As I’ve mentioned before (in my review of Volume 1 of The Sandman comic omnibus) I’m the type of person who wants to read the book before watching the movie.

Special effects have gotten so good, and modern authors have become increasingly more cinematic in their writing (probably a whole other post right there), that these days it’s a bit of a crap shoot whether or not one adaptation will prove conclusively “better” than the other, but reading still seems to give my imagination the most to do, and so I generally still like to try and read things before I watch them.

And so when I saw the trailer for Mickey17, I thought it looked amazing, and I immediately requested the book. But as the release date kept getting moved around (it was changed four times!), and I kept winning and losing holds battles with other library patrons, and with its seemingly short run in theaters (I think it was only three weeks at the theater near me), I started to lose hope that I would ever actually even read it. Once it was out of theaters, I wondered if I should even bother.

But I’m really glad I stuck with it . . .

Mickey7 manages to be both funny and a bit macabre, with some small doses here and there of philosophy — I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say the Ship of Theseus is mentioned in the book — as well as a brief and accessible approach to physics.

A big draw for me in reading Science Fiction and Fantasy is worldbuilding, and imagining what our society could look like in the future, what it might have looked like in the past if a few things were different, or what completely bonkers nonsense we can come up with if we simply put our minds to it. Mickey7 does engage in these kinds of thought experiments, but through familiar means which serve to highlight the unfamiliar twists. For instance one of the seemingly major antagonists in the book is a kind of sentient swarm of bug-like creatures called ‘Creepers’, which Mickey (the main character) and other planetary colonists find on a Hoth-like ice planet.

Mickey’s interaction with the ‘Creepers’, and some of themes therein, seemed to owe a huge debt to the ‘Buggers’ from Ender’s Game; however, in an interview at SUNY Brockport, author Edward Ashton claims receipts (aka influences) such as Clifford D. Simak, Isaac Asimov, and the early work of George R.R. Martin.

However, I wouldn’t say Ashton’s main interest in writing is the world on which his story is set. Indeed Nilfheim is just the canvas on which he explores his true interests: the Teletransport Paradox.

I don’t think that verbiage is ever actually used in the book, but in that same SUNY interview I linked to above, Ashton talks about Star Trek and how the platforms they used to beam up and down to planets never sat right with him. I believe he uses the term “murder machines”.

The idea here is that a copy of your body is made at the location of where you’re trying to go, and your body which is in your current location gets dissolved. Are you still you on the other side? For Ashton it seems like the answer is irrevocably no, and so what happens when the body at the starting point doesn’t want to die, but the other body has already been made. Who gets to live?

Ashton does a great job of making the ensuing hijinks compelling and sometimes funny, but I’ll admit that I sometimes felt the main philosophical question trying to be answered often got swept aside or lost in the plot. Ideas like Ship of Theseus and Schrodinger’s Cat are brought up now and then, but ultimately Ashton’s main character, the titular Mickey7, isn’t really the type of guy to really consider it fully.

It wasn’t until I was writing this review that it occurred to me that the theory of Quantum Superposition represented by the well known Schrodinger’s Cat example could potentially serve as a foil to the Teletransport Paradox.

In that theory, one of the multiple states an object can be in is location, so by that thinking you could be both where you started, and where you’re going at the same time until you are observed, in which case you would finally be in one place or the other. Notably, I think this does not involve there being more than one of you, and also does not involve you dying.

Somehow THIS theory of teleportation feels more interesting to me, but I fully recognize it is way less plot-driving. Also, now I’m thinking of a story in which a Mickey-like character goes about investigating his past iterations trying to prove that he’s actually someone else completely even though he looks the same and has the same memories . . . I imagine it will involve quite a bit of gaslighting . . .

There’s a lot here I guess hahah.

So, Give Mickey7 a Read?

Absolutely! Even given my criticism above, Mickey7 is wildly entertaining. Ashton has a gift for making hard concepts easy to understand (and actually entertaining to read), and I really enjoyed the book’s sort of dark wit but ultimately hopeful ending.

And ultimately, I’m excited to check the next book Antimatter Blues, and reinvigorated to watch the film when it hits streaming (I think) sometime in May!

Well that’s all I have for this week! What are your thoughts? If you woke up and there was another version of you lying next to you in your bed, what would you do? Would you be able to push yourself into the ‘Corpse-hole’ (aka matter recycler)?

Let me know your thoughts? Looking forward to discussing more about this one!