Alt-Media: Mickey7

2022, Edward Ashton -- audiobook

Lo and behold, I actually listened to a 9 hour audio book over the last few weeks, during commutes and while running errands. I have literally never listened to one before, not completely because of bias (admittedly, I do think proper "reading" and "listening" are two separate methods of absorbing the "written" word) but due an assumption of costs. Then I noticed that Spotify does more than audio-drama podcasts, and has a good number of books to listen to, I gave it a go. And, having enjoyed the movie and being curious about the original book, I thought, "Why not."

First thing up, and no it's not "the book is better" -- oh, it is, but the first thing I need to get off my chest is that the reader of an audiobook should not do the voices. For one, leave it to the reader to put his own voice on the characters speaking. And secondly, a man doing a "girl voice" just sounds terrible, unless you are going for comedic effect, and at worst it ends up telling us about your latent misogyny. If an author is not able to impart upon you an accent or vocal characterization from the actual words used, then a reader should assume everyone has the same flat accent.

Mickey 7 is not the movie, and nor should it have been -- sorry, that's an inverse statement; the movie was not the book. But, of course, it is the core from which the movie came. Mickey Barnes is an expendable, forced to join a colony ship after making the wrong bet on his best friend / greatest enemy's sports game. Berto is an athletic, capable, confident and extremely arrogant man who has Mickey always in his shadow. Berto comes out of sports retirement to play one last game before he joins the colony ship on its way to Niflheim. He wants to leave his name in legendary status on their colony of Midgard, but Mickey, who secretly despises his friend's good fortune, doesn't think Berto stands a chance at winning. He bets large. He loses, and the money he now owes means he only has one chance -- get off Midgard. Mickey knows there is no possibility of  finding a "real" job on the ship, because he doesn't really have any skills, so he signs up as Expendable, a crew member whose job it is to die on behalf of the colony. Each time he dies, he will be vat grown again, and his last memory backup downloaded into the new body. 

Its an expensive concept, and each new body requires a lot of resources. Its also a very very sociably unacceptable concept, and most people think the idea is insane. And there is a religious (not cult, accepted religion!) organization that is actually entirely against the idea. Its all because the creation of the technology started with a genius sociopath dropping himself, and his tech, on a planet where he began to kill off the local populace, to provide raw source material for duplicates of himself. When the rest of the colonial Union learned of what had happened, they responded by destroying the planet and banning the process except in the most controlled environments.

The crux of the rules is that "multiples" cannot exist -- only one iteration of a person at a time. They only create a new Mickey if the old one dies. But Berto is lazy and risk averse, so when he sees Mickey stumble into a deep crevasse on Niflheim, he assumes the man must be dead. Mickey's girlfriend Nasha knows he survives the fall, but Mickey assures her he cannot get out of the hole, so he will "pop his seals" and die. Except he doesn't. He is "rescued" by the local lifeform called "creepers", giant millipede like bugs. Well, until this one rescues Mickey, they were all assumed to be arm length and non-intelligent. Buuuut because that leaves "Mickey 7" alive when he shouldn't be, Mickey doesn't disclose this detail about the creepers until much later.

Much of the middle act of the book, if you can liken books to having acts, is Mickey7 and Mickey8 dealing with their situation. Unlike the movie, there is not a vast personality difference, but both of the men believe they deserve to exist and they know they have to hide their existence. There is a lot of focus on how hungry they both end up being, because food is rationed and the colony leader Commander Marshall, who is not the pompous ex-politician of the movie, just your usual gruff, angry military style man who is a member of the anti-Expendable religion, but also knows he requires one on the mission, has it in for Mickey and doesn't need much of an excuse to punish the man.

There is also a lot of world building / exposition, as Mickey fills in the details around colonization since "the Diaspora" had to abandon Earth. Most colonies fail. And all colonies are very very VERY far from each other; even with their close to unlimited engine reserves and extreme speed of space travel, it takes years, if not decades to reach other possibly habitable worlds. "Possibly" is a key point, as they only have the long range sensor data, and that doesn't always mean much. Many colonies arrive only to die off or be killed off by local life forms or the environment. Some die on the way or are lost. Colonization seemingly means death, but they keep on doing it. The book does not comment on the why.

The book does eventually reveal both Mickeys and the existence of the creepers being more than bugs, but it doesn't delve into them much. Mickey7 knows they are sentient, and when Marshall sends him/them out to destroy them he turns the tables. Not in any grand gesture like the movie, but simply telling him that Mickey8's bomb is in their possession and now the two sentient species on the planet have a stand-off relationship. Oh, and its the creepers who figure out the communication / translation bit, not Marshall's technologists. 

Overall, for my first audiobook, I enjoyed myself. I feel the experience is parallel to (proper) reading, and I doubt I will ever be able to pull the two closer together as the "same" experience. It took years for my brain to eliminate the bias between digital books and physical books, even though I embraced the simplicity and convenience of digital books, I just absolutely love the tangible nature of a nice hardcover. For me, the audiobook pulls me further from the author's words because it has someone else's voice attached dominantly to it. That makes it an entirely different experience, more akin to adaptations than the source. But time will tell whether my brain will also rewire for this.

Of note, I am using Spotify, and only fond out during my second audiobook that while the subscription provides the audiobooks for "free" its limited to 15 hours a billing period. Most audiobooks start at 10 hours. Yeah, fuck you spotify.