We Have Always Been Here by Lena Nguyen | 07/06/2021|DAW

There are echoes of Alien and Forbidden Planet in Lena Nguyen’s debut novel, featuring the crew of a survey ship hastily dispatched to a remote planet in response to a distress call from a crashed mining ship. Not that the ISF (which may stand for Interstellar Frontier, but it’s never made quite clear) cares about miners, it’s just that there’s something strange and possibly valuable on the planet.

The crew of humans and androids are fully as mismatched as that of the Nostromos, but the main character, Dr. Grace Parks, one of the two psychologists on the mission, is no Ripley, even if she is the one person who has a clue about the strange hallucinations that the crew is suffering. Parks, as she’s referred to throughout the book, is every bit as emotionally stunted as the androids. She’d never cared for human contact and always preferred the loyal, if limited human-shaped machines.

She’s an unlikeable protagonist, and that’s not just my opinion, as we meet her on the first page recovering from the effects of a prank played on her by her crewmates. Park isn’t a therapist, a job left to Dr. Killer, the other half of the psychic compliment. Instead, she stands aside from everyone and watches them for signs of going space crazy, because that happens on survey missions sometimes, right? So it’s not surprising that she’s nobody’s favorite shrink.

Nobody human anyway. The androids all like her as much as their programming allows, and maybe a bit more since they’ve arrived at the planet and everybody is acting more than a little strange.

There are two timelines, not counting flashbacks to Park’s growing up with her favorite android. The main story follows survey crew down their spiral into paranoia and madness. Interspersed is the account of the two miners Daley and Taban, stuck on the planet after an asteroid collision knocked out their FTL drive. Daley becomes obsessed with the confounding physics of the planet, while Taban just wants to fix the ship and go home. They too have an android, a HARE exploration unit, but nobody is going to mistake it for a person, what with the spider legs and metal frame. Like Parks, Taban feels more in common with the HARE than his pilot, and the pair of them are probably most likable characters in the book.

I’m sure the author would like The Murderbot Diaries readers to pick this up, but while Murderbot shares Park’s introversion and discomfort around people, its charm is that it’s easy to identify with for readers who would also like the world to stop spinning so we can binge our favorite shows.  On the other hand, you may enjoy the psychological thriller aspect of watching the mismatched crew become less human as the androids become more. In the end, the biggest monsters come from the Id, as always.