SFF180 🚀 ‘We Have Always Been Here’ by Lena Nguyen ★★½

The crew of a deep space survey team experience strange psychological phenomena after landing on a remote icy planet.

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Music: “Dawn” by Aether
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[LonelyGamr]

The flashback showing why she gets along with androids better than her human crewmembers sounds very cool

[maryb]

Just finished this novel and agree 100%, great review. I think the editors at DAW did her as a debut author a disservice and should have actually edited the book

[Cher]

I personally love the book! I’m still young so take it w/ a grain on salt, but I’m hoping she releases more books in this genre👏🏻

[heblanchard]

I'd have to strenuously disagree with this review and would encourage people to try the book out. An interesting mash up of the paranoid closed space vehicle (think: Alien, Solaris) with the creepy mysterious android theme (I thought of 'Creation of the Humanoids'). I agree that there are a few head scratchers but I don't think Thomas notes that some of these are resolved in the reveals. I also found the flashback narratives thoroughly engrossing, as much as the main narrative. It's probably a matter of taste, but I found the 'laid back' manner of the narrative to be refreshing and extremely well written (sorry, I've had enough of purple prose horror) - and I think the narration was in-line with the main character's neuro-atypicality and misanthropy - it worked for me. I admit: all through the book I was imagining how this would look as a movie. Well, anyway, one lone vote right here of 'try it - it was good.'

[georgeheingartner]

As long as Brian Herbert keeps going, we will always have Sci Fi horror.

[tomwantshelp]

Space opera/Horror mash-ups

Adrian Tchaikovsky - “Children of Ruin” - the sequel to “Children of Time” is just as good but dear god it gets horrific when humanity accidentally uplifts something extremely dangerous.

James Smythe - “The Explorer” - body horror and claustrophobia across space and time, probably the closest to Thomas’ request.

Jaroslav Kaflar - “Spaceman of Bohemia” - extremely beautiful and touching but does contain a lot of paranoid isolation and provocative imagery - literary sci fi with some horror beats rather than sci fi/horror.

Mur Lafferty - “Six Wakes” - six criminals and their cloned descendants form the crew of a generation ship/hibernation ship hybrid. One generation of clones wakes up to find that their predecessors have been murdered.

[TheWordNrd]

It's always frustrating when b plots are more interesting than the main plot.

[jeroenadmiraal]

The premise sounds really great. Too bad the storytelling was disappointing.