I'm a huge fan of science fiction and a decent fan of murder mysteries, and I'm beginning to realize how much I enjoy the merging of these two genres. For me Dead Space contained a lot of what I liked about both genres, and only a little of what I don't care for as much.

In terms of science fiction: it has the futuristic setting, the multi-planet spanning plot, the space stations and outer space exploration, the fusing and man and machine, and the excitement of artificial intelligence.

In terms of murder mysteries: it has, well, the mysterious murder, the cast of suspicious characters, the red herrings, the betrayals, and the numerous twists and turns.

The author does a good job of developing the characters and building the world(s) around them. I especially liked the Protagonist (a brilliant scientist-turned-lowly-security officer who struggles with her past defining her future), the Investigator (an calm and commanding Martian with a complex past I would love to learn more about), and the Lawyer (a disagreeable rich boy who actually has a heart of gold, er maybe bronze).

The book also engages with a lot of interesting concepts, including unchecked capitalism, corporate enslavement, scientific exploration, and the pros/cons of artificial intelligence. Even being set so far in the future, it felt a little too close to home with its portrayal of greedy, insensitive corporations and Earth as an uncouth antagonist of other worlds and species.

My main complaint is the overwhelming amount of exposition. Though a lot of the details relate to the characters and the setting, they still came across as bloated and overdone. Exposition is par for the course with science fiction, but here it just felt like much too much. Also, I had some minor quibbles with comically overdone action sequences involving robotic spiders.

Overall there's a lot to like here, from the compelling characters to the scenes of brutal violence to the surprising plot twists. There's also a nice bit of representation of the LGBTQ community and persons with disabilities, which was refreshing. It's a character-driven space murder mystery with elements of horror, and the second half especially had my flying through the pages.

(3.5 stars rounded up for Goodreads) ( )

I really liked the first half of this book. The main character and supporting characters were interesting, Wallace's writing style was solid, the world building was enjoyable, and it had a decent mystery. Unfortunately, it boils down to a bad action movie in the third act. Also, it spends a lot of time talking up how badass these A.I. weapons are, but then the characters start going through them like tissue paper in the climax. Almost gave up on this with 30 pages to go. ( )

Actually I find the existence of a large body of interconnected information (interconnected because it mutually supports itself, which it can only really do by being close to reality or even "truth") furnished by decades of science on the brain furnishes me (together with my experience though it works without it pretty well) with a structure that gives my imagination far more purchase than a blank sheet. I can come up with much more interesting novel ideas in this world of prior ideas, by building on them imaginatively. That my ideas must be "true" does not make them less imaginatively interesting. It's harder to come up with that sort of idea. You need imagination, but you also need insight and to integrate it (or knock out someone else) or it won't work. You need more imagination. What a I like to call SFional ideas. If you reckon it's good enough, you test it and then start thinking about those ideas to write a good SF novel. That’s one way. The other way is imagining anything arbitrary you like and but that’s ultimately unsatisfying because it’ll lead to crap SF novels (vide Dewes’ godawful first and second novels). Constraining to physics the landscape of ideas requires more imagination not less when we answer "why does xyz happen or have that shape"? It's imaginative like a chess move is maybe.

I’m glad we still have contemporary SF writers like Wallace that do it the hard way by grounding the SF in sound physics (the mystery in itself is quite good but what made me rate this novel higher than the usual SF dribble is the way Wallace uses Physics to make the world on the asteroids sound real and fascinating). After the first volume, Wallace is still going strong. ( )

Hester is stuck in a dead-end job doing security for a big corporation in space instead of the AI work for which she is highly qualifie, because she needs to pay off medical debts following an explosive disaster. But when her friend David is murdered shortly after sending her a cryptic message from another asteroid, Hester volunteers for the mission to investigate the murder. Hester's character and attitude are well-developed and strong, the theme of corporate greed mosre relevant than ever, and the artificial intelligence issues are thought-provoking as well as suspenseful. ( )

The two genres of fiction that I love most are science fiction and mystery. So when you have a book that combines both, especially when the mystery is like a space version of all those classic English manor house mysteries, you know it is going to appeal to me.

In a far distant future mankind has expanded into the universe but the main driver for the conquest of space is corporate greed. Hester Marley thought she had escaped the corporate world to work on a project to explore Titan with a group of like-minded scientists. Hester's contribution was as an artificial intelligence (AI) expert. She trained an AI which would land on Titan and independently explore the moon, reporting back to the project. On the way to Titan a group of terrorists exploded the ship. Hester and a few others survived the explosion thanks to a ship sent by the corporation Parthenope. Hester was badly injured and required extensive surgery which she now has to repay to Parthenope. To do this she is working as a security expert on Hygeia, a Parthenope space construct. Unexpectedly she hears from one of the other survivors, David Prussenko. He's been working on an asteroid that is being mined by Parthenope using his robotics skills to maintain the artificial mind that basically runs everything on the asteroid. Just after she receives this communication from David she learns that he has been murdered. Since a security team from Hygeia is going to investigate the murder she asks to be assigned. The other members of the team are her supervisor, a forensics specialist (with whom Hester had a relationship when she first got to Hygeia) and a lawyer. There were only 12 humans on the asteroid when David was killed so the pool of suspects is fairly small. Surely with security camera footage and forensic evidence the team can find the guilty party and wrap up the investigation fairly quickly. Except, there is no security camera footage for an hour surrounding the time of David's death, nor any other recording. The team has a fairly difficult task ahead of them. Then the bodies start to pile up!

Several times I thought I had figured out what was going on only to be surprised by another revelation. I was very impressed with Wallace's plotting and Hester is a very interesting character. Wonder if there will be more Hester Marley investigations? ( )