Review: Outside
Gustavo Bondoni 281 pages Guardbridge Books (2017)
tl;dr summary: Intergalactic expats return to Earth to find its humans now live entirely in a simulation.
Read this if you like: The Matrix, Vernor Vinge, Ann Leckie
The concept of this had me all in from the jump. It opens on Rome, a binarist (programmer) on the Human Star Voyager Unity. The ship is from Tau Ceti II, one of the places humans have now established colonies, and their voyage to Earth is the first contact with the homeworld in 500 years. They’re stunned to arrive and find the planet silent, with no sign of life on the surface below.
This sets up a nice moment of productive confusion for the reader when the narrative jumps over to Emily, who seemingly lives on Earth. The reader soon learns what’s going on: the people of Earth started living entirely in a simulated version of their planet around the same time they cut off contact with the colonists. For hundreds of years, their physical bodies have been kept, unconscious and alive, in underground stasis chambers while their consciousness exists entirely within the virtual world.
Now, as fun as this concept is, I will say—I had questions. In early chapters, as the world was constructed, there were moments I found myself doubting that the system the simulated humans described would really work. The story was fun enough I was willing to suspend my disbelief and go with it, but without giving any spoilers, I will say I was glad to find a lot of those questions I had were resolved later in the book. My feeling was right—some things about the simulation don’t make sense, and a lot of the energy in this book for me came from watching the characters discover the truth about their planet’s history and present. It gave the book a reading experience similar to a mystery. I found myself speculating about what was going on based on the clues that were dropped, and had that same kind of satisfied thrill when one of my suspicions was confirmed.
The thoughtful worldbuilding is a definite strength of this book. It’s clear that the author has spent a long time thinking about the consequences and logistics of humans going all-virtual, and he showed admirable restraint in the first half of the book with which details he included and which he saved. That slow reveal of world details is the first takeaway in this book for me from a craft standpoint. It’s tempting when you’ve built a fun world to just throw it all at the reader from the jump, but it can build a lot more tension and energy to dole that information out in bursts when it makes sense for the plot and characters. Bondoni does this exceptionally well in Outside, delivering the right little clue or burst of info at the perfect moment to shift the reader’s perception and bring the truth a bit more into focus.
I was more into the plot than the characters of this one, though I think that says more about me than the book. The three main perspectives (Rome, Emily, and Graham) are all well-crafted, with clear motivations and identities. The Prophet was maybe the most fun character for me, and provided a nice source of chaos and intrigue. I did feel the book was a bit overpopulated for its length, especially when it came to the crew of the Unity—they just didn’t get enough on-page time for me to really get a sense for those characters, and some of the characters on Earth felt a bit under-developed and under-utilized, too. I do know there’s a sequel (Splinter) that spends more time with the Tau Ceti crew, so likely these characters get some more page time there.
And, to be honest, I’m nit-picking a bit here. The minor quibbles I had didn’t stop me from devouring this book in 3 days flat because I couldn’t stop reading it. I always love when someone does justice to an interesting thought experiment, and that’s definitely the case here. I also felt like the ending struck a perfect balance—enough of a bow on it that the book feels like it has closure, but with a glimmer of where things might be going in the future that makes me really want to get my hands on the sequel. Definitely recommend for fans of future Earth sci-fi.
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