The Mimicking Of Known Successes by Malka Older

On the plus side, with this I’ve finally read all the nominees for Best Novella for the 2024 Hugos! That said, what a strange set of entries for this year. As Doug has opined elsewhere, this was not a good year for the category Jo Walton considers an excellent barometer of the speculative fiction zeitgeist.

The Mimicking Of Known Successes is fine. The conceit is cute and the worldbuilding rather brilliant. Essentially, humanity has fled to a planet they call Giant (but which I’m pretty sure is supposed to be Jupiter) after having pretty much destroyed Earth. Society has reorganized itself around the literal platforms they’ve built to support humanity, far above Giant’s gaseous surface. Travel from platform to platform involves railway services which are free by necessity since overland travel is otherwise impossible.

It’s to one such platform, tho remote and scarcely trafficked, that Investigator Mossa is summoned. A gregarious if narcissistic visitor named Bolein has gone missing, with the fear being that he either jumped or was pushed off of the edge of the habitable area. When Mossa learns that Bolein was attached to Valdegeld, the platform where her former girlfriend Pleiti now works as a scholar at the renowned university, she doesn’t hesitate to show up on Pleiti’s doorstep to ask for help.

Pleiti does know Bolein, who had a reputation around campus as being something of a blowhard. He was always happy to talk about his own theories, but didn’t have any interest in listening to others, even to Pleiti’s own research into rebuilding Earth as an integrated ecosystem. He doesn’t strike Pleiti as being the kind of person who would suddenly kill himself in such a quiet, tidy manner, so she sets out to help Mossa figure out his last few days in hopes of solving the mystery of his disappearance. What they learn will lead them all over Giant as they uncover a criminal conspiracy that could very well jeopardize both their lives, just as they’re starting to reconnect once more.

I really enjoyed the evolution of what constitutes Classical vs Modern in this setting, and laughed when Mossa dropped the “why are men?” crack towards the end. Living on a gas giant is a wonderful thought experiment, as readers see how humans have adapted to the hostile environment, and how they cope with no longer having Earth. As the framing for this novella, it’s excellent stuff.

It’s a pity then that the execution of the tale is so uneven. The mystery itself seems like a series of dramatic set pieces, with only two scenes (discovery of the theft and the rocket launch) actually making sense. The rest isn’t even window dressing, it’s just nonsensical clutter. This book has absolutely been compared to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s body of Sherlock Holmes mysteries so yes, if you want to pretend that the made up bullshit of The Speckled Band is good writing then sure, The Mimicking Of Known Successes is more of the same — an ironic twist that I’m fairly certain was not the point of the title.

I’m not sure if I was disappointed by the allegedly sapphic romance between Mossa and Pleiti. Readers only discover that Pleiti uses she/her pronouns towards the end, and I’m not sure why it takes so long to declare. I’d much rather it have been clearer that this was not a typical heterosexual romance, which is what it reads like for most of the book. I also found the romance itself unconvincing, with a lot of blurting out of opinions and not a lot of actual feeling. Representation is great, but can we have interesting representation please?

Anyway, this novella was solidly middle of the pack for me. Thornhedge is my top choice, followed by Mammoths At The Gates, then Seeds Of Mercury and this book, which barely pips Rose/House to fourth place. Dead last is the dismal Life Does Not Allow Us To Meet. And that’s the end of this year’s Hugos voting for me! I do a recap of my voting this year over at my newsletter, for those interested in seeing how I feel about artists and longform dramatic presentations in addition to the prose I cover here.

The Mimicking Of Known Successes by Malka Older was published March 7 2023 by Tor Books and is available from all good booksellers, including