Across the Void

March 25, 2019
Vaughn’s uneven near-future debut centers on May Knox, pilot and commander of the Stephen Hawking II, who wakes up alone in her spacecraft with no memory of recent events and no idea how her history-making voyage to the Jovian moon Europa failed so completely. On Earth, her husband, Stephen, whose research fueled the mission, is stunned to discover she’s alive. Over time, May recalls they filed for divorce before she left. As the two struggle to close the physical and metaphorical distance between them, they cannot be certain whether the obstacles in their way are already too great. Readers drawn to the promise of a female-centric SF novel with a strong heroine and a sassy AI will be disappointed to find that as the story comes to a head, old conventions of male ego–driven storytelling surface, making this work less than groundbreaking. In the end, supposed protagonist May (who boldly declares to Stephen, “I don’t need a hero. I’m the hero”) is rendered as just another damsel in distress. As novels about female astronauts continue to bubble up, this one sinks.

June 1, 2019

When Commander Maryam "May" Knox awakes aboard a ship, she has no idea who she is. Memories slowly surface, and she realizes she's on the Hawking II, a vessel she was captaining on a research mission to Europa. On her way to the Jupiter moon something happened that killed her entire crew, left May in a medically induced coma, and caused an inevitable failure of the ship. With no immediate memory of what happened, she must find a way to communicate with Earth for her survival. Except that Earth does not think she lived; NASA has not heard from Hawking II in weeks, and her husband, Dr. Stephen Knox, is mourning their near-dead marriage and her presumed death. When by chance May finds a way to get in touch with NASA and Stephen attempts to get her back, it's a race against time. How do you save a loved one when it seems external forces both on the ship and on Earth are determined to stop a rescue? VERDICT Vaughn (Time Runners) is a pseudonym for an accredited film writer and director, which explains the tight prose and Hollywood-style plot. Fans of The Martian and Mary Robinette Kowal's "Lady Astronaut" series will be enthralled.--Kristi Chadwick, Massachusetts Lib. Syst., Northampton

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