SciFi Novella Review: The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older

 

Full Disclosure: This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on March 7, 2023 in exchange for a potential review. I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

The Mimicking of Known Successes is a new novella from author Malka Older, whose novel Informocracy managed to garner a bunch of nominations at awards (including a Hugo Nomination for Best Series). To be honest, I kind of hated Informocracy, which I found to be both ridiculous in characters and concepts and in themes. But Older's social media presence and other work on SciFi/Fantasy kept me interested in her, so I was willing to give her another try in this shorter work, a novella, that takes place in a different setting altogether.

And I'm really happy I gave it a chance, because the Mimicking of Known Successes is a terrific novella, one which carries interesting themes, a Sherlock Holmes/Watson-esque setup that I'm always a sucker for, and a pair of central neurodivergent protagonists with an understated lesbian romance that work incredibly well. The story takes place in a distant future in which humanity fled the Earth and now, living on platforms built around what is essentially a gas giant, where humanity struggles to survive while also longing for their home planet...and that longing leads to research into the old Earth's ecosystem back when it was healthy and functional, so that the researchers can come up with a way to restart that ecosystem for humanity's long-sought return. This setting makes for a fascinating backdrop to a mystery featuring neurodivergent investigator Mossa and her ex, Scholar Pleiti, as they investigate the disappearance of another Scholar. Really Really liked this one and would be surprised if it's not on my 2024 Hugo Award Nomination List.

Quick Plot Summary: A man is reported as arriving at a distant platform, the furthest east one could go, and then disappearing. Investigator Mossa arrives at the platform, expecting to find proof of a suicide by jumping to the planet below, only to find that the man was a scholar at Valdegeld University and that he was man incredibly proud of his work there. And so Mossa returns to the university she once attended and seeks the aid of her ex, Scholar Pleiti, in navigating the politics of Valdegeld and discovering what might've happened to the disappeared man.

Pleiti has accomplished much since she broke up with Mossa, now an established Classics Scholar looking into the ecosystem of old Earth and how it worked, so that they could one day return home and restore that ecosystem. She never expected to get invovled with Mossa again, but finds herself caught up in Mossa's singleminded determination to come to the truth, as the two of them discover a plot that involves the Institute charged with preserving old Earth species, another dead man, and perhaps that the two of them might fit together now like they didn't back then...assuming the investigation doesn't get them both killed first.

Thoughts: The Mimicking of Known Successes is essentially a riff on Sherlock Holmes and Watson stories to a certain extent, with Mossa playing the role of Sherlock and Pleiti playing the role of Watson - and Pleiti narrating all but the prologue from her own first person viewpoint. And it works extremely well in just that fashion, as Mossa tries to discover the truth of what's happened, comes to brilliant conclusions sometimes that need to be explained, and sometimes requires Pleiti to help her stumble upon the truth. But there's more than that here, and the combination is what makes this special. So for example, there's the relationship between the two protagonists - Mossa is clearly on the Autismm spectrum, with her struggling to handle anything other than her singleminded determination to find answers to her current investigation, even as she does still want there to be more with Pleiti...it's a type of relationship she struggles to express and for most of the book, Pleiti has to guess whether Mossa might even want that. Meanwhile Pleiti once broke up with Mossa because that singleminded determination left her feeling abandoned, but in the end here discovers that the two of them have both changed and that it might actually work out, with Pleiti herself being somewhat focused upon her own work to an extent that probably suggests her own level of neurodivergence. And the way the relationship plays out along the way is just done oh so so well.

And this gets combined with the story's ideas about science in this setting, where post destruction of Earth's ecosystem there are different sciences that have evolved to adapt: you have the prestigious classics, which seek to research the ways Earth's ecosystem, animals, plants and all, worked at one time in order to use those lessons to recreate a new successful ecosystem (the titular "Mimicking of Known Successes") and the "Modern", which instead studies the planet "Giant" upon which they now orbit and is disdained for it (presumably because it suggests giving up on Earth). And within the classics, there are questions the book poses, like are they really actually doing anything useful in all their tedious slow research and planning, and is there collection of animals and plants in both cells and in real life in the Mauzooleum really doing any good? Or are they just making excuses by putting off the concept that they're never going to be able to go back because they never will find the perfect mixture? These ideas are really interesting, and they work reall well amidst the story's mystery and romance, to combine for a novella that is its own tremendous success.