Review of Dead Space by Kali Wallace

Over the years I have paid less and less attention to science fiction and fantasy awards. It’s become normal to celebrate vanilla, or laud politics over quality or innovation. But occasionally I will peek, and one award I have lingering attention for is the Philip K. Dick Award. While producing its share of stinkers, it has traditionally looked beyond the mainstream, making it a potential gold mine. Rudy Rucker’s Software, Ian McDonald’s King of Morning, Queen of Day, M. John Harrison’s Nova Swing are examples of PKD award winners. Winning 2021’s Award is Dead Space by Kali Wallace. Why not have a look?

Dead Space is a locked room mystery set in a cyberpunk solar system. ‘Locked asteroid’ the better descriptor, the majority of Hester Marley’s investigation takes place deep in space inside a 15km-long rock being mined for valuable minerals. Marley an AI expert, her initial intentions of helping set up a colony on Titan were set aside when terrorists attacked and killed the majority of the expedition. Left with multiple bodily prosthetics and deep in debt, Marley has become an indentured servant of Parthenope Enterprises, one of the largest solar system corporations. Thus, when a dead body turns up at their mining operations inside said asteroid, it’s Marley they send to investigate. Little to her knowledge she is stepping beyond the corporate and into the violently political.

The fuse lengthy, Dead Space takes its time fizzling toward its dynamite. But Wallace makes the bang worth the reader’s while. Leading scenes are relatively short and tight, and constantly build toward answering the larger, whodunnit mystery, particularly the seeming impossibility of the murder. A small but effective cast of secondary characters are slowly introduced, both helping develop the wider plot as well as adding suspects to the mix. And when the explosion does happen, Wallace does not depend on any deus ex machina or inorganic surprises to fuel it. The rush of tension is a nice fountainhead bringing together all the story’s elements to that point, and the underlying explanation is likewise grounded in what the reader knows. In terms of pure murder mysteries, Dead Space has all the pieces going for it.

If there were anything to improve, or anything that could have made Dead Space a better book, then perhaps a touch sharper prose would have made the scenes pop off the page a bit better. Combining this with a touch more detail in the setting(s), particularly the mining operation inside the asteroid, would have allowed for a more tangible imagining of the story, as well as bulked up the tension toward the climax—claustrophobia something the book doesn’t really take full advantage of.

But aside from these minor matters, Dead Space is tough to discredit. Wallace set out to write a tight, sturdy mystery, and succeeded. Is it the most literary, ambitious novel out there? No, it doesn’t do anything fresh or new. But innovation clearly was not the goal, and what the story does, it does well. A cyberpunk murder mystery that starts slow but stealthily escalates into an exciting climax, Wallace builds an intriguing story that could have done with a touch more setting (to anchor the tightness of the locked room mystery), but puts good energy into the other parts—plot setup, mystery escalation, red herrings, etc. It keeps the pages turning. Is Dead Space the strongest Philip K. Dick Award winner? No, but it’s worth a read for people who enjoy such combinations of science fiction and murder mystery, or, who are looking for a nice, relaxing, escapist read in general.