INVISIBLE THINGS

Kidnapped astronauts find themselves in a mysterious city on one of Jupiter's moons.

Sociologist Nalini Jackson landed a gig that many of her colleagues would envy: She's undertaking “an intensive field study of social dynamics” on a NASA cryoship orbiting Jupiter. The problem, she soon realizes, is that she doesn’t like people all that much, especially most of the overgrown frat-boy types who are her shipmates. Things get worse when their ship is suddenly taken by mysterious forces to Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, and they find themselves in New Roanoke, “an American city of at least a million. On a freaking moon, 444 million miles away, for chrissakes. In a bubble. City streets. Expressways. Parks.” They’re made to attend an orientation, where a supervisor tells them, “You can either let it drive you crazy for the rest of your life—and it can—or you can just go with the flow and make the most of this. Do like the locals do: Accept it and live your life. You got no choice; this is your home now.” The ship’s mission leader, Bob Seaford, takes this advice and gets involved in the community’s ruling party, while Nalini’s friend Dwayne Causwell goes the other way, plotting to escape the city with a ragtag group of dissidents. Meanwhile, a crew consisting of a NASA admiral, a businessman, and his dopey assistant embark on a voyage to rescue the kidnapped astronauts, who find themselves dealing with “invisible things,” mysterious gravitational forces that the people of New Roanoke refuse to discuss. There’s a lot going on in this book, and the results are mixed. As a satire of American politics and class issues, it’s a little too obvious and clumsy. But as a science-fiction novel, it’s saved by Johnson’s charismatic writing and sense of humor. (“So we missed sentient life—so what?” Nalini tells Dwayne early in the book. “Have you ever met sentient life? A lot of them are assholes.”) The book doesn’t quite live up to its high ambitions, and it’s far from Johnson’s best work, but it’s still unquestionably entertaining.

Clumsy in parts but, overall, a lot of fun.