Wellington has done his research (including consulting two actual astronauts, as referenced in the acknowledgements), and that gives the early Earth-bound sections a healthy dose of realism. It probably won’t surprise you to learn that the first half is the one I prefer. The first half is pretty solid Hard SF, while the second is firmly in the horror tradition. The Last Astronaut handles this disparity in approach by splitting itself pretty evenly down the middle. When the genres mix, you end up with a war between the need for answers and the knowledge that those answers can’t match our own imaginings. It’s not necessarily more dangerous, but the fear levels are heightened. being stalked through the darkness by an unknown monster is far scarier than fighting a man with a knife. Horror is a genre that falls apart when we get the answer. Almost all fears are rooted in the fear of the unknown. When something goes wrong, it is picked apart in terms we understand, and the situation is either resolved or abandoned in a logical fashion. Hard SF is rooted in our present understanding of science, so it’s a genre where we expect hard and fast answers. Here at least, these two genres don’t sit together very well. The first is Hard SF, and the second is Horror. The Last Astronaut is an odd mix of two quite different genres. But when a mysterious object approaches the Earth, it is Jansen who must lead the mission to make contact. When a mission went wrong and astronauts died, it was Jansen who shouldered the blame.
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