CisLuna

CisLuna is the second book in the Galactican series. Set in the near future, where climate change and political upheaval have transformed Earth, the nation-state of Sierra (the west coast of the former United States of America) have colonized the moon and placed multiple space stations in the L1 Lagrange point, a stable orbit spot between the Earth and the Moon. The new space colonies are owned and managed by the SpaceCorp, and created as an escape from the political pressures coming from the other new nations created from the dissolution of America.

The SpaceCorp has several thousand people working on the Einstein-class space stations and hasn’t had any major issues until the body of a flight surgeon is discovered and they need to bring a detective up from Earth to investigate. It is through Detective Sergeant Roy Stone’s eyes that we learn more about the lives of humans in space and the dangers they face from the harsh space environment. What wasn’t expected in those dangers was the presence of a serial killer.

Cisluna is part of a growing genre of realistic near-Earth science fiction, probably the most famous of which are Andy Weir’s The Martian and James S.A. Corey’s Expanse series, both of which have received movie or TV treatments. Author Ejner Fulsang, a tech writer for NASA and SETI, brings a lot of real-world experience to his writing and it shows in the amount of detail included in the descriptions of the space stations and life on them. That aspect of the books should appeal to new readers who are following the new push into space by Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. Where CisLuna could use some work is in characterization and dialog, which doesn’t always flow well. But this is a good mystery space novel and delivers a lot of science education along the way for those interested.