Title: Lunar Surface Blues
Author: Leigh Kimmel
Publisher: Self-Published
Publication Date: April 22, 2023
Genres: Science Fiction, Alternate History
Length: 16 pages
Source: I received a free copy from the author.
Rating: 3 Stars
Blurb:
The High Frontier is no place for foolishness, but nature can always make a better idiot. Four years ago, Molly’s parents brought her up here to the Moon when their work brought them to Shepardsport. In the time since that move, she’s earned her place here and a seat on this field trip. Only one problem — she’s been given the worst possible EVA partner. A pencil-necked dweeb with an attitude, Benji wants to be one of the guys. But his stunts keep putting them both in danger, and the adults keep blaming Molly. When Benji gets in over his head, can Molly save him before it costs both their lives? A short story of the Grissom timeline.
Content Warning: Oxygen deprivation.
Review:
Nobody remains a child forever.
The world building was well done and memorable. Teenagers on the Moon need to grow up faster than teens on Earth due to the limited resources and high levels of danger there in this universe, so Molly and her classmates were given responsibilities that made them feel more like adults than anything else. Their community needed them, and they were generally ready to rise to the call to action.
I was hoping for more conflict in the final scene, particularly as it applied to Molly’s relationship with the classmate she was paired with for this assignment. So much time was spent building up to that moment that the way it was resolved felt a little anticlimactic to me. If only there had been more time to explain why things unfolded this way and what might happen to her next.
Molly was an intriguing and sensible protagonist whose past gently hinted at the alternative history aspects of the storyline for reasons that other readers should discover for themselves. I like it when little moments like these ones are included and would have happily accepted even more of them as well. While Molly was technically still a teenager, this isn’t something I’d necessarily classify as a young adult tale due to the high stakes of her mission and how mature she was. Not every culture considers teens to still be children, and this was one of the ones that didn’t encourage much of a gap at all between childhood and full adulthood at all.
This is part of a series but can be a read as a standalone work.
Lunar Surface Blues has piqued my curiosity.