The Space Between Worlds

I read this book five years ago, and thought I'd refresh myself before the #SFFBookClub read of the sequel this month. I'd forgotten just how much I enjoyed this story and world. The writing has a brusque, hardboiled tone from the cynical point of view of a survivor, and it really works for this particular kind of book.

This is a multiverse travelling story, where there is technology that can send people between similar worlds, but only safely to ones where their "other selves" are not alive. Cara is somebody who has fought to survive her whole life and thus has few other selves alive, so she gets a job as a "traverser" to be sent to other worlds to collect information. Because it deals with worldwalking between closely related worlds rather than wildly different ones (like Charles Stross' Merchant Princes series), it gets the opportunity to explore the same characters in different timelines where their lives had taken different paths.

The post-apocalyptic wasteland locale of this novel is split into the wealthy folks of Wiley City living behind a wall (literally and metaphorically the airquotes nice white people of this story), the religious Ruralites, and the survivors of Ashtown between them. Cara is constantly code switching and crossing borders, both locally and multiversally--she is pretending to be a Ruralite, is secretly from Ashtown, while she precariously lives in Wiley City (hoping to get citizenship). Thematically, I love how the book ends with doubling down on Cara's role as an intermediary between worlds.

I am so mad at myself for putting this book off for as long as I did. I actually checked it out from the library TWICE and didn't get around to reading it either time. I picked it up during this slow work week to read at work since no one else is working, and I was absolutely gripped. Despite some questionable structural decisions I enjoyed this the whole way through.

We are following Cara, a woman living in the fictional, ultra prosperous Wiley City, one of the many walled fortresses surrounded by desolate wastelands which are populated only by the impoverished slums existing outside the city. Cara is originally from Ashtown, one of these slums, but due to extremely lucky circumstances, finds herself as a temporary resident of Wiley city working for the Eldridge Institute, a massively influential mega corporation founded by Adam Bosch which has discovered the secrets of the multiverse, and the secret to traveling to parallel worlds. Over 300 worlds similar enough to the original "Earth Zero" were identified as being traversible, but there's a catch. One can only travel to a world where they are dead. Because of this, the wealthy and privileged residents of Wiley City are generally not suitable candidates for traversal because their parallel selves likely have a similar upbringing and would never have died. This requires the Eldridge Institute to recruit individuals from extreme life circumstances that are likely to have died in other parallel worlds, like Cara who grew up amidst extreme gang violence, addiction, and devastating environmental conditions. In fact, she is dead in almost all parallel worlds, making her an ideal traverser. In this story, we dive into some of Cara's missions on these other worlds as we learn about her complicated relationship with her work counterpart Dell, a woman Cara is clearly in love with, and her mentor Jean, a former traverser himself. We also learn of Cara's home life, her existing family, and the vicious life circumstances that she's not quite escaped, and the life the failed to escape on so many other worlds. But after a botched jump to another world and being embroiled in gang drama she managed to escape in her own world, Cara gets thrown into a vast conspiracy that threatens her position an the Eldridge Institute and shakes her sense of identity as someone who is truly between two worlds.

The back of the book blurb does not do this story justice, it is chock full of dramatic action, deeply complex character arcs, conspiracy, and thrilling twists. And there's even a sapphic, slow burn love story in here too. While long, the book did a good job of pacing the story so it didn't feel like it dragged on too much with a loose three act story. With that being said, I did find the second act to be most compelling, and it was difficult to leave that arc of the story. There was so much information revealed at the end of the second act, it did feel at times like the story was being artificially extended just to wrap up an over arching narrative. In fact, it almost felt as if the author realized half way through the book that they wouldn't be getting a book deal for a sequel, so they rushed to wrap everything up nicely. But that's not to say that the final act wasn't good, I truly did love this through the end. This story also had a LOT to say about class which I think was very well done, and had something to say about race, which I would have liked to be explored a bit more than it was.

It's hard to identify any one thing that this book did best, it was very strong throughout. The characters were all fantastic, each compelling in their own way. But what was particularly impressive was the author's ability to write characters across parallel worlds different enough based on their life circumstance, but similar enough to remind you that they are in fact the same person. I found it extremely well done. The complex world building was also expertly integrated into the narrative with minimal blocks of exposition. There is a particular funeral scene that very nearly brought me to tears with how much love and gentleness in exuded despite it being a completely fictionalized ceremony within a fictionalized culture.

There's so much here that any fan of science fiction will find to love. If you enjoy Blake Crouch (particularly Dark Matter) or Jeff VanderMeer, you'll likely enjoy this. And this is a specific comparison I wanted to make because I couldn't help thinking of it the whole time, but if you liked This Is How You Lose The Time War but you wish it were a bit more narratively comprehensible with a more straightforward story, this is exactly the book for you.

An interesting story that could have been extraordinary if the world-building had more depth.

I initially discovered this book when I saw some fanart of Cara and Dell, and on that front the book did not disappoint. The main character whose first perspective we experience is Cara, who works as a traverser. A scientist called Adam Bosch discovered the existence of the multiverse and found a way to travel to parallel worlds that are all different from Earth Zero. But to travel to another version of our planet, the person must be dead in the alternate universe already, or you die when traversing to it. Cara is special, because of the known alternate Earths, she is dead on all but 8, which means she has more access than any other traverser.

On a trip to Earth 175, she discovers a sinister truth though, that changes everything about how Cara views traversing.

Very cool concept, but as I said above, very weak on the world-building. We only get to experience a bit of the city Wiley, and the slums outside of it called Ashtown. It felt a bit Mad Max style, but we do not get more info than that. This is a bit disappointing. The rest was captivating though, so I still thoroughly enjoyed myself.

This is a novel of alternates worlds set on post-apocalypse Earth. On Earth Zero, as he calls it, an inventor-entrepreneur safely ensconced in a gated city shielded from the harsh conditions of its planet has found a way to reach alternate versions of the planet. Crossing over is risky, so the task devolves to the expendable: the citizens of the wasteland ruled by warlords outside the city gates. Like Cara.

I’m not sure anyone could care enough for Cara, or her tech megalomaniac boss with a dark past, to carry a novel, were it not for a simple fact: This is not a novel of alternates worlds set on post-apocalypse Earth.

What Micaiah Johnson has created instead is something that takes the form and background of its genres and uses them for a meditation on inequality, violence – carried out on others and self-inflicted –, and all forms of exploitation, all couched into a simple, slow burn thriller. And as if this were not a small miracle alone, Johnson’s writing – wry, personal, sharp and human – will get you into the head of her protagonist in a way only the best can. This is more Red Harvest in speculative 21st century costume than anything you’d want to call “sci-fi”, and I for one can’t wait to read what she writes next.