Their mission is to save the world, over and over again, because they can’t stop failing, their failures compounding across time: “Each had had the experience of self-annihilation. Schrodinger’s Cat writ into ethereal multiplicity, as it were. Because the astronauts are both alive and dead all the time, in several different universes, which often overlap and fold onto each other, allowing the three to fight, fall in love and co-exist with each other on different timelines. Moss could change like other people breathed…”Īll three astronauts flow along different continuums in this world, both before and after their death. “Moss remained stubbornly uncommitted – to origin, to gender, to genes, went by ‘she’ this time but not others.
Here we follow the three – a woman named Grayson, a man named Chen and a woman, sometimes, named Moss. Three dead astronauts had fallen to earth and been planted like tulips…” The astronauts in question pop up early on in "Borne," primarily as creepy window-dressing: “I came to the edge of a courtyard and a peculiar sight. More: 5 books not to miss: Sequel to 'Children of Blood and Bone,' 'Just Watch Me' by 'Dexter' author The connective tissue of this life has been stripped from the bones. That might not seem to make a lot of logical sense when you consider that this is a novel we’re talking about, but in fact, as the book goes along, the lack of structural integrity begins to make more sense, not less. Unlike "Borne," which largely adhered to more common notions of storytelling, "Astronauts" exists in a state that is often beyond language.
This is a book of giant ducks that cannot be trusted, blue foxes with profound secrets and leviathans with distorted hallucinations for backstories: “Behometh became wraith, became phantom, became a notion and smudge of night…” If this sounds daunting and possibly confusing, well, it is, and by intention.
There’s nothing easy about Jeff VanderMeer’s latest book, "Dead Astronauts" (MCD, 323 pp., ★★½ out of four stars), which is either a prequel or a companion, depending upon how you look at it, to his 2017 novel "Borne." Both take place in the same fictional world: a post-apocalyptic ecological nightmare multiverse of Earth, where an all-powerful Company has littered the City with biotechnic ghosts and lethal fever-dream animals.
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