Luminous Dead, Dead Silence, Dead Space
I suppose everyone has that moment where you pick up a book and go “ah fuck, the novel I have been writing and trying to get published was already done! Dammit!” and then you read further and go “ah, nope.” I had that moment and also a moment of “maybe I should avoid putting the word ‘dead’ in my title.” Or…. maybe I should have put the word “dead” in my title, clearly it had worked for these three publications.
I’m listing all three at once, not as a pattern (yes I know I just compared to three films at once last time, but stick with me here), but because that is literally how these three novels landed in front of me. Thus far I had gotten my reading recommendations from the finest sources… okay mostly queer book subreddits. So sue me. I can’t entirely recall how these crossed my dash, but I bought all three at once and had a long weekend of “death.”
I don’t really want to get into the details of each of these. They were decent books in their own right, but I was very much still looking for comps, which at this point meant “find things like what I wrote without being freaked out that someone else wrote it.” And these books, when combined, did it. One had the isolation and “only two lesbian characters with tortured backstory” vibes (Luminous Dead), the other had the creepy void of space with hallucinations (Dead Silence) and the other had… more creepy settings and a space station (Dead Space).
But other than that, none of these really… compared… to what I had written. So I never felt that they were something I could list as relevant. But, lets run through the likes, dislikes, and what did compare.
Luminous Dead: sweet concept of spelunking on foreign planets. I’m claustrophobic as is, so the idea of squeezing yourself through tiny fissures on an alien world is freaky enough without the second-skin biosuit, the isolation of doing it all alone, the hallucinations of dead people, and the endless threat of having your molecules condensed to rock by a passing alien tunnel-worm-thing. Though, being someone who has a rough relationship with food, I do often find myself wishing I could plug a cannister into my gut for calories and then keep on trekking. So there was plenty to be freaked out about in this one. It also could have taken place in any cave system and still been the same story, so the “other worlds” aspect got a bit lost.
I liked the freaky and unnerving nature of this book. It certainly nailed a setting, and had some decent scifi concepts. But as far as being a queer-story, the central relationship was lacking. I may have mentioned in previous posts my dislike that every queer relationship has to be pristine and lacking any strife, miscommunication, and toxicity for it to be worthy of print. But it at least needs something for me to root for. In this one the characters grow “close” via a video com-link between the spelunker in her suit and her “handler” but it’s a kinda shitty working relationship. And since all we have to go off of is the virtual connection via comms, it doesn’t give much opportunity for them to act of their growing feelings. And the moments where there are “romantic” actions are… kinda freaky. Like remotely piloting the mech suit that your soon-to-be-girlfriend is passed out in, dragging her body deeper into cave systems by remote control while she loses blood, oxygen and calories… is… romantic. Sure. In all, I enjoyed the setting, but the motives in the story didn’t catch me, and if I was hoping for a fun side romance, I wasn’t drawn in.
Dead Silence: Wins the award for largest “oh shit this is my book” moment before I realized “is not my book.” This one has points for freaky deep space horror leadup with eventual scientific explanations following gory plotline developments. And zero points for gayness. Like, not sure how it was listed in the same breath as the others on a site talking about queer stories. The main character is certainly straight passing, and into her male crewmate. Sure, fine, whatever. I have read an uncountable amount of stories with straight sub-themes, it’s nothing new. Just gonna ignore as usual and follow the plot instead. I liked it. I wished I had more stomach clenching moments of “what the fuck” in my own work after reading parts of this. The ghost-ship of corpses was giving me serious pulp 90’s horror movie vibes. But… in the end, it kinda felt like a let-down. The purely scientific reasoning seemed to eat away at the impact of everything going on. Maybe I missed the point along the way. Maybe I was just distracted by her waxing misty eyed over the bro she was hot for. Who knows. Maybe I just wanted aliens. Whatever, it was good enough that I read another book by the same author, another female main character, same yearning for male vulnerability from afar as an afterthought, but this other book had aliens. I know its verboten to have the answer at the end of it be “oh it was aliens all along!” but c’mon. Theres nuthin like a good alien.
Dead Space: I’m… not even really sure what was “dead” about this one. Barbary Station called and wants it AI back. That’s… kinda all that stuck with me about it. Another abandoned station with a renegade AI. As someone who vehemently refuses to engage with Chat GPT, I am just about done with AI. It was freaky in 1999 when The Matrix came out. It hasn’t changed. Bring me the aliens. This one had a “queer” romance if you squinted, in so much as the main mentioned off-hand the brief romantic tryst they had with their FWB non-binary coworker, but it was never revisited. Since I wasn’t seeking comps for “Shield Runner Pirates” but my own work, there was little else I could stack this against in my own writing.
If you haven’t picked up on it, the gist of all three of these novels is that they advertised something thrilling (“There’s DEATH in the title, it must be exciting!”) and carried a hint of romance, but all of them got swept away in their own agenda and didn’t deliver on any juicy satisfying romance, and only just delivered on the sci-fi of it. They are perfectly fine books, but they just felt lacking to me, like I wanted them to be something more. In short, my brain squashes them all together and not just because I read them all in the same weekend.
AZ ROZKILLIS 