Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach

Definitely more of a 3.5.

The author plunges us deep in the middle of this post apocalyptic world and it took me a while to gather my bearings. And while it'll probably take me a long while to ever get comfortable with all the scientific terminology associated with these kinds of sci-fi books, I was able to get the general idea and emotion behind it all. The dual timeline with the current and the ancient Mesopotamian civilization was a master stroke to make us feel invested in everyone's lives, the discussion about the ethics of time travel as well as a very short term focused banking economy on the development of the world was fascinating, and the best part was the clash of cultures we could witness - not just between the timelines, but also within the present between the generation who survived the plagues and the younger ones born in the aftermath. That cliffhanger ending though equal parts wonderful and frustrating, because I can't even guess what happens next.

Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach is not a simple story. There is nothing subtle and simple about a middle-aged scientist with prosthesis octopus-like legs, time travel, ecological restoration, and culture dynamics. Nor is there anything subtle about a world in recovery that has been racked by climate change, species die off, and plague. The world Minh lives in is one that is complicated and nursing its wounds and trying to move on. It sounds like it is a depressing story full of tropes, coming off as a typical apocalyptic novel. But in Gods, Monsters and the Lucky Peach, it isn't like that. If anything, Robson has created a world that is recovering and in a lot of ways excelling. We are past the struggle for resources usually associated with apocalyptic novels. The descriptions of technology and how it is intertwined with life are marvelous, but humanity has changed past that. To me, there seemed to be an undercurrent of depression among the plague-babies (those that survived the plague), Minh's generation. This is in stark contrast to Kiki's generation, the fat-babies. The characterizations between the two cultures is relevant and interesting.

The story is told in three parts. The first, and most lengthy is setting up the world building and Minh's life as a world-class ecologist. Her job is to go out and do reclamation on natural habitats in an attempt to find balance again with nature. We meet Kiki, an administrator, and fat-baby - tall, healthy, and robust in personality. All she wants is Minh's approval and friendship. She goes out of her way to put herself in Minh's life, almost to an uncomfortable degree. Minh is a cantankerous older woman. Set in her ways and uncomfortable with how forthright Kiki is. A new proposal for a time travel project to ancient Mesopotamia has come up, a proposal that Minh wants badly. Kiki and Minh work to land the bid and enlarge her team with the addition of Hamid. He falls in the middle, personality-wise. The second part of the story is the actual expedition and ecological restoration work. It is fascinating how Robson handles this. She creates a stark dichotomy between the technology of the Lucky Peach(their ship) and ancient Mesopotamia. The third part of the story is what happens after the intial part of the cataloging is done, where cultures clash.

Robson has meticulously constructed a story that is rich and nuanced. Areas that are “old-hat” in science fiction, i.e., time travel, seem restrained and exciting instead of worn out. It is a rigorous story that asks a lot of the audience. Character dynamics, the heart of the story, are done in a way that you empathize with all sides involved. It is obvious why Robson won many awards for this story. This story cements her as a science fiction powerhouse and one to watch in the coming years.

3.25 out of 5 stars

This is a compelling little story that drops you into a future where ecological disasters have ravaged the Earth and time travel is now a possibility. I wasn't quite sure what was going on in the first several chapters, but things are made more clear as time passes. The interplay between the chapter epigraphs and the main narrative was a really great feature that I enjoyed puzzling out.

As a setting, ancient Mesopotamia provides a fertile ground (wink wink) for time travel exploration, but the time spent there feels fleeting and underdeveloped. Similarly, the constraints of the novella format made it difficult to get a full grasp on the characters and their relationships. These are minor qualms, though, as I felt like this was a solid novella that certainly warrants a sequel.

See this review and others at The Speculative Shelf.

Science fiction has a history of glamourising science to a certain extent - for centuries stories have focused on that one big culminating moment in an experiment, and dealing with the fallout of those BCMs. On a dramatic level that's understandable, of course, but it leaves one with the impression that big dramatic moments are what science is about.

Kelly Robson's Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach veers strongly away from that tradition, to interesting effect. It's one of the few stories I've read in the genre that looks at things like responding to a RFP, data collection, and discussing funding sources, and a lot of the day-to-day stuff that keeps real scientists occupied but never seems to be a concern to fictional ones. It's a refreshing change, and one that's balanced nicely with more traditional sci-fi elements like time travel,dystopia, and body modification.

In this novella Robson manages to tell a story that's both mundane and fantastic, while giving hints of a larger and more complex world that the story is existing in. Reading it, it's clear that she's someone with a deep love and passion for sci-fi as a genre, and has thought long and hard about both what makes time travel stories work, and where they sometimes don't. I look forward to seeing more work from her in this setting in the future.