The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

Publisher – Hodder & Stoughton

Published - Out Now

Price - £14.99 Hardcover £3.99 Kindle eBook

'My mother used to say I was born reaching, which is true. She also used to say it would get me killed, which it hasn't. Not yet, anyway.'

Born in the dirt of the wasteland, Cara has fought her entire life just to survive. Now she has done the impossible, and landed herself a comfortable life on the lower levels of the wealthy and walled-off Wiley City. So long as she can keep her head down and avoid trouble, she's on a sure path to citizenship and security - on this world, at least.

Of the 380 realities that have been unlocked, Cara is dead in all but 8.

Cara's parallel selves are exceptionally good at dying - from disease, turf wars, or vendettas they couldn't outrun - which makes Cara wary, and valuable. Because while multiverse travel is possible, no one can visit a world in which their counterpart is still alive. And no one has fewer counterparts than Cara.

But then one of her eight doppelgängers dies under mysterious circumstances, and Cara is plunged into a new world with an old secret. What she discovers will connect her past and future in ways she never could have imagined - and reveal her own role in a plot that endangers not just her earth, but the entire multiverse.

I’ve a soft spot for the song Everybody’s Free and as I get older, I find it chimes ever more with me. One lyric I love is ‘Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s’. Its always tempting to say yeah I worked really hard to get where I am and yet I’m more increasingly aware that privilege has helped me a lot – my gender, my skin colour, my upbringing and even the century and country I was born in helped and influenced my choices and outcomes. Science fiction and physics have long been interested in parallel worlds – alternate histories, different identities (sometimes wearing goatees) are something long used often to explore our own world and often examine what makes a character act the way they do. I was therefore absolutely wowed by Micaiah Johnson’s The Space Between Worlds which takes the parallel worlds theme and adds in a complex and ambitious story of class, relationships and capitalism’s evils to give us a truly excellent piece of twenty first century science fiction.

Cara is a Traverser. She can travel to parallel worlds. In the far future Earth is hit by burning sun, deserts and running out of key materials. The solution created by the genius Adam Borsch is the ability to cross people to other universes – where materials can be found, where information can be gathered to suggest which decisions are best to take to aid the future. But of course, there is a catch. You can only travel to another universe if the original you had died there. As such those people who perhaps have had the roughest lives tend to be the most prized for these experiments and Cara is dead in over 370 of them. Cara is from the poor nearby desert settlement of Ashtown where life is cheap and a cruel Emperor rules with the power of life and death. Many of Cara’s other selves have met early and nasty deaths. Hence, she is recruited by the technological powers of Wiley City to explore other worlds. Knowing that future automation could wipe her job out she strives to be ever useful but one trip to a new earth reveals secrets of her own that mean Cara starts to questions everyone she knows including herself and finds all is not what it seems in Wiley City.

This tale packs so much into a relatively short (for SF) story and I loved all of it. Cara is our narrator and let’s have a look at this character. I loved that she is someone that is increasingly aware of where she comes from and her role in society. She isn’t someone blinded by Wiley City’s amazing tech and wealth she knows she is being used just because her other lives ended short. She knows that the company will cut her loose to save some money when they work out they can send a robot in her space but she needs to have a roof over her head and not return to poverty and the hard life of Ashtown. Usually we tend to get lead characters removing the blinkers of an injust society here Cara is already aware the world is not perfect its just she is perhaps more aware than anyone in Wiley City what the alternatives look like and so tries to keep a low profile. As we get to know Cara, we find her secrets of her own upbringing dominate her life and her next major traverse flushes everything into the open taking us the reader by surprise. Cara has to decide if morality or survival is what she needs to protect

This leads to what I felt was the main heart of the novel what makes us who we are or claim to be. Triggered in particular by Cara’s visit to a new recent Earth and the surprises she finds there gives her a chance to re-assess her key relationships. The abusive Ashtown Emperor Nik Nik who she’s had a toxic relationship with in many many worlds; her religious sister Esther and her strict ‘watcher’ Dell who Cara flirts and torments without mercy but who never responds. We see the versions Cara knows and then we see their alternate selves’ lives. Are those of Cara’s worlds the lucky ones who had a good outcome by being the best version of themselves or are they just the ones who reacted to events going a different way. Will different environment make you good or bad; hard or soft or just hide your true natures? Johnson leaves the reader to decide, but I liked a book that makes you reassess the reader’s own response to characters you’re reading about.

The last aspect of this is the high quality of Johnson’s writing. Science fiction can often focus on the science and not the characters or the world this all happens in but Johnson paints their worlds with a much more interesting blend of societies. Cara explains the science of Traversing , but we also get ideas such as the Traverser god Nyame which could be a weird hallucination as people enter the weird space between worlds but adds a fascinating ambivalence to what Cara is experiencing in the dark. We see Ashdown ad Wiley culture as a volution of our own and it’s little things like burial ceremonies, which cloth colours are prized or the availability of fruit that makes you actually better understand the world and it’s inequalities. I especially loved how Johnson raises issues of race and class in to this worldbuilding. Wiley City likes to be progressive but isn’t actually helping those in need instead often treating certain characters as tools. We see them though as the story progresses as actual people come across to show this world is as flawed as any other. Sometimes a CEO and an Emperor really do have the same job description which work for our own world and time perfectly too.

This was a spellbinding read in what turned into a tough reading week and I really appreciated Johnson’s thoughts on morality, mortality and doing the right thing even more. This is high quality science fiction bringing imaginative world building and character to an old favourite and delivering some smart observations of our own time. I eagerly await more from this writer in the future but for now prepare for a trip between universes. Strongly recommended and one of my favourite SF reads this year.