Dare Mighty Things
Oct. 30th, 2018 08:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraDare Mighty Things, Heather Kaczynski. 2017 YA science fiction in which our NASA-intern protagonist is recruited for a mysterious competition for a chance to go into space. I don't actually watch reality shows, but I love the elimination-show format in fiction, the jostling in the rankings, the slow attrition of the background characters and the tension of wondering when your favorite secondary characters are going to go, the inevitable twists. I *also* love space and astronaut-training stories in particular, so this was basically catnip; reminded me of Kenneth Oppel's Starclimber in that aspect, although that was steampunk and this is near-future SF. Anyways, Kaczynski plays it very seriously and does an excellent slow reveal/ramp-up of what's going on, although I'm going to go ahead and say that not everything is resolved and there's a sequel that just came out last week that I am in the queue for and can't wait to get.
Major spoilers for the ending and for a couple of other aspects:
I am... reserving judgment on the veering/possible shark jump into aliens in human disguise. I was totally on board right up through the Contact-like message with the recipe for the ship - I love Contact so much and I'm really happy to see more authors playing with that concept - but I'm not sold on "so and so was an alien the whole time". But, I don't know, there was clearly a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes that we haven't had explained yet, so maybe she'll still tell a good story around it even if there's a giant suspension-of-disbelief ask there. The last third was *so* gripping and tense, I'm inclined to give her some benefit of the doubt.
I personally liked the handling of Cass's asexuality, that it was something she was still questioning and exploring, that in an extreme situation she had a desire-adjacent moment that didn't convert her but resolved in a warm and friendly way. I have no idea how ace teenagers would feel about that representation but I personally am pretty fond of the "shades of grey, you can truly be a thing even if the breadth of your life experience has some exceptions" approach to identity questions. What I didn't like as much was that she was so sure she wasn't gay - early on in the book, before she ever said anything about it, I had very much read the way she described the other women candidates versus the guy candidates as showing attraction towards the women, and had assumed that we were building up to a reveal that she was gay. So it was jarring for me when she was like "but definitely not that!" and I was like "sometimes when you're admiring the legs of the girl with the intimidating beauty and amazing hair, are you sure that's not even a little bit gay", but I guess that was just me and my ladyshipping gaze.
Also I'm sure everyone is sick of "I was totally writing this fic" but I'm still really fond of my Huge AU where instead of a weight-loss camp it's an astronaut-selection camp because it turns out only fat teenagers can survive the hibernation process (and Becca's all gung-ho about it, and Will's ambivalent...). My scenario was an alien macguffin in the outer solar system and I never even had a full outline but I just really liked the inversion of "sent to camp because of something "wrong" with you" vs "invited to camp because this socially-devalued trait has suddenly become essential" (I had a whole background in which genetic therapy had made fatness much more rare, more closely matching how rare it was to see fat people on TV like that). Man, I miss Huge the show and I miss those kids. I wish I had written more of my many, many thoughts about them.
Major spoilers for the ending and for a couple of other aspects:
I am... reserving judgment on the veering/possible shark jump into aliens in human disguise. I was totally on board right up through the Contact-like message with the recipe for the ship - I love Contact so much and I'm really happy to see more authors playing with that concept - but I'm not sold on "so and so was an alien the whole time". But, I don't know, there was clearly a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes that we haven't had explained yet, so maybe she'll still tell a good story around it even if there's a giant suspension-of-disbelief ask there. The last third was *so* gripping and tense, I'm inclined to give her some benefit of the doubt.
I personally liked the handling of Cass's asexuality, that it was something she was still questioning and exploring, that in an extreme situation she had a desire-adjacent moment that didn't convert her but resolved in a warm and friendly way. I have no idea how ace teenagers would feel about that representation but I personally am pretty fond of the "shades of grey, you can truly be a thing even if the breadth of your life experience has some exceptions" approach to identity questions. What I didn't like as much was that she was so sure she wasn't gay - early on in the book, before she ever said anything about it, I had very much read the way she described the other women candidates versus the guy candidates as showing attraction towards the women, and had assumed that we were building up to a reveal that she was gay. So it was jarring for me when she was like "but definitely not that!" and I was like "sometimes when you're admiring the legs of the girl with the intimidating beauty and amazing hair, are you sure that's not even a little bit gay", but I guess that was just me and my ladyshipping gaze.
Also I'm sure everyone is sick of "I was totally writing this fic" but I'm still really fond of my Huge AU where instead of a weight-loss camp it's an astronaut-selection camp because it turns out only fat teenagers can survive the hibernation process (and Becca's all gung-ho about it, and Will's ambivalent...). My scenario was an alien macguffin in the outer solar system and I never even had a full outline but I just really liked the inversion of "sent to camp because of something "wrong" with you" vs "invited to camp because this socially-devalued trait has suddenly become essential" (I had a whole background in which genetic therapy had made fatness much more rare, more closely matching how rare it was to see fat people on TV like that). Man, I miss Huge the show and I miss those kids. I wish I had written more of my many, many thoughts about them.
