Dead Man on the Moon by Steven Harper
Cover art by Zuccadesign
Published by Phobos Impact
Reviewed by Leigh Kimmel
I originally came across this book about the time I was reading Sharmon DiVono's Blood Moon. I had developed a real interest in reading science fiction about lunar settlement, from classics like Robert A Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress to the more contemporary computer game novelization Rebel Moon. However, the copy immediately accessible to me was part of a stock of merchandise for a business, so I was hesitant to read it and risk degrading its condition. I did glance through it enough to get a general idea of the storyline, but not enough to constitute an actual reading, just enough to confirm that yes, it was a sf police procedural.
Recently, I came across a book called Gunpowder Moon. At first glance, I thought that it would be a police procedural like this one, but as I began reading it, I could see it was in fact more of a thriller. So I wanted to go back and read this book so I could compare and contrast this one.
In this novel, Luna City is primarily a research settlement, with some commercial activity. The biggest draw for it is Luna University, which offers the possibility of studying and doing research on the Moon. The story starts with two students gathering samples for their professors only to make an unexpected -- and horrific -- discovery: a human body, dead and desiccated from being on the lunar surface without a space suit.
Meanwhile our protagonist, Noah Skyler, is arriving at Luna City to study materials engineering. Because he's a former police officer, he's hardly gotten introduced to his roommates at his new apartment before he gets a call from the Chief of Security. They've just discovered a body on the lunar surface, and they need another person with crime scene investigation background.
So Noah has to do an EVA to examine the body in situ, and pretty much everything goes wrong that could possibly go wrong. Unaccustomed to the lower gravity of the Moon, he uses too much force when moving the body, and ends up damaging it -- a major professional lapse. Worse, his partner on the EVA is a blamer, and seems determined to make the situation even worse by subsequently going to the Chief of Security and making Noah sound like a completely incompetent and irresponsible bungler who's blaming and attacking him.
Noah has no more than dealt with that mess when he comes home to his apartment and finds a party in progress. One of his roommates, a buddy, and two girls are going at it. Noah's less than happy, and it leads to an unpleasant confrontation. He ends up booting the partiers, and he thinks that will be the end of it.
And then he gets word that his roomie has been found dead, drowned in one of the fish tanks that provide most of the protein for the inhabitants of Luna City. However, unlike the mystery body on the surface, this guy isn't completely dead. There's still enough tissue function left that they can use super-advanced regeneration technology to grow him new brain tissue. However, the damage is sufficiently extensive that he is considered to be legally dead, and with him any legal issues related to the drug use that appears to have lead to his death.
Specifically, the drug known as Blue for its ability to give a man a sort of artificial "blue balls." It's used to sustain an erection -- suggesting that it had its beginning as a legitimate erectile dysfunction medicine -- and is favored by the party set. But overdoses can have serious consequences -- and it looks like someone is smuggling it in and selling it to others.
So Noah has two criminal cases on his plate, one of which is rather personal, with a big load of survivor guilt attached to it -- if he hadn't kicked out those partiers, the one guy wouldn't have been down in the aquaculture area, high as a kite on Blue. And even as Noah's trying to sort out his classes, he's also preparing a vaudeville act to entertain the community up here. And while he's rehearsing before his act, the guy in charge of the lights makes a complete hash of everything, raising serious questions about his professionalism. It's a very stressful moment at which Noah comes very close to snapping at the malefactor.
Meanwhile, the Chief of Security, Linus Pavlik, is carrying out his own investigation of both deaths. He's particularly concerned about how personally Noah is taking the death of Viktor Riza -- as if he were personally responsible, just by tossing the man and his fellow partiers out of the apartment in order to get some sleep. Pavlik also wants to get to the bottom of what exactly happened during the investigation of the crime scene of the John Doe found on the lunar surface. He has two people telling him the exact opposite about what went wrong with that, and they can't both be true. Who's the blamer, and who's getting beaten with the blame stick?
