What If You Believe Your Roommate Is An Alien?

This is a story about a young girl going to college so it includes teenage love, dealings with teachers and unruly fraternity boys, the whole coming of age thing. But that is the simple part what if you believe your roommate is an alien? Or that your professor is trying to brainwash you? Or that you fear the space station will be flooded? Glad to know you are not crazy?

Joan Slonczewski is new to me so I did not have any preconceptions beyond the blurb which made me think of a strong girl going to college on a space station possible with some aliens involved.

Jenny comes across a sweet easy-to-like main character. She is a spawn of the Ramos Kennedy family which are deep into the politics of the time, on both sides. The political part felt a bit too true and reflects things easy to imagine of our own time. I am talking from the far north of Scandinavia here.

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Yes there are small mini-elephants in Jenny’s room now and then but I am talking about the aliens. Earth is to a large part devastated by ecological calamities but on top of that it is being infested by alien RNA based life, mostly as a thick layer over the Great Lakes but they are changing fast much like viruses. The Ultraphytes or Ultras are important to the story and the whole series. Jenny’s parallel between smallpox decimating the Indians even before they saw a white man and the Ultra was fascinating and a bit scary.

I like reading about Jenny dealing with it all and doing ordinary teenage things too. The ordinary things make the futuristic world more tangible. And there lots of fascinating futuristic concept to take in. They have printers that can print out almost anything including real viruses. Hacks are frequently life-threatening and outbreaks of new tailor-made diseases are common. People don’t pay taxes any more they are Taxplayers and gamble at a casino instead and the surplus fund the government. Some of the names of technologies and gadgets feel a bit juvenile like Toynet and calling bears for teddies. Teenagers of today would never use that kind of vocabulary but many things might change in a hundred years.

Jenny also does sports. She plays Slanball the game of mind force (See Slan a novel by A E Van Vogt about telepaths). It is a bit like that game in Harry Potter.

Joan is a microbiologist with teaching experience and that comes across in her writing. I particularly liked the way she used virtual worlds for teaching and anthrax for building the space elevator. It has been a pleasure to read this new-to-me author. Her last novel came out more than ten years ago and this is the first novel in the Frontera Cycle so I hope it doesn’t take another ten years to write the next one because I want to read it and read it soon. The story has a young adult feel to it but worked well for me at my age. It is also stand alone if that is what you prefer.

Joan told me that the Frontera Cycle will continue with Jenny. She visits Cuba, and discovers that ultraphytes have evolved to grow in the ocean–but what are they up to? Meanwhile, back at Frontera for her sophomore year, the college faces an uncertain future because the casino is losing money–and proposes an alarming solution.

The Highest Frontier get my strong recommendation.

Book Information

The Highest Frontier (The Frontera Cycle 1) by Joan Slonczewski (Tor 2011) – review copy – Amazon US | UK

One of the most respected writers of hard SF, it has been more than ten years since Joan Slonczewski’s last novel. Now she returns with a spectacular tour de force of the college of the future, in orbit. Jennifer Ramos Kennedy, a girl from a rich and politically influential family (a distant relation descended from the famous Kennedy clan), whose twin brother has died in an accident and left her bereft, is about to enter her freshman year at Frontera College.

Frontera is an exciting school built with media money, and a bit from tribal casinos too, dedicated to educating the best and brightest of this future world. We accompany Jenny as she proceeds through her early days at school, encountering surprises and wonders and some unpleasant problems. The Earth is altered by global warming, and an invasive alien species called ultraphytes threatens the surviving ecosystem. Jenny is being raised for great things, but while she’s in school she just wants to do her homework, go on a few dates, and get by. The world that Jenny is living in is one of the most fascinating and creative in contemporary SF, and the problems Jenny faces will involve every reader, young and old.

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If Infoquake was cyberpunk-business then Multireal is cyberpunk-politics.

I am afraid I didn’t like Multireal as much as Infoquake. Maybe it is suffering from sequel sickness. Everything was new and fresh in the first book. David Louis Edelman invented a whole new cyberpunk-business kind of science fiction with Infoquake.

Maybe it is the character’s helplessness. In Infoquake Natch and his team kicked the oppositions ass. Here the team crumbles, the Defense and Wellness Council foils them at every point, taking the fiefcorp from Natch, leaving Jara in charge. Natch himself only react. I am unhappy for Jara in this book, she was the only likable character in Infoquake, here she is more the object of others manipulation than being the actor herself, perfectly in line with the story mind you. But I liked the taking-charge Jara from the climax of Infoquake. I have hopes for her in the final book of the Jump 225 trilogy: Geosynchron.

Don’t get me wrong, it is a great story, but I am not happy about our protagonists.

At the center of the story is a new technology Multireal, that allows users to iterate through possible outcomes of an action and choosing the one with the preferred outcome. Used as a weapon in war or as a tool for oppression it would be unstoppable. Using it in everyday life would be a game changer of world shattering proportions. Infoquake introduced the technology and Multireal is about who should be in charge of it. The Defense and Wellness Council wants to suppress it and maybe use it to take control of society. Against them is Natch and his tiny fiefcorp, Natch is not totally defenseless, he ruthlessly uses both friend and foes, not stopping at worldwide insurrection to archive his goals. He also have Margaret Surinas, the inventor of Multireal, legacy on his side.

There are other players behind the scene and by it’s side. The world is about to change and Luddite groups are on the march, increasing their attacks. Then there is old enemies. Natch have gone through life making enemy after enemy and never looking back. Now when he is playing for higher stakes than ever, those enemies will come back to haunt him.

There are no space battles in this book but there is a firefight of epic proportions. And the twists and turns the story takes are as interesting and thrilling as any space opera.

One of David’s strong point is the world building, he creates a believable and complex future world. With well thought out institutions, government and technology as are further explained in the appendixes to the book.

Multireal is the middle book in a truly epic trilogy and if you are seriously into science fiction you should read it and it’s prequel Infoquake because it is a game changer.

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