Book review: George Saunders’s Vigil and Matthew Kressel’s The Rainseekers are sci-fi treats

Vigil
George Saunders, Bloomsbury

In general, I’m not a fan of short stories (or short novels). The moment I sink into them, they finish. However, while interesting people continue to write interesting works like these, I feel compelled to continue reading them, and this week I will feature not one, but two of these relatively slim tomes.

First, there is Vigil from Booker Prize-winning author George Saunders, whose novel Lincoln at Bardo was a worldwide success. In Vigilthe ghost of a woman named Jill “Doll” Blaine plummets to Earth to oversee the final hours of an oil tycoon named KJ Boone.

Jill’s job, she says, is to comfort. She loves helping a soul find peace with what they have done. But it turns out Boone doesn’t need comfort. He is very happy with the decisions he has made, even though his life as an oil tycoon has inevitably involved so many lies and so much environmental destruction.

The story takes place during the last hours of the tycoon’s life. Other ghosts appear, as do family members. Everyone comes looking for some sort of reckoning moment with the tycoon. Jill, our narrator, frustrated with Boone, ends up pacing back and forth, visiting elements of her own life and death before returning to her post at his bedside.

As you would expect from a famous wordsmith, every line of Saunders’ work is fresh and beautiful. He is an enemy of the boring and the cliché.

But ultimately I found myself unsatisfied VigilThis is the outcome. I think I expected to understand Boone’s heart better. Or, perhaps foolishly, I wanted the same reckoning that everyone else in the story wanted. I also thought Jill was the most interesting character in the book and would have liked to spend more time exploring her tragic story.

However, no one can deny the genius and artistry of Saunders, nor the relevance of the issues he explores in Vigil. I think this is probably a book worth reading at least twice.

The rain seekers
Matthieu Kressel, Tor Publishing

Let’s now move on to The rain seekers by Matthieu Kressel. It is essentially a series of short stories, but crossed by a narrative arc. The main protagonist, Sakunja Salazar, is an influencer turned journalist living on Mars during a time when efforts to terraform the planet are finally bearing fruit.

There is now open water on the Red Planet, and at certain times you can even breathe air, unless an oxygen-poor draft spoils the moment. Sakunja takes a buggy ride through the Martian wilderness with a group who intend to be the first to witness rain on Mars. It’s a charming and poetic idea.

Along the way, Sakunja interviews his fellow rain seekers, asking them about their lives and why they want to see Martian rain. Each of these tourists’ stories contributes to the overall story of the group traveling through the wilderness.

Kressel is very good at telling people’s stories, powerfully and in just a few words, which gives weight to the story. The stories build a vivid picture of the solar system as it is in Kressel’s vision of the future.

I think the least successful part of the book, for me, was Sakunja herself, who never managed to arouse my interest or sympathy. However, it is an enjoyable and very human addition to terraforming classics such as Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars trilogy.

Emily also recommends…

Juice
Tim Winton, Pan Macmillan

If you are interested in oil tycoons and their role in climate change, this is the book for you. We travel far into the future in this novel, but it turns out that there are still people alive who can be punished for what went wrong. It’s a wonderful piece of work – and this month’s pick for the New Scientist Book Club!

Emily H. Wilson is the author of the Sumerians series (Inanna, Gilgamesh and Ninshubar, all published by Titan) and she is currently working on her first science fiction novel. She is a former editor of New Scientist and you can follow her on Instagram @emilyhwilson1