Roseanna Pendlebury Renan Bernardo’s Disgraced Return of the Kap’s Needle, recently shortlisted for the Nebula Award for Best Novella, follows events on a generation ship sent out to colonise the exoplanet Kapteyn D. In this story, he marries traditional aspects of a generation ship story with some of the themes and atmosphere of earth-based cyberpunk and other capitalist dystopias to examine a relatively familiar story shape from a slightly newer angle. The planet the ship is traveling to, thought to be habitable after initial advanced scans, is revealed to be home to toxic fungal life, contact with which is quickly and painfully fatal. Despite the expedition’s huge cost in money and human hours and lives, the Captain has made the decision to relaunch the ship, returning it to earth and away from their promised new home. But, as the ship was never designed to make such a return journey, critical supplies are low and life is degrading fast. The story predominantly follows the…
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