Moonbound

by Robin Sloan

A new book by the author of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. I decided to read it after watching a short video that Sloan made called “I made a fantasy script in the tradition of Tolkien (and so can you) “.

He doesn’t take himself too seriously. After somewhat high language setting up the backstory (“The Anth mustered a final invasion to breach the moon”), when most people on earth died, to read “this was a bummer” was great. Reminds me a little of DFW, how he uses slang intermingled with $10 SAT words.

I didn’t take a lot of notes. Here’s a plot summary:

We are waaaay in the future. Humans had some kind of war with AI “dragons”. The dragons now live on the moon but still rule earth in some sense (or at least, they can destroy earth if people do things they don’t like). There is a medieval-seeming village (Sauvage) and a boy named Ariel. The early plot is weirdly similar to… and then exactly like, The Sword in the Stone.

Except, rather than pulling the sword from the stone, Ariel runs to a cave he recently stumbled across, where a space pod holds the dead body of an ancient female warrior, Altissa Praxa. She has a sword, which he takes and gives to his brother Kay.

Two things happen: 1) Altissa had an AI living in her bloodstream all that time, for thousands of years. The AI is some kind of fungus that is able to read from (and sort of write to) human thoughts. It “jumps” from Altissa to Ariel. The AI is the narrator of the book!

And 2) the wizard Malory who kind of runs Sauvage gets very upset. He set up this whole sword/stone thing specifically for Ariel to complete the story, but we don’t know why. He says an encantation, and everyone in the village is frozen so he can reset things. But the AI blocks the encantation from reaching Ariel’s ears, and he runs off. Something like that.

The adventure includes talking beavers, a walking robot that shares a hive consciousness with other walking robots, a burly treasure hunter. Ariel manages to deliver a signal to call down a hero from space who mankind (or the Anth, humans from 10k years earlier) left as a safety net. A girl named Durga awakens and tries to help defeat the dragons.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. It has a lot of creative ideas, a sense of fun, and usually didn’t get bogged down in anything boring.

Here are my notes:

Altissa’s sword is named Regret Minimization. (45)

“When you’re alone, even a hateful companion is a companion.” (46)

The golden elk who talks to bees. They live in a hive among its antlers. “Often I carry the burden of declining, so they can remain kind.” (57)

“Don’t judge your fortune until you’ve mapped it more completely.” (86)

“Tyger, Tyger” = an Anth… science collective? Lab? Encrypted all Anth DNA and stored it in animals so the dragons would find no one to fight on earth.

On p. 162, a reference to the Festina Lente symbol from Penumbra!

“A rainbow is just a narrow window” into the light that exists. (170)

The “dragons” in this book descend from LLMs (“language machines”). So they have “a bias toward… plot.” I like that! (228)

“I was born in San Francisco, the city the future reached back and made, because it was going to be needed.” (238)

“The sun was hot but the air was cold: One of the planet’s great combinations.” True! (290)

Vocab

• berm - a narrow shelf, patch, or ledge. The shoulder of a road. (289)
• hibernaculum - shelter during hibernation (384)
• petrichor - the smell of rain after a long dry spell (10)
• regolith - unconsolidated residual or transported material that overlies the solid rock on the earth, moon, or a planet (405)
• saccade - rapid, twitching eye movement (392)
• sauvage - French for wild, untamed (8)