The more I contemplate what a generation ship is, the more I learn about how complex and difficult an undertaking it really would be. It really would take a worldwide effort to build, to staff, and to supply. Would the entirety of humanity coming together be enough to succeed, though? I don’t know; there are so many points of failure. Supply, environmental regulation, ecological problems, politics, and the unexpected all present problems. The engineering is the easiest part of the whole endeavor. It’s the human problem that will be the hardest to solve. The Deep Sky by Yume Kitasei highlights some of those very human problems the crew of a generation ship would encounter. She presents some intriguing solutions, including using augmented reality, to keeping her humans alive on the journey. Along the way, Kitasei gives readers a look at the social and familial ramifications of sending humans on a one way trip to a distant world.
Disclaimer: The publisher provided a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Any and all opinions that follow are mine alone.
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TL;DR
The Deep Sky by Yume Kitasei combines a compelling mystery with interesting technology, family strife, and lots of bird facts. This science fiction novel rests on excellent world building and is worth your time. Highly recommended.
From the Publisher
Yume Kitasei’s The Deep Sky is an enthralling sci fi thriller debut about a mission into deep space that begins with a lethal explosion that leaves the survivors questioning the loyalty of the crew.
They left Earth to save humanity. They’ll have to save themselves first.
It is the eve of Earth’s environmental collapse. A single ship carries humanity’s last hope: eighty elite graduates of a competitive program, who will give birth to a generation of children in deep space. But halfway to a distant but livable planet, a lethal bomb kills three of the crew and knocks The Phoenix off course. Asuka, the only surviving witness, is an immediate suspect.
As the mystery unfolds on the ship, poignant flashbacks reveal how Asuka came to be picked for the mission. Despite struggling through training back on Earth, she was chosen to represent Japan, a country she only partly knows as a half-Japanese girl raised in America. But estranged from her mother back home, The Phoenix is all she has left.
With the crew turning on each other, Asuka is determined to find the culprit before they all lose faith in the mission—or worse, the bomber strikes again.
Review: The Deep Sky by Yume Kitasei
A generation ship leaves Earth full of people capable of birthing children. They sleep for ten years and then are awoken mid-voyage to begin giving birth. Once the children are old enough, all will return back to cryo-sleep until they arrive. Except during the mid-voyage session, a bomb explodes, killing three people, and sending the ship off course. This is the beginning of The Deep Sky by Yume Kitasei. Asuka survived the explosion and is both suspected and tasked to find out what happened. She’s an alternate, meaning she wasn’t originally chosen for the voyage. So, she doesn’t have an exact role. Her job on the ship is to fill in for others and to perform the odd jobs other needs done. Asuka begins investigating; she also ruminates on the past, her life and all that she left behind on Earth.
The Deep Sky by Yume Kitasei is a third person novel set partially aboard a generation ship and partially on Earth. For each chapter in space, there’s a flashback chapter prior to the ship’s launch. Kitasei includes a lot of interesting ideas mixed with a compelling mystery. The novel balances plot and character well with enough tension to keep the reader wanting just one more page. Just another one.
A Planet-wide Effort
One of the great bits of world building that Kitasei does in this book is the realization that the entire world would be needed to get a generation ship off the ground. That idea existed before this book, but it’s often shown as something world does out of the good of its heart. In reality, each nation would have its own motivations for contributing, and part of that motivation would be competition against other countries. Kitasei has this generation ship and all the treasure humanity invests in it be one part of the political dynamics of the planet. In fact, once the ship launches, nations go to war. Because humans will be humans even when joined in an effort to save the species.
And because humans will never agree on the correct way to save the species – whatever that is – there will always exist those who disagree and feel hurt by the method chosen. Some of those people will take advantage of that moment to spread their hatred and bigotry. Kitasei depicts Men’s Right Activists and white supremacist groups in her novel as part of the background story. It’s a nice depiction of how humanity would react to a generation ship. Selection for the ship would require discrimination of some sort. Not everyone on the planet can join the ship, and in Kitasei’s world, the first round of discrimination is young, birthing people and not birthing people. Naturally, this would disappoint the non-birthing population. Vultures, grifters, and bigots would – and, in the novel, do – jump on that disappointment to radicalize people toward hatred, fear, and violence. Kitasei builds this into her world as something the people training to be on the ship will experience.
Parents, Loss, and Leaving
Part of the flashbacks are Asuka dealing with her family. Her mother doesn’t want her to apply to the program. She reacts poorly to the anticipated loss of her daughter and ends up losing her daughter really. On board the ship, there’s a real time communication machine that despite the distance from Earth allows the ship to communicate with a reasonable timescale. Yet, Asuka doesn’t reply to any of her mother’s messages. Kitasei does a wonderful job of filling in the mother/daughter relationship such that the reader understands why Asuka cuts off contact while at the same time understanding the consequences a little better than Asuka seems to.
