Unique Scifi Suspense in “We Have Always Been Here”

We Have Always Been Here, by Lena Nguyen, is a thoughtful scifi mystery about a colonization ship on a planet where nothing is what it seems on the surface.

In this future world of android workers and space colonization, the hardest aspect to accept is that anyone in the galaxy hired Grace Park as a psychologist. Park doesn’t really connect with or understand other people, so she mostly keeps the paperwork for a more senior shrink. There are hints from the beginning that the others on this ship have complicated backstories, that there are secrets and factions on the ship, and that the mission is not exactly as described, but Park’s frankly dreadful at her psych job and doesn’t exactly encourage confidences or even social chats with the other crewmembers. This leads to her social isolation even before anything mysterious begins to happen… but fortunately loner Park seems more comfortable this way. Her complex special interest in the ship’s androids often takes the place of socializing with humans, which introduces readers to the world of synthetic workers and the relationships between androids and humans.

The small crew on the Deucalion (yes, perfect name) is tasked with exploring a newly discovered planet, Eos, and sending data back to ISF, the massive conglomerate who owns basically everything. In a darkly realistic future, desperate people take conscription jobs with ISF to get off an almost-uninhabitable Earth and give their families a better life in a new colony somewhere. The futuristic debt-slavery is believable, almost a logical extension of entire careers spent paying back student loans, and the idea of a massive everything company has a lot of the worldbuilding that made The Warehouse darkly suspenseful. This novel shows a hostile, dangerous galaxy, with the depressing effects of greed and climate change, but without veering into edgy grimdark nihilism. There’s still a reason to care, and many of the characters are motivated by family and love. The worldbuilding is so great (except for Park’s inexplicable career choice?!?!?) in this novel.

Most of the humans on the ship are scientists, since androids handle the work of cooking, cleaning and general ship maintenance.  I loved the locked-door feeling of this ship life in the beginning of the mystery. There were a lot of the elements I’d enjoyed in Emma Haughton’s Antarctica mystery, The Dark. Isolation, hostile elements outside, old secrets from back before the mission. This leads to heightened suspicions between crewmembers, especially as strange things begin on Eos. There’s a real tension as characters have terrifying experiences, unsure if there is something very strange on Eos or if they’re cracking up from the isolation.

We Have Always Been Here is a dramatic mystery, but the pacing is slightly off in this novel, with several of the flashback scenes of Park’s life and of Eos’ history feeling like filler. There were too many different scenes to make a point about young Park and her androids, or about Taban on Eos.  Also, there were way too many exciting, dramatic, tantalizing moments with no explanation beyond a vague statement that “there are anomalies here.”  I actually don’t much care if fictional technobabble works…  I love Star Trek and accept without question that characters can replicate anything for their comfort and enjoyment, but also need to go on dangerous missions for certain space MacGuffins that somehow can’t be replicated.  But you’ve got to tell me the reason is, like, the antimatter conduction drive was damaged in the proton storm, or whatever. Too many rounds of characters having wild experiences on Eos and just saying there are anomalies here felt slow and frustrating.  Because the book dragged in parts, I kept putting it down, but then the suspense and the worldbuilding brought me back in.

Overall, this was a thought-provoking, mysterious world, with occasional repetitions that detracted from the suspense. When it was working, though, We Have Always Been Here blended Park’s personal story with wider, wilder questions of what it means to be alive and to live.