Good Reads & Views

The Last Astronaut by David Wellington
Fiction

What it’s about: In the 2050s, NASA has scrapped crewed flights after a disastrous Mars mission, leaving space exploration mostly in the hands of private company KSpace. But when a KSpace astrophysicist makes a startling discovery, he risks his job to tell NASA: a bizarre object in space is decelerating and heading directly for Earth. NASA and KSpace are now in direct competition to chart a course for the alien object and figure out what it wants, which means NASA must pull its last remaining astronaut out of retirement. The rest of the novel is an intensely cinematic and disturbing journey, as both crews enter the strange ship and find nightmarish creatures inside. Action-packed, character-driven, and featuring perhaps the grossest scene of alien body invasion since Alien itself, The Last Astronaut is an exciting addition to the first contact canon. My only quibble is with some of the pretend tech: a “neutrino gun,” according to Fermilab physicists, would be an unmanageable and absurd communication mechanism, even in the future.

Introducing: Heroic former NASA Mission Commander Sally Jansen, the last astronaut of the title, who’s called out to head the Orion 7 first contact mission. After leading a failed attempt to reach Mars on Orion 6 in 2034 (a misstep that cost the life of a crew member), Jansen is traumatized, ashamed, and out to prove that she can successfully keep her group safe.

Try this next: The criminally underrated and claustrophobic psychological horror film As Above, So Below or Ericka Swyler’s Light From Other Stars—an ambitious novel about NASA, astronauts, and time travel.

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Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers: Monstrosity, Patriarchy, and the Fear of Female Power by Sady Doyle
Nonfiction

Why It’s Significant: Sady Doyle (author of Trainwreck) offers a sweeping analysis of monstrous women across history and in contemporary society, touching on everything from the biblical figure Lilith and Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca to the Laci Peterson case and the My Favorite Murder podcast. Doyle smartly links all these examples to the patriarchy, proving how depictions of beastly females often help enforce traditional gender roles and demean strong women. The subject matter is often gruesome and infuriating, but Doyle’s hilarious criticisms of popular media provide hope. Worth it for her feminist analysis of Jurassic Park and her acerbic takedown of Species alone.

Reviewers Say: “Some people take a scalpel to the heart of media culture; Sady Doyle brings a bone saw, a melon baller, and a machete.”—Andi Zeisler, author of We Were Feminists Once

You Might Also Like: Other important texts about the monstrous feminine, like the work of Barbara Creed or Julia Kristeva, or recent horror films directed by women, like The Babadook or Raw.

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Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson
Fiction

What it’s about: As the title suggests, Jeanette Winterson’s new novel is about Mary Shelley’s groundbreaking contribution to the science fiction genre, but Frankissstein is also a futuristic love story set in Britain after Brexit. Winterson weaves the origin story of Shelley’s work alongside a present narrative about the romantic relationship between a transgender surgeon named Ry Shelley and an AI expert named Victor Stein; Victor is experimenting with cryogenics, and Ry has access to spare body parts for scientific study. Along the way, the couple gets mixed up with a sexbot manufacturer named Ron Lord, a sneaky Vanity Fair reporter named Polly, and a skeptical evangelical named Claire—all contemporary counterparts to Mary Shelley’s 1816 cohort at Lake Geneva. Frankissstein is a funny, deep, and smart meditation on the existential quandaries of embodiment, mortality, and authorship. After all, who’s really the monster: the creation or the creator?

Book Buzz: Frankissstein was longlisted for the Booker Prize. You Might Also Like: The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson or The New Annotated Frankenstein, which discusses Shelley’s original 1818 text alongside the 1823 and 1831 revised versions.

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Machine by Susan Steinberg
Fiction

What it’s about: After releasing three wonderfully strange, sparse, and formally experimental short story collections (Spectacle, Hydroplane, and The End of Free Love), Susan Steinberg finally brings her signature style to the novel. Machine follows a teenage girl narrator over the course of a difficult summer—her father is having an affair and another teenage girl drowns on a drunken night. The main character dances around these plot points, in fractured sections about female identity linked by semicolons. By alternating between discussions of adolescent emotional turmoil and ruminations about stars and the origin of the universe, Steinberg illustrates the complications of being young in a world wracked by climate change and political upheaval.

Reviewers say: “Machine reads like the text messages Laura Palmer might send back from the Black Lodge. It’s a timely reminder of why our culture remains haunted by dead girls, and of the different ways we find to drown them.” –Bennett Sims, author of White Dialogues.

You Might Also Like: A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride, Peach by Emma Glass, or Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss.