Emma Newman, Planetfall & After Atlas

Emma Newman,

• Planetfall, Roc, 2015.
• After Atlas, Roc, 2016.

"Why two covers?" are you asking, "You never put two covers even if it's a series." Thank you for being so observant a regular reader (or if it's the first time you come here, welcome). Planetfall and After Atlas are both set in the same universe. They are both tied by one event: a ship called Atlas leaving Earth with humans aboard. But they can both be read as stand alone novels, you could even read just one and not the other. On the other hand, reading both as a diptych will certainly illuminate the stories more...

Planetfall.
Colonists from Earth have arrived on a planet, looking for God under the guidance of a woman named Suh. The novel follows Ren, an engineer. She's obviously troubled by a tragedy that happened when they arrived on the planet and that she hid from the other colonists. But suddenly, Suh's grandson appears outside of the settlement.

Planetfall has hints of 2001, but the quest of a higher power is often in the background and the mysterious tragedy that surrounds the apparently happy settlement is centre stage of this intense novel.

After Atlas.
Forty years after the ship Atlas has left Earth in search of God's planet, Carlos Moreno, whose mother left aboard Atlas when he was a boy, is indentured and has been working for decades as a detective for the Ministry of Justice. He's assigned to the murder of Alejandro Casales, a cult leader he knew when he was a boy.

At first glance, the novel has all the  attributes of a cyberpunk whodunnit: the main character is a troubled loner, it starts in a rainy city and moves to a chic hotel in the country where the crime happened.

For all appearances, both novels are extremely different: while the first one is  a metaphysical planet opera but above all a story about mental breakdown, the other one is a dystopian noir cyberpunk that moves from a Blade Runner like setting to Agatha Christie with more gore and virtual reality.
The themes and tones are different too: Planetfall is raw with grief. It strikes true and is gut wrenching. After Atlas is, for most of the novel, a grim social commentary through a murder investigation and reminds at times of The Stars My Destination.
But both have this common theme: how do you flee a life that's a sham and in which you try to hold onto appearances and find small ways to make it bearable?
The characters are certainly a highlight of both novels: Ren, in Planetfall, is written with an amazingly true intensity. Carlos, in After Atlas, has all the appearances of the hard-boiled detective and reveals, layer by layer, his anger and his drive.

By reading Planetfall first and then After Atlas, both endings will be even more striking and leave you wondering what will happen. But it will also make visible how both, despite such different stories and settings, are a variation on the importance of choices. Reading the diptych will make you ask for more of Newman's writing... And since she has also written a series of fantasy novels, Split Worlds, that wish can be easily fulfilled!

The author's website.

Update - 3 May 2017: After Atlas has been shortlisted for the 2017 Arthur C. Clarke Award. An excellent choice!

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If you've liked Planetfall and After Atlas, you may also like

Tade Thompson, Rosewater.

Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Time.

Emily St John Mandel, Station Eleven.

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