Cold Rising: A Review

Olgo is an “agent”, a lethal and emotionless fixer for Micron, Earth’s largest corporation. Suong is a child labourer in a subterranean mining settlement on Mars. Neither has any inkling how much will change when their paths cross in Rohan O’Duill’s sci-fi novella Cold Rising (2023, Lower Decks Press), a rousing tale with all the grit and aplomb of Golden Age science fiction.

But this is a story with a more nuanced worldview than the libertarian fairytales of Golden Age pulp: you know, “Self-reliant individualist, armed with trusty blaster and trusty spaceship, uses pluck, grit, and ingenuity to save the galaxy all by himself.” The world of the book, like our world, is not so simple.

It was pure serendipity that I came across the article “Who Cleans the Toilets on the Death Star?” by Karlo Yeager Rodríguez in Blood Knife a bare few days before I began reading Cold Rising. Though Yeager Rodríguez refers specifically to military sci-fi when he notes, “…writers are more interested in characters who can move the plot, and that probably doesn’t mean the people cleaning the shitters,” his observation can apply to a great deal of plot-driven fiction. A powerless character (says given wisdom) is an uncompelling one.

Cold Rising troubles that assumption.

Suong dwells belowground in Opportunity City, a hellhole of capitalistic…