Debatable Space

At least there’s one aspect not up for debate in DEBATABLE SPACE, Philip Palmer’s debut novel: Predictable, it is not. The rest, however, may divide the sci-fi community: Old-school purists will nuture a distaste for its oft-Bacchanalian bent, while more adventurous readers will love it for its headstrong refusal to play by the rules – any rules.

The plot concerns – initially, at least – a crew of space pirates led by their graying Capt. Flanagan (the title is merely decorative). His merry men and women include a married couple, a former slave, a bioengineered man-beast, a 120-year-old man in the body of a prepubescent child and a sentient flame.

This “freelance capitalist group”’s mission: Kidnap Lena, one of countless daughters of the evil ruler Cheo, whom they despise for wiping out a planet and all its humanity strictly for self-serving political gain. They hold Lena ransom for money, a fleet and a sector of space to call their own; she says he won’t pay, but they disagree, for one good reason. (And even though that reason comes early in the story, I won’t divulge it here.)

The narrative then shifts – as it will willy-nilly until the bitter end – to excerpts from Lena’s “thought diaries,” which recount everything from sneaky, spy-like moves she made as part of a worldwide crime force to remembrances of guys she balled, including the one who could never maintain an erection and bring it home until she pulled a kung-fu move on him that temporarily stopped his heart.

Palmer then introduces an element of “DRs” – dopplegänger robots – which allow their users to experience things from a galaxy away, typically super-twisted sex games. Back in Flanagan’s world, there’s a menacing swarm of nanobots that omniously spell out words of warning in the air. With the exception of Lena’s ongoing self-history, it seems as if Palmer’s story is more episodic in nature than a cohesive, A-to-Z whole. That very well may be, but the book eventually threads as much as it can together. At least this approach keeps you on your toes.

And so does his welcome approach to playing with the conventions of a novel, primarily in the realm of the visual. Sometimes a page will contain only a single sentence in big, bold letters; other times, it may hold no more than a lone letter – one created by hovering bugs. A phrase like “up, up, up” actually climbs the page, while “down, down, down” plummets to its bottom. Four lines of ellipses? One hundred exclamation marks following a “BANG”? Palmer doesn’t think twice about employing such devices.

If that kind of experimentation piques your interest, DEBATABLE SPACE may sit well with you. I won’t say it’s the best sci-fi novel you’ll read all year, but it’s likely the most daring and wildly inventive. –Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.