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How High We Go in the Dark pairs Station 11 vibes with a euthanasia theme park for kids
Sequoia Nagamatsu’s debut novel How High We Go in the Dark is the winter’s most ambitious science fiction book: a sequence of interlocked stories that’s drawn comparisons to sagas like David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas and Anthony Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land. The story begins in a near-present, where an Arctic expedition accidentally releases a virus that makes people’s bodies mutate and shift form. Each story follows different characters further into the future, as the plague spreads and humanity evolves. These stories involve spaceships and robot dogs, death hotels and a euthanasia amusement park for sick children. And yet these are also down-to-earth stories about how people navigate their jobs and relationships, chase their crushes and worry about their kids, as they head into an unpredictable future.