Goldilocks belongs on the shelf right between The Martian and The Wanderers, the hyper-mechanical and the ultra-psychological novels about deep space. This finds some really good middle ground between the two, but its greatest strength is its ability to reflect on the political realities of the modern world. The race for the stars sprang from political rivalry, and Laura Lam describes a near-future world in which politics once again spurs humanity to other worlds. Only this time, it’s not a cold war but literal rising temperatures: climate change is killing the planet, and rather than do the hard work of reversing it, humanity is looking to start fresh. Or, certain segments of it are. The rich ones, and the male ones.
But a few highly trained women decide to change that. The Atalanta Five, as they come to be called, have to steal the ship that should have been theirs by right. They had the skills and the training. But a less experienced crew of men were given the honour at the last minute—or so they thought. And so Valerie Black, entrepreneur scientist and billionaire, takes back what’s hers, and puts an all-female crew onboard the Atalanta just before takeoff.
From the name of the ship to the name of the destination planet (Cavendish), and even the main character’s last name (Lovelace), the book is permeated by the names and stories of defiant and neglected women of history and myth. Heck, even the title, Goldilocks, refers to a woman—one who steals from bears and refuses to settle until things are “just right.” Obviously this is not the meaning of the title (Goldilocks Zones refer to planets on which liquid water can exist), but it provides yet another reminder of the ways that women’s and girls’ contributions are ubiquitous, inescapable. No matter what some do or say, female stories and female success resists and endures.
Naomi Lovelace, Valerie’s adopted daughter, has another potent story of resistance and endurance to layer atop those tales. Passed over again and again, Naomi has stubbornly remained true to her dream of space. But unlike both her mother and her adoptive mother, Naomi didn’t get into robotics or engineering. Instead, she focuses on xenobiology, developing crops that can sustain humanity during space travel and then on another world, under the light of a very different sun. It hasn’t been easy. We see her sacrifices of time, of relationships, and of all other facets that make a life. Naomi is a woman and all women, wondering how to reconcile herself to a world that doesn’t value her, wondering why she has to reconcile any of her choices at all.
Valerie is an excellent foil for Naomi, with similar dreams of space but different motivations and methods. Her confidence and determination spring from her ego, not her desire to please or do well by others, and much of her power comes from her charisma. Naomi, more reticent and inwardly-focused, nevertheless harbours an equally iron will, though she’s torn about how and when to put her foot down. How she learns to do so is a major part of her character growth, and a really excellent aspect of Goldilocks. Too often, books about exceptional people don’t show them changing or learning, but another of Naomi’s great strengths is her adaptability.
There are several twists I didn’t expect but really loved. Most have to do with motherhood, which is a thoroughgoing theme of Goldilocks. Who has the right to choose whether you have a child, or children? How do you give birth to a new biome, a planet, a society? How do you parent it, what values do enforce? The book really sheds a light on how climate action and gender are linked, but it doesn’t offer any easy solutions.
It does, however, have a pretty straightforward take on wealth inequality: it shouldn’t exist. Valerie Black may be a “good” billionaire trying to help the world, but her “help” always somehow ends up sating her ego and bolstering her company. As her motives become suspect and her means even more so, she and the entire crew have to grapple with the inequalities they only thought they left behind on earth.
The final confrontations, though, wobble dangerously on the edge of cartoon villainy, and the final decisions are made more for literary reasons. (In trying not to spoil anything, I’ll just say that no one on board is an immunologist or political leader. What exactly will their choice accomplish?) There are lots of moral questions raised, but solutions veer toward the pat, convenient. A dramatic crisis pushes people to change (even though crises more often deepen inequalities). A few brave souls make a world-altering difference (even though coalition-building is often more successful in the long term). The book doesn’t fully grapple with the moral questions, because it decided from the outset what those answers should be. Bad people die or are punished, and everyone finally sees the correct way forward, hooray! But the evil deeds had some dramatically positive consequences—so what do we do with that?
Sit with it, I suppose. Take it as a cautionary, that we can’t let things get so bad as to require deadly solutions. I don’t think this book will convince anyone who isn’t already onboard with its political stances, but it’s a good reminder not to put our hope in billionaires or demagogues. And remember that planets and political rights are fragile, and must be defended with both action and sacrifice. We can’t have oil and fast fashion and all the other trappings of capitalism and still have a planet. And we can’t solve the world’s problems if huge swaths of the population are excluded from the conversation.
Goldilocks is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers as of April 30th 2020.
Synopsis | Goodreads
The Earth is in environmental collapse. The future of humanity hangs in the balance. But a team of women are preparing to save it. Even if they’ll need to steal a spaceship to do it.
Despite increasing restrictions on the freedoms of women on Earth, Valerie Black is spearheading the first all-female mission to a planet in the Goldilocks Zone, where conditions are just right for human habitation.
The team is humanity’s last hope for survival, and Valerie has gathered the best women for the mission: an ace pilot who is one of the only astronauts ever to have gone to Mars; a brilliant engineer tasked with keeping the ship fully operational; and an experienced doctor to keep the crew alive. And then there’s Naomi Lovelace, Valerie’s surrogate daughter and the ship’s botanist, who has been waiting her whole life for an opportunity to step out of Valerie’s shadow and make a difference.
The problem is that they’re not the authorized crew, even if Valerie was the one to fully plan the voyage. When their mission is stolen from them, they steal the ship bound for the new planet.
But when things start going wrong on board, Naomi begins to suspect that someone is concealing a terrible secret — and realizes time for life on Earth may be running out faster than they feared . . .
Goldilocks is a bold and thought-provoking new thriller for readers of The Martian and The Handmaid’s Tale.
