The Scourge Between Stars

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While I enjoyed the characters and the setup of The Scourge Between Stars, the horror elements were not developed well enough to leave a lasting impression. The novel would have benefitted from being more thoroughly fleshed out, with emphasis on providing greater deviation from the familiar plot points of Alien. The signal-to-noise ratio was abysmally low. This was nothing like the scrubbed-up audio she had heard in Data. Punches in the static vaguely reminded her of words, but she couldn’t make out anything coherent. Just as she leaned closer to the garbled sound, the transmission cut out. There's some word choices that feel a little off, one of those first-book, pre-hard-editing kinds of things (' stared at a horrible noise,' and my personal peeve, an inappropriate 'smirked'). Hopefully, that will improve in the final edition, but I'll note that it seemed better than the average first-book. Tense, gory, and genuinely creepy…. Brown handles the astronomy and exobiology equally as competently as the interpersonal dynamics and trauma. The result is a sci-fi horror mash-up that holds its own with the classics of the genre.” — Publishers Weekly But in her dreams she had always emerged from the Calypso after her father and mother, with her sister beside her. No matter the promise this signal held, that dream would never come true. She was painfully reminded of that by the eerie sound floating out of Watson’s familiar face, a face stolen from the grave.

This novella has everything I want in a sci-fi horror: lots of action, excellent character arcs, and a solid resolution.” — Buzzfeed Something about it made her gooseflesh turn into an outright chill. With astrophysical and instrumental sources ruled out, there were only a few things it could be. Ness Brown's The Scourge Between Stars is a tense, claustrophobic sci-fi/horror blend set aboard a doomed generation ship harboring something terrible within its walls. A perfect scare to swallow up in one sitting.” —Chloe Gong, #1 New York Times bestselling author of These Violent Delights If you liked the fast-paced action and horror elements of the Alien movies, I think you’d really enjoy The Scourge Between the Stars.

Ness Brown

Ness Brown’s The Scourge Between Stars is a tense, claustrophobic sci-fi/horror blend set aboard a doomed generation ship harboring something terrible within its walls. It has a good heart: an interim female captain trying to find her footing, a potential romantic interest, the sense of scrappy, desperate humanity going to try and overcome the odds through science, technology and grit. With all the elements that were eventually brought into the story (spoilery thematic stuff family trauma, failed colony, missing fleet mystery, robots/AI, finite resources, insurrection, romance ), it might have been a bit too much for a novella. NESS BROWN is a speculative fiction author by day and astrophysicist by night. They are a proud New Mexican living in New York City (and missing green chile) with their husband and two cats, Faust and Mephi. They are currently studying graduate astrophysics after several years of teaching astronomy and encouraging students to wonder about worlds beyond our own. The Scourge Between Stars is their debut. He’d explained it to her before—the decades that the fleet had spent on Proxima b, exposed even at the terminator to the host star’s radiation tantrums, had corroded a number of systems and machines. The captain had stopped answering his comms and leaving his quarters last week. As the first mate, she could only cover for him for so long. She stared at the closed door, wondering for the nth time if she should rip out the panel next to it, scramble the wires controlling the mechanism, and force her way in.

This was a really fun sci-fi horror. Reminiscent of the Alien franchise--and, to be honest, if you've seen any of those movies you kinda know how it goes--Ness Brown utilizes some of the typical tropes of sci-fi horror, but it in no way bores you. The Scourge Between Stars is short, sweet (well, bloody), and to the point.

