Six Wakes

Rating: Impressive!

Ostensibly, this is a locked-room murder mystery. In reality it is a pretty deep dive into philosophy - of life, of what life is, of what is really important, and of what you choose to do with that life.

It's the story of a generation ship, where the only crew awake are six clones. The story begins as the clones are awoken amidst carnage. Their previous clones have all been murdered. Blood and other fluids are floating all over the room. All over the ship. And the clones have no memories of what happened, who killed them, why it happened, and not much of an idea what to do about it all. Their AI computer has been hacked and is inaccessible.

Although there is a lot of action, there is also a lot of pretty deep thought show more on the implications of cloning, of AIs, of betrayal, revenge and finding a way to live with past actions you cannot undo, no matter how much you might wish to do so. show less

So, a group of clones wake up on a spaceship. They've been killed. They have no memory of it, or of any part of the last 25 years. And they all have secrets. Ta-da! A locked ship mystery.

As a mystery story, this worked. The solution is telegraphed a little too much -- it was easy to figure out most of what was going on, pretty early on -- but there was one twist that did surprise me. (And yet it was not the ridiculous Twist Too Far that you often get.) As a science fiction story, this worked. It's mostly about a single technology, sequential cloning, and how it changes humanity and many of our favorite pastimes. And as a character-driven story, this also worked pretty well. You get to like the characters and empathize with, well, most show more of them, at any rate. Definitely half of them, anyway. And that's impressive, because this novel is mostly populated by people who have done, uh. Very bad things.

My complaints: I did kind of want -- more? Like, I feel like this was the first half of a story. Or maybe the first quarter of a story. And also the editing on this was...not great. Like. You expect errors, but this thing has errors that seriously affect reading comprehension -- the wrong character's name, wrong dialogue tags, bad word substitutions.

But, overall, interesting, well worth a read. Maybe not the book for you if you have problems with gore, eye injuries, or psychopaths locked on a spaceship with only each other for company. But if those things don't both you too much, this is a fast, fun, compelling read. (And I'd like to thank it for breaking my streak of bad reading luck. Yay! A book I really liked!) show less

This is an intriguing book, a closed room mystery where the victims and murderers don't remember recent decades as they all wake up 25 years into a space flight in new clones with old memories, with their previous bodies floating about them. It seems that everything that could go wrong is - the food synthesizer only produces hemlock, the AI is down and the logs are lost, the ship is off course, and they find a prior clone of the captain in a coma in the medical bay. As the six were criminals who undertook to crew the colony flight as a way to completely bury their pasts none of them are happy to share what motives might have lead to the blood bath. The use and implications of the cloning and mind-mapping technologies are the real stars show more of this book - I didn't really get a feel for any of the characters as people rather than as collections of capabilities and issues. The writing is good, and the plot moves almost quickly enough. Because of all the so-similar backstory material included it did drag a bit from time to time. I liked and admire this book, but do not love it. show less

Imagine waking up, naked, floating in zero-g with five other people, who are also just coming to. The six of you recently met at a launch party for the generational ship you are crewing together, the Dormire. Oh, also in the room with you are a few of your dead bodies.
None of you remember what happened. And you didn't just meet each other, either, you've been traveling together for twenty-five years. Time enough to learn each other's secrets. Time enough to plot how to kill everyone. If only any of you remembered.
Your mindmaps have all been reset to the initial recordings, they are as blank as your newest cloned bodies. There are no recordings, no logs and the AI is offline. All you have to go on are what little evidence can be gleaned show more from your former shells. Who can be trusted? Who will figure it all out first?

