Albert Wendland 235 pages Dog Star Books (2014)
tl;dr summary: Discovery of ancient technology leads to murder and sends an eccentric poet on a series of increasingly epic investigations and adventures.
Read this if you like: space mysteries, Dan Simmons, Isaac Asimov
The opening chapter of The Man Who Loved Alien Landscapes is a masterclass in how to hook a reader into a speculative world. A spaceship crew suddenly drops out of lightspeed in the vicinity of two derelict ships and the crew makes an exciting discovery when exploring them. Exactly what the reader doesn't know yet, but we're eager to find out. In the second chapter, we're introduced to the protagonist, reclusive writer Mykol Ranglen, and learn that one of those characters who explored the derelict ship, Henry Ciat, has been murdered. From there, Mykol takes on the role of amateur investigator, trying to locate his ex-girlfriend—another of the crewmembers, who are all missing save the dead one—and figure out who killed Henry while keeping people from learning about his secret link to the alien technology known as the Clips. The layers of intrigue compound into one of those books you just can't put down.
The genre-blending in this novel is incredibly smooth. It hits all the beats you'd expect from a mystery, but pairs them with the arc and worldbuilding of a sci-fi adventure. It's not quite space opera—I'd say it's too much on the “hard sci-fi” side for that, with a unique solution to the question of faster-than-light travel that I especially appreciated. But it has similarly epic adventure plot beats to the golden era sci-fi writers, written with a modern voice and pacing that made it an incredibly enjoyable read.
From a craft standpoint, I was particularly impressed with how the character and world history was distributed in the book. This actually felt like one area where Wendland blurred genres very effectively, because he used the worldbuilding to drop clues about the mystery. He does this so subtly that you don't even realize you were given clues until much later on, when Ranglen starts to figure out what's going on. And the world itself is a fascinating one, playing on a new twist on a familiar thought experiment. Much of the technology used within the world was discovered in Clips, remnants left by now-dead civilizations that were much more advanced. Using one of these, humans were able to start exploring the galaxy. But they don't fully understand how the technology functions, having taken a leap over the intervening levels of technological development that would have naturally led to such a discovery. The world in the book directly addresses the likely social impacts of this type of rapid development. This adds layers to the conflicts and makes it feel like a very rich, fully realized landscape for the story to inhabit.
The characters were also overall enjoyable to spend time with. The character of Ranglen feels like another place where mystery crept into sci-fi land, because he fits a certain thriller archetype. He's a loner, unlucky in love but scrappy and resourceful otherwise, who suddenly finds himself at the center of a potentially deadly conspiracy. The dry humor in the voice makes Ranglen endearing despite his faults, and he's an easy character to root for. The villain (when he's eventually revealed) was nicely hate-able in a very Bond villain-ish kind of way, which felt like the right choice for the story. If I had one critique of the book, I suppose it would be that there are a lot of intriguing characters in this story and some of them didn't feel like they necessarily got their full due. There were a few times a character name would be mentioned and I had to check back to remind myself who they were, which admittedly could have been a me problem. Nonetheless, it didn't seem like some characters were used to their full potential.
That said, that's a very minor nitpick of what is, in the end, a highly enjoyable and well-crafted story. It's a smart story set in an immersive world, with a plot that mixes the page-turning tension of a mystery thriller with the sense of exploration I love in sci-fi. I'm excited to read the rest of the books in the series, because this is definitely a world I'd be happy to spend more time in.
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