I am on a super-hot streak of reading new novels. In some ways it is luck of the draw, I put books on hold at the library, they come in when they come in. After reading the over-the-top insanity of Manhunt (which is both Sci-fi and horror, don’t get me started) the sober tone of this book was just as welcome, but in a totally different way. I don't remember where I heard about this book. I put it on hold months ago, and Sequoia Nagamatsu is not a name I had ever heard of before. I did however hear a glowing review on the SFF Yeah! podcast from Book Riot just a few days before I cracked it open.
From the moment I started reading this book I was immediately struck by the power of the prose, the strength of the narrative, and the powerful feeling I got when I read each and every story in this book. It is a novel sorta, I mean it could also be called a short story collection all set in the same universe, but collections do not sell - at least we are told that all the time. On a technical level, it wasn’t until something I consider a spoiler tied it all together in the last story that really made it feel more like a single work. Doesn’t matter it is fantastic no matter how you market it.
Sequoia Nagamatsu is a powerful and talented writer, the emotional and epic scope of these stories had me wondering where the hell these came from? The pandemic nature of it all had me wondering if this was written in response to COVID and if that sounds impossibly fast Remember that Anthem by Noah Hawley was written and already published in response to the January 6th insurrection. That is not the case with How High We Go in Dark is that Nagamatsu was working on these stories for more than a decade some of them written as stand-alone stories as far back as 2009.
The marketing of the book makes the cross-comparison between Cloud Atlas and Station Eleven. The format is clearly influenced by David Mitchell's style of narrative formatting, It wasn't just that novel as he used a similar structure, he also used it in at least The Bone Clocks. The Station Eleven comparison is mostly pandemic related, but also the tone of reaching for hope. Let's be clear before we reach for hope it gets really dark. I was not a fan of the title that I could never remember when people asked me what I was reading, but I understand what it means.
So before we talk spoilers for the story or themes let me say outright. How High We Go in the Dark is a fantastic piece of work. Might be the best thing I have read this year and considering the last couple of books have all been amazing that is saying something. Okay mild spoilers, but still you might want to read it come back…
“In Siberia, the thawing ground was a ceiling on the verge of collapse, sodden with ice melt and the mammoth detritus of prehistory. The kilometer-long Batagaika Crater had been widening with temperature rise like some god had unzipped the snow-topped marshlands, exposing woolly rhinos and other extinct beasts.”
The concept of climate change unleashing a virus is one I also explored in my CLI-FI novel, so I am familiar with this concept and really enjoyed its use here. It is not that far-fetched and considering the themes, we will get to at the end, it was really important to the inter-linked stories. This also shows something underrated about this novel. SN took the science pretty seriously and the novel shows this with the climate elements but also the stuff that takes place off earth.
So yeah this takes place in the future when climate change has unleashed disease upon the world with melting ice that releases bacteria that has not been around in thousands of years. This is happening by the way. So far it hasn’t been deadly, but it could. In this case when the novel starts we are years into a virus that targets the young. Children can’t fight it. Adults are mostly immune but fifteen and under are at risk. When the novel starts we get a view into the scientists studying the melting ice and the roots of the plague. The second chapter is where it gets a little darker.
“Everyone scoffed when the governor first announced plans for an amusement park that could gently end children’s pain—roller coasters capable of lulling their passengers into unconsciousness before stopping their hearts.”
The POV character is a comedian and at first, I thought this was going to be a little more surreal. It has a radically different tone than the first chapter, an emotional gut-punch, one after another…
“We love you, Danny,” He said “My little Dan the man.”
“We’ll be right here, watching,” she said “You’re such a good boy.”
I couldn’t imagine being in their place. I thought about the tiny body bags lining the streets in the early days of the plague, how crying parents could be heard all hours of the night, the white buses that took away the deceased to be stored or burned or studied.”
This chapter is painful, I am not a parent, but I imagine this seems impossibly dark, but when the chapter comes that shows humans working to escape earth you need this chapter to show how far they have fallen. How desperate the species is to get out of dodge.
This may be personal but there was only one story I didn’t like and found to be ineffective, kinda BS. As a 29-year (so far) vegan who has volunteered at for months at a time at Farm Sanctuaries, I have spent time around pigs. Sweet emotional and smart critters, I am an animal rights person. There is a chapter where a character wrestles with the ethics of exploiting animals for organs to save humans. This is done in a science fictional way when a character learns to communicate with a pig named Snortorious.
“Pig is food?
“Yes sometimes,” I say. “But some people keep pigs as pets and there are wild pigs like the ones you see on your nature shows.”
People eat pig.
Snortorious Snorts became frantic.”
In the end, Snortorious decides shortly after this that he will be harvested for organs that he wants to help people. I will never agree with this in my decades of being vegan I have seen people tie themselves into ethical pretzels to try and defend eating food made in a cruel and brutal way and a lot of you people love your bacon. It may not have been SN’s intention but to me, this chapter came off as an elaborate way to justify meat-eating. It didn’t ultimately hurt my view of the novel because as much as I didn’t like this chapter I liked the rest that much more.
Okay moving on. As a science fictionist and a space nerd I found the chapter set on the generation ship escaping earth just as heartbreaking as an amusement park for euthanizing kiddos.
“The botanists dreamed of Trappist soil and wondered how our seeds would fare if any local flora would bring us food and medicine. The astrobiologists spoke of deep oceans that might contain creatures of unimaginable size, conjuring fantastic visions of giant squid and whales. But as we approached the system, we saw no continents or islands, no biosignatures of animal life. The observation deck was filled with silence and tears.”
It would be easy for this far-out in space chapters that take place over thousands of years to mess with the tone for more mainstream readers but I think this will work for Science Fiction readers. Similar to Kim Stanley Robinson’s genius novel Aurora at this point the novel is clearly bring home the message how important the earth is to our species.
The novel does return home, with a chapter about the humans left behind and how technologically dependent the species has become. This chapter didn’t seem that far off with a Japanese man announcing that he had married his hologram.
“I’m afraid none of our real-life meetings could ever compare to this. Look at where we are. Isn’t it amazing?”
The last story is a beautiful piece called “The Scope of Possibility.” This one does a wonderful job wrapping up and tying it all together. Any arguments that this is not a novel ends with this summation. In the end, it comes down to a chapter that starts this way…
“When she was seven hundred years old, still a baby by world-builder standards, I walked my daughter to the seed field where I had been designing earth. Kids usually weren’t allowed in the fields until they have completed their apprenticeship in their second millennium, but I needed to show her, she needed to understand.”
SN explored many dark themes with elegant prose, and masterful use of science fiction has a way to explore various ways the human species threatens everything they have been given or created. It doesn’t matter if you believe in high power or col science we depend on the earth and various beautiful and ugly moments to build a civilization. How do you tell a story that shines a light on the human experience and how fragile it is.
That is what this novel and Sequoia Nagamatsu has done. A wonderful reminder that everything is in our hands fragile.
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