I was browsing the sci-fi section of our local used shop when I picked this one up to read the blurb. I had listened to Mur's podcast back in 2020, just after lockdown, but I had never looked into her work. When I saw that she had dedicated it to James Patrick Kelly, I bought it instantly. I am, to be brief, a fan. You can see the lineage of Think Like A Dinosaur here in Six Wakes.
I really enjoyed this Locked Room mystery. In Space! With clones and AI! And I'm not the only one who liked it. Six Wakes won the 2018 Hugo award, the 2018 Nebula award and was a finalist for the 2018 Phillip K Dick award. show less

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3031117.html

I had to swallow quite hard to accept the initial set-up - in Lafferty’s future, people routinely transfer their consciousness into younger clones of themselves, but clones have lesser rights than born humans and only one clone is allowed to exist at any one time. It’s no more ridiculous than faster-than-light travel, of course, or than a lot of other social and technological innovations that are sf staples. The plot then is a locked-room murder mystery, where the crew of a long-haul colonising starship are all resurrected to find that their previous bodies have been gruesomely killed and they have lost their memories of the voyage so far. The answers turn out to lie in the very show more construction of their society. Very nicely done. show less

Recommended for those who like complex, layered plots; intrigue; cyberpunk; and can deal with a generally nasty setting and unloveable characters.

There is a lot going on with this story, which centres on the six individuals who are running a generation ship, who all wake as clones having lost decades worth of memories of their work together. None of these characters are likeable, and I appreciate that, even while I struggled to get invested. All of them have been selected because of their criminal past, and none of them know what it is that the others have done. I never really did warm to any of the characters except Maria, who got quite a bit of the screen time. By the end of the book, Lafferty has managed to make her more a victim of show more circumstance than a hardened criminal, which is neither wholly true nor wholly false.

While I struggled with the characters, I did get very invested in the plot and the world building, especially as details of the past lives of the clones came out. I had initial misgivings about mixing a limited group murder mystery with clones in space, but Lafferty mostly manages to balance the two. show less

'Six Wakes' reminded me strongly of the early Asimov books. In the same way that Asimov set out the three laws of robotics and then presents mysteries that show their unintended consequences, Mur Lafferty sets out the Cloning Codicils governing the use of cloning technology and the rights of clones and then wraps a series of mysteries around them. Mur Lafferty's book is more ambitions than the early Asimov in complexity, scope and storytelling style.

'Six Wakes' wraps a well-thought-through view of the personal and social impacts of cloning in a fiendishly intricate puzzle, enhanced by clever reveals from multiple points of view and enlivened by frequent violent death. The mysteries are complex and inter-related in surprising ways, show more weaving in and out of one another over centuries of activity. The storytelling uses multiple points of view to trace the backstories of individual characters while carrying the current action forward. The result is something original and fresh that feels like the genius offspring of ‘I, Robot’, ‘Lost’ and ‘Revenge’.

I don't want to give the plot away as uncovering and solving the puzzle is the heart of the book, so let me describe it using a metaphor. Think of 'Six Wakes' as starting out as a broken analogue wristwatch. The watch case holds all the complex pieces that will make the watch work but theyre not in the right place so no one can tell the time. The challenge of the book is for the pieces to become aware that they're part of the watch and find a way to configure themselves to work together.

The watch case is a starship, staffed by six clones and an AI. The clones are all criminals, on the ship to earn a clean slate on a new world. The plan is that the clones will renew on death so that the ship can be staffed across generations. The broken nature of the watch becomes apparent right at the start when all the clones wake up at the same time and discover they've all be murdered and that neither they nor the AI has any memory of how it happened. Each of the characters is a piece of the watch. Each piece is more complicated than it at first appears and each piece has something to hide. With the starship, its crew and its mission under threat the characters need to find a way past their mutual distrust so that they can share their stories and understand what's happening.

And yes, that's the simple version.

The central puzzle - who killed the clones and why - works. The flashbacks add depth to the characters, deliver lots of surprises along the way and flesh out the context for cloning.

The only thing missing for me was any real sense of tension. Even when the risks were at their greatest, I didn't feel much sense of threat of foreboding. In some ways, this was good as it allowed me to focus on the plot. It also echoes the clones' it-doesn't-matter-if-they-kill-me-cos-I'll-be-back experience of life. Still, a little bit more tension would have turned this into a page-turned rather than a jigsaw puzzle.

If you like puzzles and admire a well-constructed plot and detailed, credible world-building, set against a background of violence and threat, you'll have fun with this book. show less