He's also getting some interesting information from the Luna City doctor, who doubles as a medical examiner at need. It seems the John Doe on the lunar surface is a complete unknown. There's no DNA record in Immigration's database -- and every single person who lands on the Moon, even shuttle pilots who stay in their spacecraft, has to be registered. So they're looking at someone who shouldn't even exist -- and they have to figure out how he could be on the Moon when it should be impossible for him to be there.
I found these sections fascinating for the background information they gave on Linus, particularly his heart condition that makes it impossible for him to ever return to Earth. It started as a mild illness, but he was so covered up with work that he ignored it, figuring he could just tough it out -- until it laid him out flat. Turned out that the infection had settled in one of his heart valves, and damaged it to the point it needs to be replaced. Except for one problem -- when stem cells are taken to culture a replacement valve, it turns out he has a susceptibility to develop cancer, so he's stuck with the damaged one. As long as he stays on the Moon, in 1/6 g, he's fine -- but if he were to go to Earth and stay under 1g for any length of time, his heart would almost certainly give out from the strain.
And that's particularly difficult because he has a family -- and his wife can't immigrate and become a permanent resident. Part of it is a career issue, and part of it seems to be some form of flatphobia -- a deep and pathological aversion to leaving Earth. She can endure it for short visits, but it sounds like she needs some kind of medicine, and quite possibly assistance from her "obie," as people's onboard computers are called. These are implanted devices connected directly to their brains, which enables them to connect to the local Internet on the fly and do a bunch of other things that require a handheld or other digital device in the here-and-now.
That's just one of the interesting bits of transhumanist technology that is mentioned in passing in this novel, creating a sense that the century to come will see all kinds of cool technology helping humanity live in such an extraordinary environment as the Moon -- but that human nature remains pretty much the same as it always has, including the capacity for irrational jealousy, as well as arrant stupidity.
The ending has some aspects that approach that of a thriller, as Linus and Dr Fang go out to examine a shuttle that they have reason to believe to contain critical evidence, and suddenly discover it's been tampered with -- after they've removed their space suits and are in deadly danger when a hatch starts opening automatically. However, that element is pretty well necessary to create the "ticking clock" urgency of the ending, and doesn't really change the subgenre, which remains firmly within the "police procedural" zone.
The novel is handled as a fair mystery -- all the pieces are there for the reader to find, or a least notice in retrospect, although they are often revealed in moments that are particularly trying for the POV character, so that it's easy for the reader to miss that yes, this is a clue that will prove important later. And while the fictional technologies of the future world are important in daily life, all the key clues are things that could happen in the present day, because they depend on fundamentals of human nature, not technology.
On the whole, it's a very satisfying science fiction police procedural in the tradition of Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel. My only complaint would be the lack of sequels in over a decade since its original publication. The layout of the cover, with the words "LCSI: Luna City Special Investigations" at the top and the actual title at the bottom with the author's name, would strongly suggest that this novel is the first in an ongoing series about law enforcement investigating murders and other serious crimes in and around Luna City. It's interesting to compare and contrast it with Andy Weir's Artemis, which comes to a sufficiently definite conclusion that it's acceptable as a stand-alone, even if it leaves some opening for future sequels. I'm thinking that the difference is that Artemis is presented as a self-contained novel, while this novel is packaged in a way that indicates that it will be the first in a series, setting up an expectation that, as of yet, has not been met.
Especially now that indie publication has become a major Thing -- the author is a member of Book View Cafe, a writers' indie publication co-operative, so he certainly has the wherewithal to re-issue this volume and put out subsequent ones -- I wonder whether there's some kind of issue with the rights not being reverted by the original publisher. I know from some things Sarah Hoyt has said that some publishers can be decidedly difficult about releasing the rights of books that they are no longer really keeping in print, on some pretty spurious grounds. As if they're more interested in keeping the author from making money than on making money themselves -- a "dog in the manger" attitude.
Buy Dead Man on the Moon from Amazon.com
Review posted March 31, 2022.
