The Fortress at the End of Time
Joe M. McDermott
Tor.com
January 17th, 2017
Ensign Ronaldo Aldo just wanted to be cloned by ansible to a good post, fly ships on missions deep into space, and get more clones promoted out to other postings. That’s all anyone in the Service wants.
Unfortunately, his ratings weren’t particularly stellar, so his first cloning is to humanity’s most remote outpost. It’s so grim and boring, the person he’s sent to replace committed suicide.
He just wants to follow the rules and do a good job, but life out at Citadel isn’t that simple.
The basic premise of the book is that humanity has propagated all over space by data transmission by a tool called an ansible. It scans a person in one location, transmits data, and reconstructs them from matter at the remote location, creating a clone, or copy. When people do a good job and get promoted, they’re cloned again out to someplace better.
The main character isn’t an admirable guy (or even an interesting one), but through boredom, frustration, and ingenuity born of desperation we watch him turn from disappointed but stubbornly optimistic to pessimistic and reckless. The story is told as Aldo recounting his ‘crimes’ to a confessor, and we learn that although his crime may be seen as serious, by the end you can’t really blame him.
For anyone who’s been stuck in a dead end job in the ass end of nowhere that killed their optimism and good will, you’ll probably see Aldo’s unraveling as almost familiar.
JL Jamieson is a strange book nerd who writes technical documents by day, and book news, reviews, and other assorted opinions for you by night. She is working on her own fiction, and spends time making jewelry to sell at local conventions, as well as stalking the social media accounts of all your favorite writers.