Chimera by Alice Thompson review: Times Literary Supplement
“Chimera is above all interested in what makes humanity human, in the face of madness, loss, betrayal and the cold silence of outer space.” Lily Herd, of the Times Literary Supplement
Lily Herd is an assistant editor at the TLS, a leading magazine for culture and new ideas that publishes expert reviews and essays by the best writers from around the world, and we are thrilled to share Herd’s thoughts on Alice Thompson’s latest release.
Chimera by Alice Thompson is a gripping, deep space novel that sees scientist and dream investigator Artemis travelling to the distant moon of Oneiros. Her ship, the Chimera, has been sent to look for organisms that will help assuage Earth’s global warming, but it becomes clear on the journey that there are other disturbing reasons for the mission.
In Herd’s review, published in the latest edition of the TLS (September 8 2023), she described Chimera as a “brilliant” sci-fi novel which challenges readers “not to understand the physics, but to follow the novel’s strands of mystery”.
It reads: ““The dream is alive”, claimed the astronaut John Young, on landing the shuttle Columbia in 1981, following several successful orbits of Earth. For the characters of Alice Thompson’s brilliant new sci-fi novel, Chimera, dreams remain elusive. Their reality is a combination of space, artificial intelligence and a complex relationship with gravity. Young’s vision of cosmic travel and the ways in which it might change the world is destined, in Thompson’s hands, to become nightmarish.
“As her characters “cruise” through space, Thompson keeps the science - the “atoms and molecules and stardust and dark matter” - accessible and in harmony with the poetic tone of the book. This world feels like a natural continuation of our own, including its ethical dilemmas.
“Chimera is above all interested in what makes humanity human, in the face of madness, loss, betrayal and the cold silence of outer space.”
To read the full review of Chimera on the TLS website, please click here.
Chimera is available for order in paperback at £10.99.
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