2021 science fiction, short novella in the Diving Universe series. A
backwater planet's moon has a complicated hazard; what happened to the
ship that famously vanished?
Like The Spires of Denon, while this is nominally set in the
Diving Universe it doesn't have any connection to it: no wreck diving,
no Fleet, no anacapa drive, no familiar worlds. I suppose it's
Rusch's prerogative to say which universe it's set in, but if I'd been
expecting more about any of those things I'd have been disappointed.
(It's possible that a later book will tie it in, of course, but that
hasn't happened with Spires.)
On its own terms it's quite fun, written as an in-universe document
describing what's known of the events and what can be reconstructed
based on similar incidents. The notional author interviews various
notional people who were connected with the mission, and everyone's
biases are showing. Overall the piece is inconclusive (there's no
"what actually happened" at the end), but I've got used to that with
Rusch.
Definitely not worth seeking out unless you're already a fan of
Rusch's style. If you do hardcopy, I trust there'll be an anthology
eventually, rather than the current set of thin expensive chapbooks.
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