Mickey7

Edward Ashton

I think what the Bong Joon-Ho film gets so right about this book, is the tone. There are changes to the plot, to the characters, to the pacing - to most aspects of the story, really. But what remains is that funny, simple, at times almost slapstick, goofy humor that makes Mickey such an enjoyable narrator. If you liked that element of the movie, well, happy reading…

Mickey7

Edward Ashton

imagine you found out that when you go to sleep at night, you don’t just go to sleep. you die. you die, and someone else wakes up in your place the next morning. he’s got all your memories. he’s got all your hopes and dreams and fears and wishes. he thinks he’s you, and all your friends and loved ones do too. he’s not you, though, and you’re not the guy who went to sleep the night before. you’ve only existed since this morning, and you will cease to exist when you close your eyes tonight. ask yourself – would it make any practical difference in your life? is there any way that you could even tell?

Mickey Barnes is the Expendable on the beachhead colony mission to Niflheim, and he’s sick of it. Sure, the thought that he will regenerate in a new body after death isn’t wholly unappealing, but having died six times already, he’s feeling the weight of his truly undesirable role. And being left for dead through a series of miscommunications and unfortunate circumstances has yielded him a multiple. Now there are two Mickeys, which poses even more problems. Top that with diminished rations, a lying best friend, and a highly suspicious commander: Mickey’s sticky situation is only growing. And with a potential violent conflict with the locals on the horizon, things really couldn’t get any worse…

and so, like bored young men throughout history, I spent an unfortunate amount of my time finding ways to get myself into trouble

everything’s easier if you can just accept that and move on

Ashton conjures a fun voice and perspective through which to chart humanity’s outward journey from Earth, with all its hazards, horrifying missteps, and surprising successes. Mickey, an outward dolt but an inward thinker, colors the reader’s perceptions on what is important in these agonizing voyages of hope and thin margins, cluing us into the strange possibilities of space travel and what it all might mean for our humanity.

the fact that it doesn’t make any measurable difference in any way whether I’m the same person or I’m not means that there’s no possible way for me to know for sure

I think that’s when I first realized that despite all the training, despite the indoctrination, despite the incontrovertible fact that I’d died five times by then and I was clearly still alive – deep down, in my heart of hearts, I did not believe in immortality