and its tropes and peccadilloes? No. But it’s a solid, suspenseful read that will scratch a certain itch that I maybe don’t have as often as many other readers but still occasionally have just the same. I don’t need any more sci-fi horror for a while now. If you do, pick this one up. It has just enough surprises to be satisfying.
The Last Astronaut is available via Hachette Book Group (Orbit) and where all good books are sold.
*Of course, his nature and presence will make it that much easier to adapt this novel into a screenplay or a video game.
