Ex Libris: In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream

SF author Richard Paul Russo is a bit of a conundrum for me. I didn't like the first book I've read of his, Carlucci's Edge, because I thought it couldn't decide whether it was noir or cyberpunk, i.e. being too noirish to be cyberpunk and too cyberpunk to be noirish for its own good.

However, when I saw his next book, Ship of Fools-- about a generational ship encountering a mystery-- I just couldn't resist. After all, I'm always up for a little genre-sliding. The fact that it won a Philip K. Dick award in 2001 also counted in its favor.

We had not made landfall in more than fourteen years. One disastrous choice of a star after another. The captain viewed this string of failures as absurdly bad luck; the bishop, as divine intervention. Either way, I saw it as prelude to the captain’s downfall, which would almost certainly mean my own downfall as well.

With this opening line, Russo begins a tale involving a wandering generational starship looking for a planet to colonize. Unfortunately, after a number of failures, foment is brewing between the leaders-- alcoholic Captain Nikos Costas and power-hungry Bishop Soldano-- and their factions, as well as the much-abused undercaste crew of the ship. But at last the ship has found a possible planet-- except that like something out of the mystery of the Roanake colony, the colonizers discover the planet's previous inhabitants have all disappeared. And then they find out where the bodies are buried...

Soon enough, they encounter a signal in far-off space where they find a floating derelict bigger than their starship. Ecstatic at the first contact with a possible alien race, they try to tow the wreck back to civilized stars but soon find themselves grappling with an evil that would dwarf anything human minds can produce.

All in all, Russo has managed to spin an enthralling, spine-chilling story that combines science-fiction and horror effectively. In fact, this book reminded me of the movie Event Horizon and even the trailblazing Alien: the claustrophic narrative; characters acting like chittering rats in a dark, crowded hole; the overwhelming blackness of space; and a Lovecraftian evil that declares that yes, the Universe is inimical to humans.The fact that Russo's main protagonist, the deformed Bartolomeo, uses a noirish tone of voice adds another flavor of darkness to the story.

Like the movie Event Horizon, Russo's tale is excellent in idea and excellent in execution-- but unfortunately a bit lacking in climax. However, Russo has raised the bar so high such that when the reader comes to the last page, one can only forgive him for barely not reaching it (or not at all, depending on your mileage). Likewise, Russo raises a number of questions, including whether or not one has to believe in a god to believe in evil-- and whether 'evil' is just another name for 'alien'. In this, I think, Russo succeeded quite well.

For myself, the book shows that there is still Mystery and Evil outside the boundaries of our Earth-- and beyond the ken of men.