Trafik

November 30, 2020
Ducournet (Brightfellow) dazzles with this whirlwind jaunt through a far-future universe, told in jargon-studded prose that turns gonzo science into gleeful lyricism. Mineral miner Quiver and her robot companion, Mic, “a deeply thoughtful gizmo” designed to keep Quiver from losing her mind in the lonely expanse of space, have only each other for company as they travel between jobs. When not cycling through fights and reconciliations over their human and robot foibles, Mic studies what little knowledge remains of a long-since destroyed Earth—reverently researching Al Pacino, Nikki Minaj, and Japanese culture—while Quiver escapes into a virtual reality that allows her to experience the wonders of nature—and where she keeps glimpsing a mysterious redhead. When their latest job goes awry, the pair flee and head to the planet Trafik. But to get there, they must brave a series of surreal worlds. The trek itself is delightfully absurd, but it’s in Quiver and Mic’s bittersweet, and often incomplete, remembrances of an Earth they never experienced that the novel finds its emotional center. Though the ending is abrupt and a hair too tidy and some of Quiver and Mic’s exchanges can be twee, overall their relationship is affecting, and each sentence is finely tuned. Ducournet remains a fantastic stylist.

Starred review from March 1, 2021
Odd-couple asteroid miners Quiver and Mic--a manufactured human and her artificial companion--explore the post-Earth universe in this surrealist SF tour de force. Quiver is a "transitional prototype...gestated in a dynamic carbon envelope" back on the moon. Mostly human but for the small detail of her chemical incubation, she nevertheless feels an acute sense of alienation. Mic, her fully robot AI companion, has been programmed both in the science of interstellar "rare mineral reconnaissance" and in the art of soothing Quiver when she "flips her fuses." Mic is also highly schooled in the cultural mores of the gone Earth, erased in "a cascade of catastrophes" which flung the remnants of the human race to Elsewhere, where they attempt to regroup. Via frequent data-dumps from Side Wheel, a virtual database of all things terrestrial, Mic has trained himself as a geisha, memorized the entire discography of "diva[s] from the distant past" like FKA twigs or Nicki Minaj, and developed a deeply erotic obsession with all things Al Pacino. Meanwhile, Quiver spends her time in The Lights--their spaceship's version of Star Trek's holodeck--immersed in a Jungian Eden that is co-inhabited by a mysterious redheaded woman. When an argument between the two miners escalates into name-calling (" 'You forking self-righteous GIZMO!' [Quiver] shrieks....'You maddening THINGAMABOB' "), Mic comes to a realization about his own selfhood. In the resulting existential backwash, the two badly bungle a rare mineral retrieval. At this, Mic and Quiver decide to go rogue and set a course for the planet Trafik, a fabled place of intergalactic free spirits where all their fantasies (even the Al Pacino ones) just may come true. What follows is a winsome space picaresque in which surreality piles upon surreality as the ill-matched soul mates navigate the unknown universe in their search for identity, belonging, and the sensual pleasures of the flesh, even if that flesh is actually machine. A longtime master of the extraordinary sentence, Ducornet has outdone herself here, blending SF's penchant for invented jargon with her own queer linguistic egalitarianism in which all adjectives describe all nouns (even such unlikely couplings as "profiterole lasers") in a primordial soup of possibility. This slender book captivates with its ferocious curiosity, quick wit, and ultimately tender generosity. Carried along by the bumptious rollick of its language, this tale is full of sound and fury, signifying literally everything.

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