(courtesy Bloomsbury Publishing)
We live in troubling times.
Hardly a news flash there; one glance at the nightly news is enough to traumatise you with updates on the creeping annihilation of climate change, the democracy-decimating horrors of fascism and the possibilities of new pandemics, fresh wars and death and violence on a global scale.
Even for the most optimistic among us, things look grim and it’s not hard to imagine the world ending in ways too nasty and horrific to contemplate.
In Here and Beyond by Hal LaCroix, that nightmarish future has come and gone, and we find ourselves onboard a generation ship known as Shipworld – this differentiates it from the lost Earthworld which has been left behind to what is imagined to be its sure and certain destruction – with 600 volunteers who are on a 360-year journey to a distant planet known less than poetically as HD-40307g.
Devised and built by an eccentric billionaire who, at the last minute, declines to join those he has conscripted on his sole mission to save humanity, Shipworld is destined to see the rise and fall of six generations before the seventh is able to set foot on what it is hoped will be humanity’s new home.
Reaching this super-Earth, about which much is inferred with the only “certainty” being that it seems to have all the characteristics needed to support life, is a bold and daring mission, each part of which has been thoughtfully and carefully set out in a manifesto that is treated almost like holy scripture by some.
Brenz’s aunt, Janelle, was an odd, crumbling old lady. He hadn’t visited her in several months, which he knew was no way to treat an elder. But the thing was, even though she’d only spent her first year or on Earthworld, it seemed as if Janelle was from there, not here. Like some extraterrestrial stowaway on a secret mission.
What is fascinating, and there is much to compel you to keep reading this enthrallingly brilliantly well-written novel, about Here and Beyond is that it doesn’t focus on what was left behind, or even in many ways what awaits the seventh generation of volunteers in just over three and a half centuries when they reach their destination, but rather what happens to the people living and dying onboard what is a bold and hitherto unrealised experiment.
LaCroix makes the point, in ways nuanced and affecting, funny and heartfelt and deeply thoughtful, that while it’s all very well to have a mission, and it is indeed a necessary guiding light without which Shipworld would spiral into likely chaos and loss, that it cannot be an immutable, unchangeable thing.
And even if that is what was intended, and it was, the reality is that the culture onboard the ship is going to change and be reshaped over time, and there’s a lot of it in play here, and with it the mission, or at least, how the mission is realised.
That’s precisely what happens, and what makes Here and Beyond such a captivating read is that LaCroix explores this all but inevitable cultural change with real empathy and understanding, appreciating the fact that we are a dynamic and inquisitive and restless species and that simply treading water is not in our DNA and that inevitably we will grow and change and with it where we are and what we do.
(courtesy Bloomsbury Publishing)
Rather than opting for big dramatic, blockbuster-level brushstrokes, which raise the adrenaline level and make for heart-pounding pulpy writing, LaCroix opts instead to focus on the raw humanity of certain epochs which punctuate the journey.
These are told either in the third person or through first person histories of people dubbed “Chroniclers” whose personal recollection of key events are interwoven with the big ticket moments that see revolutions come and go, none of which end life aboard Shipworld but which could seismic disruption and significant change, and pandemics erupt and fall away.
In a carefully curated environment where nothing of the old world has been brought along – there’s one giant Olmec stone head in the main central park and a 16th century oil painting, 100 songs and a library of books from the billionaire’s own collection, and that’s it – and old thoughts and ideas and practices such as social media and even computer screens have been left behind, humanity is supposed to be working from a clean slate, untainted by a ruinous, planet-trashing past.
But humanity, to play around with a famous phrase from Jurassic Park, always finds a way, and while the people aboard Shipworld do manage to avoid many of the failings of the past, they are still tribally-minded people who can’t help but agitate for change.
It’s an integral part of the human condition but whereas it could be destructive on board Shipworld too, it ends up being a catalyst for change as people wrestle with their innate humanity and how it can be expressed differently in an altogether new environment.
And it comes to me, in that moment, like a whisper from within, that maybe we’ve overthought things, that the Pioneers should have just gone into the stars without a Mission, without a destination, just flung themselves upon the engulfing heavens. Hoping to find, by touch, what finds us.
No, that wouldn’t have made sense. Goodnight.
The staggering brilliance of Here and Beyond is that it manages to grapple with big “I” ideas and huge questions about what makes us human and can our innate nature lead to different outcomes or are we doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past while still richly and affectingly accessible.
Over 360 years we do witness big narrative punctuation points that absolutely drive and consume an engrossing storyline, but what remains a constant is the emotional intimacy that marks every single passage of time that is explored in the novel.
Far from being mere cardboard cutout inserted to serve a greater, richly intelligent narrative good, the characters in Here and Beyond are fully realised, flesh and blood people who live, laugh, agitate, hope, wish and die in some of the finest and most fulsomely detailed world-building you’ll come across in any novel.
We are gifted with being able to spend time with a cast of compelling characters who are given all the time in the (artificial) world to be known and to make an impact, not as puppets of the narrative but as key drivers of an enthralling storyline.
Vividly realised, with big sweeps of history and small but pivotal moments of moving and thoughtful humanity, Here and Beyond is as epic as they come while still feeling intimate and human and real, a fantastically well realised look at a future which may yet prove we can leave our feet of clay behind and walk on a new world unencumbered by the sins and travesties of the past.