Reading Roundup: Dystopian and Sci-fi Picks from Don Miasek

by Don Miasek

Many people assume that writing is a lonely affair, with nothing but a laptop and a Starbucks cup to keep you company, but nothing could be further than the truth. Trading stories, beta-reading for others, and workshopping characters and plotlines means you get exposed to phenomenal people and books. There’s a whole community of speculative fiction authors out there, and as a result I’ve been exposed to novels that I never would have had the chance to enjoy.

In writing Pale Grey Dot, I’ve had the opportunity to compare my own artistry with the greats of Canadian science fiction. How does the oppressive police force of City of Sensors compare with Pale Grey Dot’s Earth Security Service? Oh, what a brilliant way to show a crumbling society in Girl Minus X. Perhaps there’s a way for me to evoke the same thought-provoking, yet fun characterization as in The Downloaded.

Could Pale Grey Dot’s spaceship captain Ezza could take on Bounty’s Nikos Wulf?

OK, it’s not always for artistic reasons.

Below are my picks for dystopian and science fiction books from All Lit Up.

City of Sensors by A.M. Todd (Now or Never)

Combining the oppressive totalitarianism of Big Brother with gritty noir, author A.M. Todd puts us in the shoes of Frank Southwood, a good detective but a troubled man. Frank’s specialty is financial crime, and in a world where every transaction is carefully logged, processed, and scrutinized, he’s quickly swept up in a conspiracy involving the mafia and a group of rebels threatening to bring the entire system to its knees.

For me, the crime investigation wasn’t the hook of City of Sensors, but rather its lead. Frank is fastidious in his attention to detail, yet his personal life is slipping away from him. He specializes in economical crime, yet he’s a gambling addict and compulsive spender.

Maybe that girl at the local diner would like a gift of new gloves, and so Frank’s balance ticks down another notch. An ad pops up for a grid-patterned tie he definitely doesn’t need? Tick. An ebook on veganism? Why not. The latest phone model? Well, you can’t live without that. Tick!

With each bad decision Frank makes, his bank account shrinks and he takes another step towards personal, professional, and financial ruin. And yet, despite his faults, he’s so easy to root for. He’s trying to do the right thing, even if his own neuroses keep holding him back. There’s a certain patheticness about him that makes you want him to succeed.

Bounty by Jason Pchajek (Turnstone Press)

Author Jason Pchajek pulls us into a multi-levelled city of powerful corporations, omniscient technology, and chaotic factions all vying for control of cyberpunk Winnipeg*. For most citizens, the sky has been replaced with floors and ceilings, and the city-layers grew grungier and more dilapidated the deeper one goes. Only those on the upper levels seem to enjoy life.

Pchajek, a fellow Turnstone Press author, captures the violent mix of chaos and order. Protagonist Nikos Wulf and his fellow bounty hunters must navigate the finely tuned, omnipresent corporations on the upper levels while dealing with eco-terrorists, cybernetic upgraded gangs, and high tech clandestine hackers.

What especially drew me into the Bounty-verse is how evenly it plays these factions against each other. Wulf works for a huge corporation involved in AI research and fighting environmentalists. That’s usually pretty clear code for ‘obvious bad guys’, but Pchajek makes them sound so reasonable and alluring. And besides, are the violent psychopathic gangs from the lower levels really the better choice?

*As a Torontonian, the temptation to tease Winnipeg here is great, but I shall resist.

The Downloaded by Robert J. Sawyer (Shadowpaw Press)

Do you want fun mixed in with your science fiction? Robert J. Sawyer carries a giggle-worthy-but-still-serious tone throughout his tale of astronauts and criminals in a post-apocalyptic world. You see, cryogenics has been perfected, but with the need to upload the patient’s mind into a quantum computer. While their uploaded minds get to experience a holodeck for years, only a few months pass in the real world. Don’t worry, the book makes it easy to follow.

When the astronauts (who use uploading while on the long haul to Proxima Centauri) and criminals (who use it as a prison-alternative) wake up in the real world, they find everyone else is gone. Now they have to work together (or not) to figure out what happened to Earth while they were asleep while grappling with the ramifications of being the only humans left on Earth.

The story is told through a series of interviews, including the cool professionalism of Captain Garvey, the goofball doctor Jürgen, and sympathetic ex-convict Roscoe. Sawyer gives them all such strong voices that it’s a joy to see how they think and react to the same situation. The narrative device also raises the tantalizing question: who’s interviewing the cast if society collapsed?

Funny, engaging, thought-provoking, and filled to the brim with Canadianisms, The Downloaded is an easy recommendation.

Girl Minus X by Anne Stone (Wolsak & Wynn)

Combining the desperation of surviving a collapsing civilization with the need to protect one’s family, Girl Minus X follows Dany, a fifteen-year-old girl trying to provide for her little sister. Author Anne Stone’s world is just close enough to our own to be eerily familiar, but has deteriorated to where despair is as dangerous as the deadly virus that’s gripped the planet.

The disease ravages one’s mind, destroying the very essence of what makes a person them. Stone writes, “Once the disease has gone this far, the infected forget. They forget just about everything. They forget to even care. They forget friends and loved ones. They forget how to act. They forget who to be.”

Thanks to Stone’s expert prose, I was there in Dany’s shoes, feeling what she was feeling as she sees in her aunt through the chain-linked fence of a prison-hospice, or witnessing a colleague succumb to a new strain before her eyes. It’s vivid, shocking, and it sticks with you.

In the midst of the health crisis, Dany has ‘real world’ concerns as well. They’ve run out of food, the phone company has killed the landline, there are homeless people on every corner, crime is rampant, and the basic infrastructure of human civilization is on the verge of crumbling into non-existence.

Girl Minus X came out in 2020, so it seems impossible COVID-19 played any part in it, but it is interesting comparing how the fictional and real worlds dealt with a deadly disease. But it’s even more interesting hoping and praying for Dany to survive the challenges pitted against her.

Call Me Stan by K.R. Wilson (Guernica Editions)

The story begins thousands of years ago with Stan, the bastard son of a sheep farmer. He grows to adulthood, he gets married, he marches off to war, and he gets an Egyptian spear through the back before being dumped in a river. Unexpectedly, that last one wasn’t the end of his story, but rather the beginning. Instead, he heals his fatal wounds and heads home from the war like nothing happened.

So begins Stan’s life as an immortal being. He passes through the ages, witnessing historic events like we watch television. Author K.R. Wilson mixes in a fun, lighthearted tone with the horror of knowing you’re going to outlive everyone you’ve ever loved, hated, or even known.

It almost reads as a collection of short stories, though Wilson ties it all together with the occasional glimpse of the present day. The framing device—Stan is telling his tale to a cop—lets him use modern slang even as he lives through biblical times. It can be jarring at first, but quickly I realized it’s meant to be tongue-in-cheek. I particularly liked when Stan admits to making up quotes so the puns still translate properly. “The sound echoed like a gunshot off the village wall. Yes, I know guns hadn’t been invented yet. But I’m telling this now, aren’t I?”

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Don Miasek writes from smack dab in the middle of Toronto, Canada. An editor for TDotSpec, he’s had a hand in bringing Amazon best seller Imps & Minions and Strange Wars to market as well as Speculative North magazine. Pale Grey Dot is his debut novel.

Photo of Don credit Ramy Arida.