Review of A New Eden – Menilik Henry Dyer

Earth has fallen under the influence of the Fermion Party, whose members believe humanity’s future lies in the metaverse, a simulated environment to which people can upload their consciousness to become immortal. As a simulant, one cannot get sick, grow old, or die. Human beings have no business risking their lives in the betaverse, where injury and illness can kill them. And those who wish to explore beyond the solar system blaspheme what the Fermions believe is the natural order.

Trillion von Nichol, Atlas Tupu, Icarus Kishida, and Angelique Komene are the Beta Explorers. They have been living on Mars and training as astronauts to eventually locate planets that can sustain the next generation of humans. But when the Fermions invade the red planet to assassinate them, they launch before they are mission ready. Four different ships, with four AIs attuned to each astronaut’s personality, leave for four random destinations to colonize worlds thousands of years in the future.

Now, each Beta Explorer must learn how to function as a simulant to complete their mission. Interfacing with their AIs, they explore potential habitable planets and develop technology to assist in terraforming atmospheres for humans, all the while attempting to reconnect with one another. But the Betas are not the only intelligent species in the universe. And their first contact may be their last when the Fermion’s Starforce Alliance tracks them down to annihilate them once and for all.

A New Eden

Menilik Henry Dyer

Podium

Supplied by the author

Reviewed by Jacqui Smith

I found this to be a somewhat odd novel. The ideas are interesting and innovative, but the writing style is quite old-fashioned, full of talking heads and infodumps like a classic science fiction novel from the 1940’s. The author proposes a near future in which human minds can be uploaded into computers and as such are effectively immortal, allowing them to explore space in craft that can approach light-speed. This enables them to plant human colonies on worlds they terraform using frozen embryos. This is a cool idea. Only I found the characters are difficult to relate to and often somewhat irritating. Furthermore, some things didn’t quite make sense to me, especially the politics.

The result is a work that I can neither recommend nor advise against. You might like it, and to be honest, it is evident that some people do.