“The Speculative Fiction Indie Novella Championship (SFINCS, pronounced “sphinx”) is a yearly competition to recognize, honor, and celebrate the talent and creativity present in the indie community. We are a sister competition to both SPFBO and SPSFC, and we highlight greatness in the novella format in all areas of speculative fiction (fantasy, science fiction, horror, etc.).” – from the official SFINCS website
Note: The following review contains my personal thoughts as a judge and does not reflect the views of the team as a whole. I will not include my ratings in my original reviews.
Space Ants: Never Say Die
by Eric Kay
Survival amidst the rings of a gas giant means that life must adapt or die. Luckily, Space Ants never say die! Space Ants: Never Say Die is a collection of serialized short stories following one colony. Each segment zooms in on a single ant from different castes—from tireless handmaidens and brave scouts to valiant soldiers and the indomitable queen mother—as they explore, extract, expand, and sometimes exterminate the deadly threats lurking in the gas giant's ring system. Join the ants as they navigate the perils of deep space: impacts, dehydration, and the constant threat of rival colonies. Witness their rise from the brink of extinction to becoming a dominant force in their orbit.
Review
Space Ants: Never Say Die is an inspired combination of two topics that greatly interest me. Can you guess what they are?
They are... space and ants! Surprise! :D
Space Ants: Never Say Die is a compilation of what could be seen as short stories featuring different point of view characters that all belong to the same community. But the community is a colony of ants...in space, and the individual tales fit together perfectly to tell an epic survival story with a solid beginning, middle, and end.
While reading this novella I was often struck by the beautiful realities of the saga unfolding before me, and I had to pause to think about them.
Space is very BIG.
Ants are very SMALL.
Space is silent...
It sounds simple when put that way, but in the novella we experience massive, harrowing battles and vital individual actions being performed by tiny creatures who feel no personal desires outside completing their hyper-specific roles and being useful to the colony, who are a series of specks on a speck of rock in the vastness of space, all of which takes place in near total silence. Or total silence--I'm not sure how much sound can be generated in their thin atmosphere! Total silence when seen from above, from the vacuum, at least. There were many moments in the novella where these simple realities gripped me and deeply moved me.
The premise of this piece is amazing, and for someone interested in space, ants, or especially space and ants, this could be the perfect story. Unfortunately, I did have an issue with two aspects of the work.
I am a strong proponent of good editing and believe it should be treated equally importantly in indie publishing spaces as it is in traditional publishing. I also understand it can be a complicated thing to navigate because of cost and beyond that--knowledge of who to hire and how not to get taken advantage of. I feel like this novella is absolutely worth reading because the concepts are so, so good, but in some instances I did feel that the lack of sentence-level editing affected my understanding of the story, which was tragic.
Additionally, at times the hard sci fi nature of the story is unyielding in a way that I have not found in other great, hard science fiction. This is likely also a result of the lack of editing. I love space. I love ants. (If these two facts weren't obvious yet haha). But I mostly love them as ideas. The specific scientific details of both these topics should be included because they make them more interesting. They allow us to see their complexities--their depth. Unfortunately they are also harder to grasp and more rare as common knowledge.
Throughout the story, I enjoyed seeing the repeated phrase: "they were only ants, not _____", where the blank is physicists, astrodynamicists, orbital mechanists, etc., but I did have to think nearly every time, "I am not _____ either". Even just the basic scientific parts of the ants were a mystery to me when I began the story. What is a petiole??? I know now! But I didn't until I googled it. And while this isn't always a problem, the text did not often describe these body parts or concepts in a way where they could be visualised without knowing their exact meanings, leading to misunderstanding or general confusion (until I inevitably googled them).
Take a look at this before you read:
Similarly, a small fraction of my searches:
As a reader (and person), I want to know everything, so when I find something I don't know, I look to learn it. It is likely this omitted information would not bother every reader. It is also true that I enjoyed looking these things up, whereas another reader might yearn to understand but be more bothered by the lack of explanation in the novella itself.
This is a known, fine line to walk in hard science fiction, and I wouldn't want to change what this story is. But I believe in this case an editor could help to clear up some of these issues in case they are holding the novella back from achieving the audience it deserves.
That said, despite the above this was my favourite novella of the year. I will definitely be looking into other work by the author.
Space Ants: Never Say Die is a spectacular novella. A must read if you like space...or ants. It's really that simple!
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