Rob Hart and Alex Segura’s sci-fi collaboration Dark Space opens with a bang and does not let up. The spaceship Mosaic is on its way to explore a distant, Earth-like planet using new technologies when its engines fail. Pilot Jose Carilles is faced with a dead engine and failing shields and the possibility that the ship will either be destroyed or thrown into the void. This soon becomes the least of his problems. Meanwhile, on the fading lunar colony of New Frontier his estranged friend, disgraced spy and alcoholic Corin Timony stumbles across what could be a conspiracy but has burned most of her favours and finds it hard to know who to trust.
Dark Space is a potent mix of space opera and spy thriller. The book starts in top gear and does not really pause for a breath, constantly upping the stakes to what becomes an existential crisis for humanity. And as it alternately shifts between Carilles and Timony, with cliffhangers at the end of most chapters, the pages practically turn themselves.
Carilles and Timony are a great pair of protagonists – old friends from different sides of the tracks who have had a falling out. Carilles is the son of a senator and can’t get out of the shadow of his privilege to prove that he is actually pretty good at what he does. Timony has had to graft for her success and so fell much further but still feels she has something to prove. While these two are complex, some of the ultimate villains, when they are revealed, are a little one note. But Dark Space for all its sci fi styling is at its heart a thriller and those narratives do not tend to run on nuance.
Hart himself has said that the pair were influenced by Star Trek and Le Carre and the influences are clear. But Hart and Segura manage to put their own spin on these tropes. Without wanting to spoil any of the many twists, it uses them to pose the question – why would anyone want to let humans into a galactic federation? But it does also lead to a bit of a hand waving towards the end (or as they put it – technology so advanced it looks like magic) to bring everything together. Although, to be fair, that is also a fairly common Star Trek device.
Dark Space does fall within the definition of space opera but as such it is a short, sharp and loud one, probably full of electronic instruments. Hart and Segura take a bunch of well worn scifi tropes – faster than light travel, first contact, lunar colonies – and mix them with some equally common espionage tropes – the washed out but plucky spy, a deep conspiracy within the agency, mixing with politics – and come up with something fun, engaging and, much like Star Trek itself, optimistic to its core.
Dark Space by Rob Hart and Alex Segura
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