Publisher - Tor

Published - Out Now

Price - £9.99 paperback £2.34 Kindle eBook

When five sentient digital beings--condemned for over three hundred years to crew the small survey ship by the all-powerful Company--encounter a mysterious black sphere, their course of action is clear: obtain the object, inform the Company, earn lots of praise.

But the ship malfunctions, and the crew has no choice but to approach the sphere and survey it themselves. They have no idea that this object--and the transcendent truth hidden within--will change the fate of all existence, the Company, and themselves.

As someone who likes science fiction and fantasy there is always a interesting sense of how far does anything go until I say oh that’s a bit too weird. (Yes, this is coming from someone who online occasionally is a womble.). What I find and happily the novella Rosebud by Paul Cornell impressively delivers on this is that I like strange things to ultimately have a meaning and not simply set dressing. Prepare for a novella full of strangeness that pointedly has something to say about when a society is far too concerned about ensuring everyone conforms.

The spaceship Rosebud is only 1mm across its sophisticated mission is to gently weave particles of matter out in space to send rock ore or water back tot he inner Solar System for the Company to use. Its size means its controlled not by human beings but a crew of AI entiies who must make decisions jointly. Entities for whom reality is more a cyberspace to play with - hence they are witnessed initially as a balloon, goth, aristocrat, a ball of hands and an insect swarm. They get along…sometimes but now their attention is ona stange perfectly spherical spaceship in the way of the mission. One that as they investigate discover it has strange powers that will have consequences for the whole solar system.

Rosebud is a novella that looks very jolly and light and as we explore the world and the characters discover its very much a humour that hides a lot of pin and secrets this version of a future humanity has to offer. The lightness is that we seem to have a squabbling crew of cyber-entities. A goth named Haunt who comes from fandom and video games with alllll the brooding. Diana the smart aristocrat he often feuds with; Bo the eternally grumpy and often sweary ball of hands and many more. It very colourful and feels like people having conversations with each other that no one quite listens to. They’re all that standard work group who know they have to work together but no desire to know each other any better. Perhaps that’s what the story is about? Not completely - its a bit more interesting than that!

Then Cornell throws a traditional Big Dumb Object - a perfectly spherical not a moon spaceship that appears alien. We get our AIs turning into physical bodies they choose and how can I not love one character who adopts the form of none other than Christopher Lee in Dracula get-up. Floating through space and arriving in a gothic spaceship. Reader how can I not love a book for dares to do that and suceeds? the other choices are also very telling about the rest of the crew

But the clever part that I admired the most is that as the story progresses we have two interesting strands of story coming slowly together. The spaceship has unusual properties with time and reality that offer a traditional SF puzzle to work out and we get to see the characters explore it and understand how this can be solved. It is a very neat and powerful idea that gets used very logically. But the more bitter side of things is we start to unpeel the identities of our crew and why by law they are forced to work in space. Cornell paints us a picture of a future where conformity must be obeyed -where gender, sexuality and daring to put your head about the parapet result in laws, cruelty and severe punishments - there is a cold and brutal scene of transphobia. I’d love to say that part feels fantastical but a regular look at the headlines sadly suggests it is not. I’m not sure SF really does on its own change the world but I do think it has a duty to shout Oi and point to what is going on and ask the reader are you really happy with that? For that this book does strongly deserve credit. My only reservation is that it does get a little too rushed towards the end and everything gets wrapped up elegantly in just a few scenes. I’d had liked a little more chance to see the crew engage with each other a bit more prior to the spaceship’s appearance and also as they get to finally understand each other and we see what they’re like particularly Diana who I think has a key role to play in the story but would have liked to see them do a bit more in the main story too.

Overall Rosebud is on the surface bright and colourful but when you bite into it is a bittersweet tale of surviving dark times and trying to be as strange as you actually want to be. A dark tale with a tinge of hope that I really enjoyed reading and definitely recommend.