After not reading much of anything last year, I'd like to get back into it this year.
I went to the movies recently, and the trailer for Mickey17 played before the main feature. The premise looked interesting, so I looked into it further and found it originated from a book. Figured it’s best to read the book before seeing the movie, so I did.
Mickey7 is a science fiction story about a guy named Mickey who is part of the crew of a colony ship that recently landed on the ice planet they intend to populate. His role with the crew is what they call an Expendable. His mind and body have been placed onto something like a backup server, so when he dies, the colony’s body tank can create a brand new copy of him that retains his personality and memories. As an Expendable, it’s his job to take on the suicide missions, such as repairing the ship’s radiation core, testing medicine & vaccines, and exploring the hostile new planet.
As the title implies, this is the story of Mickey7, the seventh incarnation of the man who once was original flavor Mickey. The book starts with Mickey7 falling into a deep hole in the ice outside the colony dome. His companion on the expedition figures he’s going to die and leaves him there and returns to the dome without him.
Only, Mickey7 doesn’t die, and makes his way back to the dome with the help of a creeper, one of the normally hostile creatures native to the planet. When he reaches his bunk, he finds Mickey8 already there and uh oh there are 2 Mickeys and that’s a huge no-no. Since neither of them wants to give up their life for the other, it falls on them to sneak around and hide the fact there are 2 of them from the rest of the colonists.
It sure sounds like there could be some fun close calls and goofy clone shenanigans as they try and escape discovery. However, the story is honestly (unfortunately?) not really about that. I’m not sure how to explain what it is actually about, but I’ll do my best.
First, we should note that the story has a very casual tone. It’s told from Mickey7’s perspective, which is rather endearing. He’s a fun storyteller. Sometimes his vocabulary feels too big for the person he presents himself as, but it didn’t take me out of the story too much.
However, Mickey often stops the storytelling to give you backstory. These scene breaks are abrupt, to give it all a sense of realism since it’s mostly told in present tense. The thing is,, it’s also a bit jarring, as something dramatic will happen, but then Mickey will spend the next 10 pages explaining why what just happened is so important. Like when he found Mickey8, he had to stop and explain why multiples are universally hated.
In this way, it kind of reminds me of the book Reamde, which isn’t in any way related, but also had a focus on infodumping things that turned out to be only tangentially related to the story. At first I found these interruptions to the flow of the story annoying, but then I realized something:
The side stories are all way more interesting stories than Mickey’s. There’s a story about another colony where the colonists keep dying off due to unknown causes, and so the management decides to clone their Expendable to ridiculous levels until he’s the last one left. Would make for a great horror story!
And the story with an Elon Musk-like guy murdering people for the raw materials to clone himself and then taking over an entire planet with his clones. This could be a best selling novel of its own.
And then there’s the briefly mentioned planet of sentient cephalopods—hello! Why isn’t this book about that???
Instead we get Mickey7 and his colony’s problems, all told kinda superficially since he doesn’t seem all that invested in anyone/anything there, even his girlfriend. In fact, Mickey7 spends most of time talking about food rations, with highly specific caloric intake energy values. Now that Mickey8 exists, he’s going to have to share his rations with him(self). And then the commander keeps cutting rations since the colony isn’t doing well and they’re running out and he also just doesn’t like Mickey. There’s so much focus on the (lack of) food, with characters being protective of their rations and complaining about them, but at the same time, it doesn’t actually go anywhere, so it feels extraneous.
The story is also very… straight? There’s not a lot of sex or anything, but Mickey implies he’s slept around a lot, because as an Expendable he’s like forbidden fruit (I will relent and give a bonus point for him having a threesome with 8 at some point). But many plot points are caused by bog-standard relationship drama and jealousy, which is super boring.
Overall, I think the story would’ve benefitted from more focus and a slower burn. It didn’t feel rushed, exactly, but I didn’t have the time to connect with the characters. The disjointed nature of the storytelling probably didn’t help on this front. I think I’ll give it a solid “it was okay. Not great, but okay.”
janainaart
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