Atlas Alone by Emma Newman

Ace, 317 pages, $16

I suppose you could read “Atlas Alone” as a standalone, especially since different characters lead the parade in the other three books in Emma Newman’s loosely joined series, set in the not-to-distant future: “Planetfall,” “After Atlas,” “Before Mars,” and now “Atlas Alone.”

“Atlas Alone” continues the stories, begun in “After Atlas,” of Dee and Carl, both indentured servants of government-corporations that rule in place of democratic or republican governments, who manage to gain places on the last spaceship to leave Earth before nuclear war begins. “After Atlas” was mostly Carl’s story. “Atlas Alone” is Dee’s.

All of Newman’s Planetfall books share a history and about the same timeline. At least knowledge of each book gives a deeper understanding of the next book. Mostly, that history is bleak. In “Planetfall,” the mythic “Pathfinder,” Lee Suh-Mi, was directed by visions to a planet about twenty years travel from Earth. In “After Atlas,” Carl found himself in peril at a young age with a mother lost to Lee Suh-Mi’s stars and a father lost to a cult called “The Circle.” As an adult, Carl is a detective in London. His brain has been re-wired and his behavior has been re-directed to create a computer/human hybrid. He and his friend Dee, similarly re-worked, end that book when they get on the spaceship using Carl’s father’s cult connections.

That brings us to “Atlas Alone.” Due to tinkering by Carl’s friend, Travis, the three of them witness an abomination. From the safety of space, on board the Atlas 2, they view multiple nuclear weapons unleashed on the Earth they have just left, some of them apparently triggered by person(s) unknown aboard the ship. As far as they know, life on Earth has been extinguished.

Safe, cared for, and bound for Lee Suh-Mi’s planet to live with God, Dee feels directionless. She no longer is bound to the government corporation she worked for. Carl is the same way. They are bereft in an odd way, because life under the corporation was untenable, but they knew what they were supposed to do, the jobs wired into their heads. Now these jobs no longer exist. Unchained, they don’t know where to go or what to do. There’s no direction from whomever the commanding forces are on the spaceship. 

One thing does motivate Dee: She is determined to find out who authorized the death of billions of people. How does Dee even begin without resources, a place in the ship’s hierarchy, or any friends, except for Carl and Travis. Then a message arrives from a woman named Carolina, inviting her to crunch some data, analyze some patterns, decipher trends. Dee lights up because not only will she have a job but that job gives her access to data which may lead to discovering who blew up Earth.

On the heels of her new job, she receives a secret message from someone who will not identify him or herself, “hirself.” A “mersive,” i.e., a cortically immersive game or experience, created by her mystery contact brings her face-to-face with the avatar of one of the people Dee determined has caused the holocaust on Earth. In game-time, Dee kills the man. When she emerges from her game-time twilight, she learns the man has really died … of a heart attack. The secret contact suddenly seems not so benign.

Dee is led into deeper waters by “The Beast,” as Dee ultimately labels it, as she begins a work relationship with Carolina. Is Carolina one of the people who committed the atrocity? Why is Dee given such timely access to data she needs? Who are the killers? And what will Dee do with Carl, who slips quickly into his wired-in detective mode to investigate what he feels was a murder, not a heart attack? Did Dee really kill the man? Can Dee save whatever is left of humanity on board Atlas 2?

In the end, this is a philosophical murder mystery. The mystery is not who killed the man — Dee immersively did the deed — but what will happen next and why. Have Dee’s childhood traumas made her a stronger person or a weaker one? 

I loved Emma Newman’s other books and thought “Atlas Alone” moved Newman’s world-building along very well. Newman’s stories provide a few thoughts to chew on.

Review of “Planetfall”

Review of “After Atlas”