Kitasei lets her characters experience all the emotions associated with leaving. She further complicates this by having the characters wake up ten years after launch. For those aboard the ship, they just left, but for their families, they’ve been gone for ten years. This is a beautiful complication to a complex narrative.
Mystery
Who set the bomb and why is the central mystery. Kitasei does an excellent job with the mystery. It’s compelling. A number of people, organizations, even nations, could have been behind the sabotage. Anyone aboard the ship – even the AI, itself – could be culprit. However, I didn’t like the solution. Now, this could entirely be a me thing, and I hope it is. I enjoyed Asuka investigating the explosion. The flashbacks melded well with the investigation. I think, however, that the focus of the flashbacks pushed me to expect one explanation for the explosion and the actual explanation came out of nowhere. Does this mean too much emphasis was on the red herring? Your mileage may vary. Ultimately, I think a promise was made that went unfulfilled, and it left me wanting. However, it’s possible that I focused on the wrong parts of the story. My predilections, eccentricities, and obsessions might have given more importance to certain parts of the story than the author intended or than another reader. So, this could entirely be a me problem.
In the end, though I was disappointed with the mystery solution, it didn’t affect my enjoyment of the book. Riding along with Asuka on her journey was a joy. It was a small disappointment that won’t stop me from recommending this book. It was an enjoyable read.
Trigger Warning for Conservatives
Kitasei has created a really interesting book full of conservative bogeymen. In her world, humans are free to identify with any gender they want. There exist within the book, non-binary and trans characters. Aboard the ship, she places a trans-man capable of giving birth. Gender neutral pronouns are used with ease and without confusion.
In addition, during the flashbacks, Asuka’s Earth is being ravaged by the effects of climate change. Wars are being fought; humans are displaced; and white supremacy is on the rise – even more so than we’re experience in real life.
It’ll be okay. You’ll be okay.
AI and Augmented Reality
Asuka and her fellow crewmates all have augmented reality interfaces. Basically, they see a computer- or, in this case, AI-generated overlay on top of reality. Each crew member gets their own little version of interface to experience. Asuka sees the interior of the ship as forest that she travels through. The reality of the white walls, floor, and ceiling are replaced by the overlay. However, Auska isn’t immersed in a virtual reality. She can still see other individuals in the ship and interact with the ship. She just sees those interactions differently. Imagine if you were looking through glasses and instead of your home, the background is replaced with a Looney Tunes set. Your family is still there walking around on the same location as Wil E. Coyote. In addition, Asuka can choose how the people around her present themselves within rules set by the other individual. So, if your significant other were wearing that teal polo shirt you hate, your augmented reality could change your vision of the shirt into a white, flowy pirate tunic instead. Provided your partner has rules that allow for that.
Kitasei uses augmented reality beautifully. It takes a bit to get use to what she’s doing with it. But that is quickly overcome, and it becomes an essential part of the crew’s experience. Use of augmented reality would greatly help with the psychological effects of being stuck in one location for years at a time. Humans crave variety, and that will be hard to come by when stuck in a tin can with nowhere else to go. Augmented reality can help diversify the settings and allow the crew to experience different locales to preserve sanity. In effect, this will be a budget version of Star Trek’s holodecks.
To control the ship and implement augmented reality, Kitasei gives the ship artificial intelligence, AI. This is a fully evolved AI – Kitasei doesn’t get into the debate about sentience – that is still under human control. With AI currently everywhere in the news, it’s interesting to see what SF authors pose AI as and what AI really is. Kitasei’s AI is another character that seems to genuinely care about the crew. In reality, AI is just a deck of whatever its trainers fed it. AI can, will, and does lie. It produces falsity in an effort to fulfill requests made of it. In other words, AI, in reality, is a tool without the ability to understand the words it strings together. Kitasei’s AI shows understanding and self awareness. We are decades away from the type of AI Kitasei describes. If we end up evolving AI in any direction, I hope it ends up like the one Kitasei has in her novel.
Conclusion
Yume Kitasei’s The Deep Sky is a fun science fiction novel with some interesting ideas. It brings augmented reality into space travel while looking at the social dynamics of a generation ship program. Likeable characters dealing with leaving loved ones and home behind while trying to survive in deep space makes for an excellent read.
The Deep Sky by Yume Kitasei is available from Flatiron Books on July 18th, 2023.
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