Across the Void

Vaughn’s uneven near-future debut centers on May Knox, pilot and commander of the Stephen Hawking II, who wakes up alone in her spacecraft with no memory of recent events and no idea how her history-making voyage to the Jovian moon Europa failed so completely. On Earth, her husband, Stephen, whose research fueled the mission, is stunned to discover she’s alive. Over time, May recalls they filed for divorce before she left. As the two struggle to close the physical and metaphorical distance between them, they cannot be certain whether the obstacles in their way are already too great. Readers drawn to the promise of a female-centric SF novel with a strong heroine and a sassy AI will be disappointed to find that as the story comes to a head, old conventions of male ego–driven storytelling surface, making this work less than groundbreaking. In the end, supposed protagonist May (who boldly declares to Stephen, “I don’t need a hero. I’m the hero”) is rendered as just another damsel in distress. As novels about female astronauts continue to bubble up, this one sinks. (July)