This is a book firmly rooted in present-day politics and concerns. Newman herself seems angry about a world that makes her bleak future look increasingly plausible. The characters are angry at watching their world die, and being powerless to do anything about it. If you found out who was responsible for the deaths of billions, what would you do with that information? Would you let the past lie, or would you seek justice? It’s this moral quandary that Dee finds herself in, soon uncovering a conspiracy that could threaten the remainder of the human race.Īt its heart, Atlas Alone is an angry novel.

But detail isn’t really needed here, because that’s not the focus here.Ītlas Alone concerns itself with a simple question, with only complicated answers. The technology on display is always plausible, if never explained in any great detail. Especially when actions Dee makes in the game appear to have a direct impact on the real world of the ship.

So when a mysterious stranger offers her free access to cutting-edge technology, and Dee receives an offer of being a beta-tester, the story really gets going. Hyper-realistic simulations that can let you live any life you want. Most impressively of all, the diversity never feels forced, only natural.ĭee occupies her time on what is likely to be a multi-decade journey to humanity’s new home by playing video games. There are characters of all ethnicities, gender alignments and sexual preferences. I personally am not that concerned with diversity in SF, but Newman knocks it out of the park with her representations of minorities. I believe Dee is also asexual and possibly aromantic, though I won’t claim to understand all of the terms involved there. As someone who rarely empathises with people myself, perhaps this is why I find her so interesting. Almost emotionless, she has very little in the way of social skills or indeed emotional connections. One of the secondary character from that, Dee, is our protagonist this time around. While all of the Planetfall novels work as standalones, Atlas Alone is a fairly direct sequel to After Atlas, the second book. While I’m generally drawn more to plot than to characters, there can be little doubt that Newman has a phenomenal grip on the emotional and mental state of her characters. What it does have, is some of the most well-realised characters in SF. There’s no space battles, very few explosions and no interstellar empires. there’s certainly enough dangling plot threads for them) falls some way outside my usual reading. Įmma Newman’s Planetfall quartet (though I strongly suspect there are more books to come. But on the ship carrying the last survivors of humanity, not all grudges died with the past. Earth is gone, destroyed in a nuclear apocalypse.

Planetfall series by emma newman