Dystopian fiction can feel like a literary form of disaster tourism. The reader is invited to wander through the ruins of a doomed civilization, marvel at the wreckage, then close the book to return to a world where, hopefully, the sky isn’t filled with apocalyptic death clouds that rain poisoned razor blades. In THERE ARE NO STARS HERE, J.S. Thompson makes the idea of disaster tourism—watching the world crumble from a safe, comfortable distance—the novel’s central moral and existential conflict. Beginning with an epigraph by Benjamin Franklin—”Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety”—the narrative interrogates this tension between freedom and security, as well as what people are willing to sacrifice for a guarantee of security.
THERE ARE NO STARS HERE imagines a near-future America ravaged by environmental catastrophe and political strife (any resemblance to present-day America is purely intentional). Communications executive Solanis Tailor is driven from her Boston home after the deadly Haze—the aforementioned apocalyptic death clouds—destroys the city and causes the death of her brother. Solanis takes shelter in Shamut, a high-tech, domed city that offers protection from the Haze. As she explains to one of the Dome’s leaders, “It has to be safe… I want to make sure it’s safe. Because I can’t go through this again.” Security, however, comes at a steep price; Shamut is a tightly controlled, cult-like surveillance state that ruthlessly silences dissent and “antisocial” behavior. A second storyline, set in the American Southwest, follows Manuel: a scientist-turned-U.S. congressman obsessed with finding and rescuing his mother, who is trapped somewhere in the Free Republic of South Texas (FROST).
As a portrait of a dysfunctional near-future society, THERE ARE NO STARS HERE is thematically closer to Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go or Hugh Howey’s Wool than 1984 in its depiction of a repressive society that maintains control through seduction and conditioning instead of coercion. No one is forced to live in Shamut; its residents voluntarily give up freedom in exchange for a comfortable life in a manufactured reality. By contrasting a willing participant with someone who leaves a place of relative safety to head into the disaster zone of FROST, Thompson suggests that it’s better (no matter how difficult and painful) to live an authentic life in the real world. In the words of Manuel’s father: “We are strong. We work for solutions… You turn pain into something productive.”
This is a big, sprawling novel of ambitious scope, featuring numerous storylines and a huge cast of characters. There’s a considerable amount of world-building to absorb, but Thompson keeps the reader from becoming mired in expository details with brisk, energetic pacing, snappy dialogue, and a refreshing focus on character and psychology over plot construction. An unsettling vision of a broken future, THERE ARE NO STARS HERE presents a compelling case for the moral necessity of engaging with the world’s horrors—rather than simply watching them from a comfortable distance.
THERE ARE NO STARS HERE by J.S. Thompson offers psychological dystopian fiction that prioritizes character development over action, examining how ordinary people rationalize complicity with authoritarian systems when safety becomes the ultimate currency.
~ Edward Sung for IndieReader