Four new sci-fi novels offer advice for dealing with fanaticism

In “The Deep Sky,” by Yume Kitasei, a baffling murder happens on a starship traveling from Earth to a distant star, knocking the travelers off course. What’s more, it looks as though white-supremacist and eco-fascist groups from Earth have infiltrated the ship’s crew. Searching for a killer on this possibly doomed vessel is Asuka, a Japanese American girl whose own estranged mother has joined a group of ecological extremists.

Science fiction murder mysteries usually treat the murder mystery part as an afterthought, so “The Deep Sky” is a rare treat: a totally satisfying whodunnit featuring great clues, twists, reveals and red herrings, along with clever science-fictional concepts. In much the same way that Ross MacDonald’s mystery novels explored the hidden fault lines of Los Angeles, Kitasei uses her starship setting to show how nationalism and technology conspire to divide people, even far from home.

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Asuka is an unusual protagonist: introverted, neurotic, alternately resourceful and paralyzed. I found myself rooting for her way more than I do the supremely competent heroes who usually populate space adventures, and her broken relationships with her mother and her former best friend are compelling. “There was nothing pure about love after all,” Kitasei writes. “It had to get muddy with misunderstanding.” Highly recommended.

“The Saint of Bright Doors,” by Vajra Chandrasekera, has an especially fascinating setup: Fetter’s mother raised him to assassinate his immortal cult-leader father, but Fetter has grown up to be an underachiever who attends a support group for failed chosen ones. Soon, Fetter is getting drawn into political intrigues and investigating the permanently closed (and seemingly mystical) “bright doors” scattered across the city.

Chandrasekera builds a dizzyingly complex world, with enough ideas for 10 books, and it’s all entertaining enough that his theme — the dangers of religious extremism paired with racist totalitarianism — sneaks up on you. The followers of Fetter’s father, known as the Perfect and Kind, slowly gain power and impose their rule on everyone else, until everything goes just slightly Kafkaesque. As “Saint of Bright Doors” gets progressively weirder (and at times, more perplexing), you only root harder for Fetter to fight for his freedom.

“Citadel,” by C.M. Alongi, plays with familiar territory: A human colony on an alien world is besieged by alien creatures whom the humans believe are animalistic “demons” — but one character begins to suspect the “demons” are actually… people. What sets “Citadel” apart is its sensitive depiction of a theocratic dystopia, and the ways that people carve out spaces of survival and resistance.

Much like Asuka in “The Bright Sky,” the main protagonist of “Citadel” is refreshing: Olivia is a nonverbal autistic person who communicates only in writing. And there’s a pleasing complexity to Alongi’s world building: The state executes and persecutes people in the name of religion, but religious leaders are also leading the liberation struggle. The alien “demons,” or chimera, have friendly and warlike factions. “Citadel” is a worthy addition to the alien-world canon, but also a glorious primer on forming alliances to resist tyranny.

In the novella “Counterweight,” by Korean author Djuna (translated by Anton Hur), a corporate spy named Mac gets sucked into a power struggle over the future of the all-powerful LK corporation, which controls the world’s first space elevator. AIs, a man with the dead LK CEO’s memories, and brain implants shape this dizzyingly subversive cyberpunk thriller.

The fanatics in “Counterweight” are mostly astroturfed — orchestrated by those above for their own purposes: When the LK corporation massacres 50 dissidents, it’s blamed on a “radical Christian terrorist bomb attack,” and the corporate schemers create plenty of other fake organizations, not to mention fake individuals. But the novel’s stakes actually justify a certain messianic fervor. Whoever controls the space elevator controls the future, and that dead CEO might not stay dead. In true Philip K. Dick style, Djuna serves up enough paranoia and clever ideas to keep you guessing.

Whether they’re tackling nationalism, theocracy or corporate power, these novels remind us that there’s always someone stoking mass panics — and it’s up to the rest of us to figure out the truth before we get swept away.