Jo Fletcher Books | 2022 (31 March) | 352p | Review copy | Buy the book
In the troubled Cold War years of the 1970s, the world still reels from the events of Meteor Day when humanity learned that it wasn’t alone in the universe. A young alien child, Cory, landed alone on Earth and was adopted by Molly and Gene, who were prepared to risk everything to save and comfort this frightened, strange, wonderful child. But not only that, humans learned that there is another species, deadly, mechanical, snakelike, that destroys all life before it, that is already making incursions into the solar system. Now people look to the stars and hope for Cory’s people to arrive because this is not an enemy that can be fought without help.
Meanwhile, Cory continues to learn about life on this, his other world, while missing his home terribly, seeking to connect across the stars in his dreams. But Cory is a much loved child, not to mention a celebrity, and the subject of endless speculation, wonder and even fear. Molly’s concerns are much more practical – to keep her family together, to keep Cory as content as possible, and survive whatever will come.
Our Child of the Stars is one of my favourite books of all time. I love science fiction and especially tales of first contact, but there is so much more to this story than that. That’s partly because of Cory, who has to be one of the most adorable, sad, loving and curious figures that I’ve come across. But it’s also because of the setting in this small part of America in a reimagined and struggling 1970s. Molly and Gene are a wonderful couple. It’s so good to see them all again in Our Child of Two Worlds, set a little bit after the previous novel, with Cory’s identity now revealed and his powers emerging.
Despite the love that surrounds him, Cory is lonelier than ever, particularly as he’s aware that people fear him. But he loves to play with his powers and it’s a pleasure to read about the games he plays. Until the worry grabs him again. He’s been traumatised by the events of Meteor Day. He knows better than anyone how terrifying the Snakes can be. And he misses his family.
In Our Child of Two Worlds, we learn more about Cory’s people, how they communicate and how they love as families and explorers, as well as their mission. I loved the time spent on interstellar spaceships, the hope that not all aliens are out to destroy the world. But the fear of the Snakes is genuine and well-founded.
There are smaller concerns, equally important in many ways. The prospect of the arrival of Cory’s people means the chance of a life in the stars for Gene. Molly is more rooted in the family home. They are a loving couple but there is a shadow creeping in from the corners.
Stephen Cox writes beautifully and fills his characters with warmth and self-questioning. I love the incidental characters who debate whether Cory is a hoax. There’s the drama surrounding Molly’s family. There are tensions that play out on an intimate scale against the massive context of aliens, space travel, the potential end of the world. It works brilliantly.
There is also considerable excitement and tension as the realisation grows that the world truly is in danger. It’s a fantastic story, told so well. Do read Our Child of the Stars first. You need to do that and then Our Child of Two Worlds will be irresistible reading. How I adore Cory, the boy who loved by two worlds!
Other review
Our Child of the Stars
At 9.48am, 5 January 2057, Tash Brand pauses on a bridge across the Tyne in northern England on her way to work. The winter Sun is low in a cloudy sky. And in that instant the Sun blinks out and the world goes dark and everyone in it becomes deeply afraid. As the hours of crisis progress, the ramifications of a Sunless planet become increasingly apparent and the horror of that must be dealt with by scientists, politicians, astronauts, and individuals. There’s another edge to it as well. A discovery on the Moon reveals that the Sun’s disappearance was a deliberate act. Humanity is not alone in the Galaxy and whatever it is out there is watching Earth and has come to a decision.
It is the 2070s when a brilliant scientist receives a letter from her future self giving her the formula for Faster Than Light travel. At the same time an engineer in Scotland witnesses something that should not be possible. On Venus, an unusual spy works to make sure that an astonishing discovery remains hidden. A Cold Revolution has divided the UK and the scars remain from the conflict. It’s not something that people want to talk about. People easily defect between the two and travel is permitted but there is a distrust and competition for technology is intense. With Faster Than Light technology thrown into the mix, humanity could extend beyond our solar system. But perhaps it already has.
In the near future, Earth’s population crisis has been solved through drastic measures. On reaching adulthood, people can select how the rest of their lives will be lived – as a worker in their own bodies, as glamorous and wealthy pleasure-seekers (but for a pitifully short life), as a kind of human-android hybrid. All have their lifespan limited. But, for the longest life, people can opt to share a body – five minds in one body for about 140 years – but with consciousness limited to four hours as each mind takes its turn through the day.
And here’s my review:
Terror has come to Mount Hood in Oregon and Tennant Riggin and her much younger sister Sophie are the only survivors from a small community of people living off the grid. Everyone has either vanished or their bodies have been smashed to pieces. The government gathers together a group of scientists, experts in, among other things, the environment, in medicine, in space. They are sealed off from the rest of the world as they study this terrible phenomenon – death is brought by a catastrophic noise and it seems there is a pattern to it. Psychologist Martha Chan believes the answers can be found with Tennant and Sophie but, with the noise spreading, will there be time to save humanity?
The mining town of Northfall, Minnesota, was already dying before the night it was hit by a devastating shower of meteorites. On the same night, a young boy’s life is changed forever by the murder of his parents, a deed that is overshadowed by the discovery that the meteorites contain an unknown metal, the Ninth, which is more precious than gold and more useful than any known element. Now the world is coming to Northfall. Anyone can become a millionaire but the biggest money is for those who own land. Northfall has become a new Wild West and at the heart of it stands one family, the Frontiers.
Earth is destroyed, its form twisted and distorted by the Architects, a species the size of a moon, that barely notices the planets and ships that it moulds into more pleasing shapes. Technologies developed to try and confront this enemy, including the creation of enhanced humans, until a method of attack was discovered almost by accident when one type of altered human – the Intermediaries – was found to be able to communicate with them and the Architects, almost in horror, left. But now, years later when humankind is divided by warring factions, vessels are vanishing and it is possible that they have returned. Intermediaries are few and far between and their sleepless endless lives are a torment. One of them, Idris, is navigator aboard a small salvage vessel. He wants to lead an obscure, quiet life. That will not be allowed to happen.
When Ryland Grace wakes up from an induced coma, he has no idea where he is or even who he is. He just knows that the two people with him weren’t so lucky, both are dead in their pods. He doesn’t remember them either, yet. But the grief will come. Slowly, and with the rather annoying ‘help’ of a very basic AI, Grace realises that he has been asleep for a very long time, he is aboard the spaceship Hail Mary and that sun out there isn’t even Earth’s. He remembers his mission – he is the only chance Earth has. Earth’s sun is under attack by small ‘things’ that are consuming its power. In one generation, much of life will be dead. But a seed of hope has been detected here, light years from home and, Ryland Grace, a scientist and school teacher, is going to have to work out how to fix the sun.
Welcome to the end of time! A farmer lives a quiet life in the aftermath of the Causality Wars, wars that nobody remembers because everybody was unmade. The past has gone, blown apart into chunks of time, which the farmer pops into in his time machine, gathering up goodies to make his life at the end of time even more perfect. Other people do turn up now and again, time travellers from the past, but he sorts them out, following a lovely meal and some polite conversation. There are benefits to having a pet allosaur called Miffly. And then the unexpected happens, the impossible, the future comes to visit.
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