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The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz (2023) 335 p.

I should have steered clear when the review quotes on the back were from Martha Wells and John Scalzi. I’m surprised there wasn’t one from Becky Chambers, since her narrative style of insufferable happy-clappy Super Best Friends is what Newitz’s book most reminded me of, but these authors are all much of a muchness: a novel in which all the concepts and dialogue feel like they’re being explained to you by somebody who self-identifies as part of “nerd culture” at a board game cafe or a video-game-themed bar or (in Newitz’s case) a furry convention.

I don’t want to sound like a crusty old conservative, so I’ll be clear: the issue is not people introducing each other with their pronouns, or that everybody is vegan, or that at one point a character almost reaches orgasm just because her partner asks for verbal consent (yes, really). The problem is that a novel purporting to be about the terraforming of a planet and the messy business of creating a new society 60,000 years in the future is so uninspiringly copy-pasted from the progressive American discourse of the 2020s, in everything from gender identity to public transit to urban design to gentrification.

More disappointing is how shallow it all is; there’s a Saturday morning cartoon vibe of evil corporate villains vs morally upstanding best buddies who are always calling each other “friend” and (a la Chambers) talking about their feelings. The result is that there are basically no stakes, except when Newitz decides to deus ex machina an orbital laser beam into proceedings, which nonetheless remain boring. None of this works as a science fiction novel. I don’t care if your politics are different from mine, but if you’re going to nail your colours to the mast like this, at least be more politically interesting about it.