Antimatter Blues by Edward Ashton

This is the sequel to Mickey7 which I read earlier this year, but this time, I showed enough restraint to read a couple of other books before attempting it. If I really enjoy a book, I sometimes dive straight into the follow-up, and that usually doesn’t end well.

Not this time, and I’d like to think that’s perhaps one reason why I enjoyed Antimatter Blues even more than the first book.

Antimatter Blues
Antimatter Blues

Set a few years after the colonists’ arrival on Niflheim, Mickey’s life has settled into what could laughingly described as normalcy: he’s resigned his position as the colony’s expendable – meaning he no longer has to sacrifice himself by fixing the antimatter reactor or carrying bombs into the lair of the indigenous insectoid population; he’s settled into a long-term relationship with a pilot; and he’s managed to land a part-time role cleaning out the rabbit pens (aside from dying when ordered to, Mickey isn’t really qualified to do anything else). But then he starts to notice something rather odd: he occasionally spots other copies of him near the antimatter reaction chamber. It appears that new versions of him are being run off, and whoever is making them isn’t even polite enough to wait for him to die first. …

Continue reading “Antimatter Blues by Edward Ashton”

Mickey7 by Edward Ashton

I’d call this one a mid-level science-fiction read: not too heavy on the science; there’s enough of it to make you happy that the author knows what’s he’s talking about, but not so much that it gets in the way of a really good story – and this is a very good story.

Meet Mickey Barnes, a history buff raised on the human colony Midgard. Mickey’s a bit of a no- hoper: too lazy to really amount to anything, so he tries gambling. He’s not too good at that either.

Mickey7

So, to escape a life-threatening gambling debt, he signs on for a one-way trip to a distant star, as the mission’s Expendable, and as the colony’s Expendable, Mickey has just one job: to die when he’s asked. The upshot is that after he dies, he’s uploaded mind is transferred to a clone of himself – ready to die again when the colony needs him to.

We join the story at Mickey’s seventh incarnation. Having died from radiation sickness, from being exposed to a poisonous microorganisms, and a parasite that gradually ate his brain, Mickey is starting to get a little tired of the uncomfortable ways he’s required to die …

Continue reading “Mickey7 by Edward Ashton”