The Fractal Series - Episodes - Europa by Allen Stroud
Publisher - Flame Tree Press
Published - Out Now
Price - £2.49 kindle eBook
First episode in the Fractal mini-series, building on the heavily-praised worlds of Fearless and Resilient set in 2118AD, now accompanied by an awesome soundtrack.
David Hannington II is murdered on the small research base on Europa. As the incident is investigated, his secret plans for the continuation of illegal research into clone technology and mind imaging technology are revealed.
Nb - this novella is linked to the two Fractal Series novels the excellent Fearless by Allen Stroud — Runalong The Shelves and Resilient by Allen Stroud — Runalong The Shelves you can read this novella as a standalone though to get introduced to the very very good series.
Space is as Mr Adams once said is big. So even in a solar system you can have all sorts of adventures; as readers of series like the Expanse will be familiar with. In Allen Stroud’s Fractal series we have already had a tense almost naval-style starship battle of cat and mouse a la Wrath of Khan and in orbit over Mars a hijacked space station; so now the series takes a new turn in six short novellas set around the same solar system where all the novels have taken place. They may be linked (we don’t know quite how yet) but what we have here is a locked room mystery albeit on the icy moon of Jupiter known as Europa. I am very pleased to report that the high quality of this series is maintained yet again and Stroud now adds a mystery thriller with some intriguing questions about the nature of life as well in the mix.
On the icy moon of Europa Abiola was expecting hard work as part of a new private space exploration and science expedition set up by the Odin Corporation. The small team of eight are creating the future camp for many more to use and it will be hard work. But the working day is shattered by a strange catastrophe severely inuring a member of the crew. Abiola is appointed by the station commander to investigate but she starts to find clues that this was no simple accident. The evidence suggests either malicious intent from one of her crew mates…or that the team are not alone.
What continually impresses me with Stroud’s work is both the solidity of this near future solar system and the dramatic situations that the stories are based around. Be it ship mechnics, gravity or pushing the ideas of what living on another world or exploring the concepts of what we mean by intelligent life; there never feels a huge degree of handwavium at work. It all feels very plausible which helps the reader accept the situation and the murky world of space exploration mixed with private enterprise will be familiar to many keen SF fans as a growing concern. There are agendas within agendas here and poor Abiola soon feels that they’re a little exposed when people don’t like her initial conclusions.
As well as palausible science though this story needs a strong plot and the novella is finely paced from the initial witnessing of everything going wrong to suddenly Abiola realsing she may be in danger from either those she knows or impossibly someone else on an deserted moon. Slowly the clues show what has been going on and Stroud complicates our feelings by asking us to consider morality and intelligence from different angles than we may have opriginally excpected. Not quite your classic whodunnit and also a tale that hints at a few links to the other tales. It manages to deliver a fine fast paced and thoughtful ending and opens up the solar system for yet more tales.
This is a very neat idea to accompany a novel series and I’m very interested where this takes the wider series. If you’ve not yet tried the Fractal series this would be a fine starting point. I look forward to purchasing the next book soon!
PS these books also have an evocative soundtrack listen to Allen Stroud - Temperance (hearnow.com)
