Dead Space

In Dead Space, author Kali Wallace transports us to a future where bionic enhancement is cutting edge, humans have conquered the stars and corporations have as much control as governments, and artificial intelligence systems called Overseers are used to maintain control over huge research facilities and to explore multitudinous worlds. These Overseers are believed to be infallible. However, when someone manages to sabotage one of Parthenope Enterprises' facilities, the Symposium, and destroy it utterly, our heroine, Hester Marley, barely makes it out alive, finding herself one of a handful of survivors. The dark reality of this technological future is that the corporations can put you back together, replacing your parts with cybernetic ones, but they are very expensive, resulting in you becoming a slave to the company. You could quit at any time, but they'd have to repossess, well, most of your body. Because of this, Marley, an overly talented A.I. researcher, ends up as Officer Hester Marley, a safety officer for Parthenope, because it's not like she can refuse whatever job they offer her.

One day, out of the blue, David Prussenko, a former head robotics engineer and an associate who had worked with her on the Symposium, sends her a cryptic video message. The message was strange for three reasons. First, she hadn't talked to the guy since the explosion a year and a half earlier, as seeing other survivors only helped remind her of the horrors of the event. Secondly, the content of the message, itself, didn't make any sense and was full of things that Prussenko got completely wrong. Thirdly, video messages are very expensive to send and the small-talk and wanting to "catch-up sometime" didn't warrant the cost. So, when Marley discovers that David died the same day he sent that message, Officer Hester Marley decides to attach herself to the investigation to find out what was going on. What was David trying to tell her? Why message her at all?

Officer Hester Marley will have a rough time of it trying to research the death of her friend when the standard operating procedure is to simply close a case as quickly as possible and be done with it. Also, while Marley was a brilliant A.I. researcher, she is not the best of detectives. That's not her fault, though, since the company is more interested in closing cases and avoiding scandals than finding out the truth. Marley will find herself far from home, on an inhospitable asteroid, searching for answers that no one else cares to find in a nearly equally inhospitable research center. And while people may want her to simply fill out a report and move on so they can get back to work, the danger she's investigating is far from over and may be bigger and more dangerous than anyone could imagine.

I enjoy Science Fiction and tend to enjoy stories with main characters that have their share of troubles and hard luck and Dead Space hit that spot for me. If you're looking for Sherlock Holmes in space, look elsewhere. If you're are happy to watch a mystery unfold as it's being investigated by someone unlikely to catch on for quite a while, giving you a chance to realize a few things before she does, then welcome aboard!