Adam Oyebanji is the debut author of the novel BRAKING DAY, available now everywhere you buy books. I had a chance to read it early, because, well, my job is great like that. It’s a story about a generation ship nearing its destination and about to start slowing down…hence, Braking Day. After over a century in space, the ship is not what it once was. Add to that the fact that there are those on the ship with competing agendas and the possibility that they aren’t alone out there in space, and you’ve got a tight, thrilling story with a little something for every SF fan. I’m a sucker for generation ship stories, and I really enjoyed this one.

And I’m not the only one. I was discussing it yesterday with an author friend of mine who also got to read an ARC, and she raved about it. We spent a moment trying to determine its subgenre, but didn’t really get too far with that. It’s not space opera, but it does have some of the political elements. It leans a little toward hard SF, but while the technology is there, the book doesn’t often dwell on it. Generation Ship isn’t really a subgenre, I don’t think. Ultimately, I decided that it’s just sci-fi. Good sci-fi.

Today, to celebrate his book’s release, Adam is here to talk about a science fiction book that he loved.

Here’s Adam:

While it is frequently said that you should never judge a book by its cover, people who publish books know differently – and thank goodness for that.  But for the lurid neon and black cover design (and the absence of a headache on the day in question) I would never have picked FORTUNA by Kristyn Merbeth off the shelf at my local bookstore. That, as it turns out, would have been a tragedy.

FORTUNA, published in 2018 is the first of Merbeth’s Nova Vita Protocol trilogy.  It was followed by MEMORIA (2020) and the final instalment, DISCORDIA, which hit the shelves last December.  If you like light(ish) space opera with a bit of a gamer vibe, I can’t recommend these books highly enough.  Personally, though, I’m hooked on these books for two very different reasons.  First, the Nova Vita Protocol is the perfect modern-day example of how science and science fiction march hand in hand – a tradition that goes back at least as far as H.G. Wells.  Second, they are an ode to the merits of dysfunction.

Merbeth’s trilogy is set in a red dwarf system circled by no fewer than five habitable planets, desert hot close in, arctic cold far out, and populated by the descendants of a generation ship from Earth.  None of the planets get on, immigration between them is next to non-existent, and all are laced with ancient alien technologies with the potential to provide those who control them with considerable advantage, but also to wipe out the entire system.

The Nova Vita trilogy is science fiction, but it was inspired by science.  To be precise, the discovery of seven Earth-sized planets orbiting the red dwarf designated 2MASS J23062928–0502285 in the constellation of Aquarius.  A mouthful of an address that we can ditch in favor of a more user-friendly shorthand: TRAPPIST-1.  What’s eye catching about TRAPPIST-1 isn’t that there are seven planets, or even that those planets are Earth-sized.  What fascinates is that up to four of them, whizzing past each other every few days, lie inside that star’s habitable zone.  It was this, as Merbeth explains at the end of the book, that triggered the idea for her story.

In doing this, Merbeth isn’t somehow cheating.  By its very nature, science fiction follows science.  When science discovers something, even if it turns out to be mistaken, sci-fi authors are over it like white on rice.  In 1895, the American astronomer Percival Lovell, misinterpreting both an earlier Italian work and what he could see through his own telescope, popularized the idea that there were canals on Mars, used by a dying (drying?) civilization to move water from the poles.  By 1898 we had H.G. Wells’s WAR OF THE WORLDS, where envious Martians invade Earth.  In the early 1900s, the American, Robert H. Goddard (among others), popularized the idea that rockets could be used for space travel.  In 1933, “atomic rockets” were used to escape a doomed Earth in WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE, by Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie.  Rockets have been pretty much ubiquitous in science fiction ever since.  In the 1970s, after actual rockets sent Voyagers One and Two past Jupiter’s moons, scientists became increasingly certain that there was a vast underground ocean on Jupiter’s fourth largest moon, Europa.  Lo and behold, a Europan ocean forms part of the plot of Arthur C. Clarke’s 1982 novel, 2010: ODYSSEY TWO (and also the low-budget, for-geeks-only movie, Europa Report).  In FORTUNA and its sequels, Merbeth is doing one of the things that sci-fi does best, and has done for a very long time: popularizing real science through a rollicking good story.

As for the story itself, the five squabbling planets of the Nova Vita system play host to the Kaisers, a criminal family headed by a Ma Barker-like matriarch who managed to bear anchor babies on most of the system’s worlds, giving her an almost unique ability to legitimately cross planetary borders while behaving very badly indeed.  Trading alien artifacts left over from a bygone age is profitable for the Kaisers, provides advantage to certain authorities, and risks the destruction of the entire system.  Needless to say, high jinks ensue.  Told through the eyes of an alcoholic daughter and war-damaged son, Merbeth’s trilogy is ultimately a tale of triumph through diversity.  The Kaiser kids are diverse in the sense that they have different back stories and different ways of seeing the world(s).  The worlds they visit have diverse climates, cultures, and systems of government.  It’s not easy for people, whether sitting at the family table or negotiating with a foreign authority, to get along.  Differences like this are not easy to cope with. In Merbeth’s universe (and life, frankly) diversity and dysfunction go hand in hand.  But managing that dysfunction, weaving all the diverse threads together, allows for the creation of a tapestry both sturdier and more beautiful than a piece of cloth manufactured from a single, dull shade.  If you need a team to screw the tops on toothpaste tubes, diversity is not your friend.  But if you have a real problem, the payoff is huge.  In Merbeth’s universe, a family that seldom sees eye to eye, and a swarm of planets that are always on the edge of war find that, while inadequate on their own, they can all bring enough to the table to figure a way through.  It is creative tension writ large and a reminder, useful in these trying times that, at bottom, people have more in common than they sometimes think.

We should run with that.  Always.

You can find BRAKING DAY here:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Indie Bound

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Tags: Adam Oyebanji, Braking Day, Generation Ship, Science Fiction, Science Fiction Debut