A Review of Outbound: Islands in the Void by Richard M. Anderson

 (Precocity Press, 2024). ISBN: 979-8-9898304-6-6

A few months ago, I reviewed Richard M. Anderson’s nonfiction book, The Evolution of Life: Big Bang to Space Colonies (a 2023 Nautilus Silver Award Winner), which is an ambitious and ultimately successful text that encapsulates the evolution of life from the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago to the present. I encourage you to read that review for details on the far-ranging and fascinating subjects Anderson tackles through his exploration of Earth’s present, past, and future.

The final portion of Evolution of Life is devoted to the possibilities and pitfalls of space exploration and colonization. It looks at political, social, environmental, and many other aspects of the endeavor, which tech billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, along with NASA, see as an inevitable and even preferable part of our future. At least for some of us.

Outbound is Anderson’s fictional imagining of what this all might look like. He offers an Introduction and a final Author’s Note that position the novel in relation to The Evolution of Life. The novel is well written, with interesting characters. The technical never gets out of hand (Evolution is at times very technical) and there are conflicts in Earth–space relations and events on Earth that keep the story moving.

Outbound takes place 220 years in the future and spans a decade (2245 to 2255) before jumping 846 years into the future for a final, extended chapter that truly ups the mystery that is subtly building throughout the previous chapters.

In all honesty, I found the geopolitics of the novel to be its greatest point of interest. In thinking about my approach to this review, I immediately recalled the aftermath of the publication of William Golding’s The Lord of the Flies. Golding famously disagreed with the critics’ and scholars’ interpretations of the novel, being very vocal in speeches concerning where he felt they got it wrong. Sorry, Mister Golding, but, having written nearly a hundred books, plays, screenplays, essays, how-to articles, and various other works of fiction and nonfiction on which the public and critics have commented, I know one thing is a certainty: once the work is public, the interpretations of it also belong to the public.

Keeping this in mind, and stressing that this is one practitioner–reviewer’s interpretation of this novel, I offer the following, which is much less a critique (as I said, the novel is well written, with interesting characters) than an interpretation of its themes.

Primarily, I was surprised at how little progress the human race has made in 220 years. The inevitable horrors of climate change and abuse of Mother Earth have extensively changed the politics of the planet after wiping out more than 2 billion people. Landmasses have gone away and others have been changed (Antarctica is now largely inhabitable), and all of the dire warnings that dystopian writers have given us in the past 10 years about prejudices against climate refugees (“unwanted immigration” as it is termed in Outbound) are fully in play. One need only think of the crises of mass immigration to America from 2021 to 2024 and the controversies of people being bused, flown, and trucked to other places and the rise of so-called Sanctuary Cities to get a very real idea of what Anderson is describing.

Connected to these massive global changes, Earth is governed by a single entity with a Parliament, with its own branches of the military (the navy being the most prevalent branch by far). There is also, and most interesting to me, a very strong, consistent thread of Classism. While most of the world’s remaining population struggles with the challenges of Maslow’s lower hierarchy of needs (aka Survival), the Elite—especially the technical–scientific class (sound familiar?)—are jetting off to exotic resorts, a “refuge” where they “escape the harsh realities.” These are places “too expensive for all but the wealthiest.” Throughout the novel, no matter the crisis on Earth or in the burgeoning space colonies, the Elite are wining and dining each other. Most food is synthetic in space, so getting “real” food and alcoholic beverages is a point of focus for them and also shows who holds the bulk of the power.

Status, in other words, survives.

There is also a continuance of “the bubble” as it is currently termed, where children of the Elite attend the most prestigious, connected universities and are given the best opportunities postgraduation. A daughter of one of the central characters says, “If I’m going to put in the work and study time, shouldn’t I get a degree from an awesome university with a prestigious name?”

Violence is a constant on Earth, a situation that the space colonies (who are arcing toward a separate government) seek to avoid by intensive screening of potential citizens. Once selected, these denizens of space are subjected to a secret surveillance state. The details of the physical and psychological screenings are impressive and, as reflected in Evolution, are clearly well researched and thought out by the author, as are the details of mining, terraforming, and daily living in space.

On Earth, there are rebels and disruptors both within and outside the government. Some of the characters reminded me of people currently in positions of global “leadership” (both elected and not) and the sycophants with whom they surround themselves. This lack of behavioral maturity even 200 years from now is fully to be expected (the tech–morality gap is a serious flaw in the tripartite brain), and I applaud the author overall for not giving us any kind of Utopia. After all, anyone who is paying attention knows that the tech billionaires now in control of the planet are all about population reduction. While Bezos prepares to take pop stars into the outer atmosphere, Amazon announced 10,000 layoffs—a result of so-called (and grossly misnamed and oversold) artificial intelligence.

Speaking of AI, it is of course inevitable in any vision of the future. There is tech in Outbound that reflects Musk’s Neuralink and the neural nets we know so well from Star Trek. It is a vision of artificial general intelligence that the tech elite are willing to lay off tens of thousands of people and invest hundreds of billions of dollars to achieve. This type of technology (both in reality and in this book) is potentially very dark, and the author writes some IOUs concerning aspects of neural implants and advanced technology (echoing 2001: A Space Odyssey/HAL and some classic episodes of Twilight Zone) that Anderson partially pays off in the final chapter, which also operates as a mystery box.

One important element to space exploration and colonization that is wholly absent from Outbound (and Evolution) is exopolitics—encounters, cooperation, negotiation, and perhaps hostilities with nonhuman intelligences. Given the work of decades of researchers, testimony from experiencers, and the Disclosure revelations of the past several years from the military–industrial–intelligence complex, this aspect is something for anyone involved in this subject matter to keep in mind.

It is rare to see both fictional and nonfictional work from the same author and reading Outbound and Evolution in tandem or in sequence (I read the nonfiction first and that is my suggestion to you) is fascinating, and a credit to the time, effort, and intelligence the author has invested in his work.

One thing is for certain—the future is fast upon us and some form of what Anderson envisions in these books will undoubtedly unfold. It will be interesting to see where fact and fiction ultimately meld.