Tense, gory, and genuinely creepy…. Brown handles the astronomy and exobiology equally as competently as the interpersonal dynamics and trauma. The result is a sci-fi horror mash-up that holds its own with the classics of the genre.”— Publishers Weekly I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. The Scourge Between Stars by Ness Brown I thought the scenes involving the alien monster were so well done. Brown creates tension right from the beginning, starting with Watson’s creepy messages that don’t make much sense at first, but become chilling in hindsight. There’s definitely some Alien in these sections—the dark corridors of the ship, a terrifying scratching noise coming from behind the bulkhead walls, and of course, the sudden appearance of what’s been hiding from the crew and some very tense chase scenes. Brown uses tried and true space tropes to tell their story, and they worked. The Calypso is made up of much more than them, though—a whole contingent of nameless ‘officers’ and ‘techies’ who make up the rest of the ship’s population, and who occasionally become redshirts for the prowling alien predators. A perfect blend of science fiction and horror…Short, fast, engaging, wildly entertaining, and unexpectedly gory, it almost demands to be devoured in one sitting.” — Locus

That was absurd, since infrared sensors in the captain’s bunk would’ve alerted her already. But it was a stain she couldn’t wash from her mind. Science fiction and horror go together like peanut butter and jelly. It’s a delicious concoction that begs to be devoured whenever it makes its way to my plate. And much like the sandwich, there is no perfect ratio of jelly to peanut butter, each sandwich offering its highs and lows, but always delectably finishable. But every now and then, you manage to perfect the unrepeatable ratio and create heaven for your tastebuds. The Scourge Between The Stars, a debut novella by Ness Brown, is one of those sandwiches with the right ratios, smashing together well recognized tropes of the combined genres, while adding her own spin to the tried and true formula. There were literally times when I gasped out loud, and wished I could read it with my hands over my eyes. It had been cheaper to take to the heavens than try to undo the environmental sins of twenty-first century capitalism.”

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The emergence of this sinister lifeform is a scientific breakthrough, the first proof of extraterrestrial life and therefore worthy of study. However, it is also a menace to everyone aboard the Calypso spacecraft, so the crew must debate about whether the alien should be destroyed or preserved for scientific posterity. The Scourge Between Stars is a SF-Horror novella from Ness Brown. I had the opportunity to listen to the audiobook, which is performed by my favorite narrator, Bahni Turpin. It could take weeks—months—years to translate this data.” Otto hummed. “Perhaps longer to figure out how to use it to map a safe route.” She looked as stupid yelling outside the bulkhead now as she had the first twenty times. “We voted to decelerate again today. Repairs are ahead of schedule, but we can barely take another hit.” She recited the items from the briefing at the wall. “I vetoed the delivery of extra resources to Orion and Cygnus Wards. There will be more demonstrations, but our ration levels are already critical.” After a pause, she shared what had happened in Data. “Otto may have figured out a way to avoid the engagements.”

Carry on then,” she snapped. Otto jumped at her tone, but she wasn’t looking at him—she was looking at Watson, who tilted its head at her curiously. Unable to stomach its docility anymore, she turned on her heel and stalked out of the office. I can only speculate,” Otto said, kneading Watson’s unyielding shoulders excitedly. “But this might be the way forward.” There are many things to love about The Scourge Between Stars. What really pushed me over the fence to read this book was when I saw that not only was it a sci-fi thriller but that it was a short one at that! It seems hard to find bite sized sci-fi in today’s world with all the space operas coming out. (Not that I don’t enjoy a good space opera!) However, having a manageable story for all types of readers was certainly a plus.I’m doing much more than that,” he insisted. “I’ve developed and imported into Watson a processing library more sophisticated than anything Data has ever run before. This morning I put the finishing touches on a new series of tasks that should be able to find what we’ve been missing.” The Scourge Between Starshad so much potential, but unfortunately it ended up being way too ambitious for its length. Still, Ness Brown’s writing is really good, and despite my reservations about this book, I’d love to see what they come up with next. The nitty-gritty: The Scourge Between Stars had plenty of thrilling action, but the story itself was too big for the short format. While Brown does a nice job of building the world and the ship, this is one of those that I'd say falls under 'sci-fi' light as it doesn't get too far into the mechanics and details of the technology. There's enough to give us the parameters for the set-up. That's okay; I didn't need Aurora level technical details, but some might want more. I, for instance, found myself wondering more about the crisis that launched multiple giant colony ships without better resources.