Literature / Theta

Theta is a 2013 science-fiction novel by Sasha Fox.

In a far-away corner of the universe, in a modest cluster of stars, an invasive contaminant has gained a foothold. From a tenuous colony of a few hundred spores, it has mutated and grown wild, taking over whole systems and colonizing extraplanetary bodies, even forming them where none existed before.

Man.

The children of man have grown in his image, fueled by the same drives, desires and motivations that first drove him to explore the stars… and plagued by the vices that forced him there forever in a great diaspora.

The first book of the saga, Theta isn’t the story of a race, nor of heroes and villains.

Theta is a story of people.

Life is comfortable for Jale Bercammon, Chief Steward of the luxury starliner OCS Freeta—comfortable, stable, and slipping on by. Every day is routine, and she’s become an expert at routine.

And then she crosses paths with Theta.

Reeled in by the enigmatic and sinister Knoskali to explain the young dancer’s disappearance, she soon finds herself stumbling along a dangerous path that will take all of her resolve and ingenuity to survive.

Dreams of Refugium, a book in the same universe but largely unconnected, was published in 2017.

Tropes:

• Allowed Internal War: Brynton's Houses fight each other every so often, occasionally unto the extermination of one side.
• Ambiguous Gender: Theta is initially mistaken for female by the Freetas crew due to his lithe body, but Arvinne, who had to clean him, found that he was male, albeit castrated, or something.
• Back from the Dead: One of the first things Theta remembers is his death by hanging, it takes him much longer to remember why he's alive again.

• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: The preeminent religion on Jale's homeworld believes that you lack any body parts you lose in life when you go to the afterlife. She's not religious, but still a bit disturbed when Pinky opts to replace his injured arm with a prosthetic over being stuck in medbay until they get to a hospital that might be able to save it.
• Deuteragonist: The point-of-view alternates between Jale and Theta.
• Feudal Future: Brynton is ruled by a bunch of feudal houses that treat most other Brynti, and quite a few off-worlders, as slaves. It starts out in the aftermath of one of their civil wars.
• Genetic Memory: The Elechen encoded memories on their genes and could exchange them by tasting each other's blood. Knoskali modified himself and Theta with Elechen DNA, which enabled Theta to eventually regain his lost memories. Some of the Dazi also have Elechen genetic memory, willingly given by their allies.
• Half-Human Hybrid: The cast are mostly human-animal hybrids whose ancestors were created by the Ancients millennia ago. Theta is an arctic fox, Jale's a ferret, Knoskali is a coyote, Arvinne's a snow leopard, etc.

• Humanity's Wake: Humans are mostly known as "the Ancients" and there's no indication that they're still extant.
• Identity Amnesia: At the start of the novel Theta is barely even able to feed himself, much less remember anything, though he gets better. The drugs he was supposed to be injected with would have permanently erased the last couple years of his life but he regained his memories before they started injecting him.
• Manchurian Agent: One of Knoskali's plans was for Theta to receive a message containing an encoded order to assassinate the Dazi commander when the pirates captured him. It didn't quite go according to plan.
• Nano Machines: Theta's blood is full of them, they augment his senses, repair all damage to his body extremely rapidly, and probably resurrected him.
• Not So Extinct: The Dazi nation weren't wiped out, they fled into space and found a new homeworld. And so did the Elechen.
• Older Than They Look: They're not quite sure of Theta's age, he seems like a child but arctic foxes like him don't grow very large, while Knoskali is in his fifties and looks like he's barely into his twenties thanks to genetic work.
• Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions: "Theist" is used in contexts that suggest its become as uncommon as atheism is in the present day.
• Pretext for War: Knoskali tricked a rival lord into invoking some ancient and barely remembered custom that allowed him to demand Myshel's death, but also gave Knoskali just cause for a genocidal war with his House.
• Right Hand Versus Left Hand: Knoskali like his pawns to compete and keeps them in the dark as much as possible., which doesn't really work out that well when he's constantly changing his plans and there's no form of communication over interstellar distances faster than couriers.
• Sex Slave: Myshel was a male "dancer" and augmented assassin belonging to Lord Knoskali, and at least one of them is in love with the other.
• Space Pirates: The Freeta is attacked by a ship of pirates who are rather quick to execute whoever they can't ransom, sell into slavery, or conscript. Theta and Arvinne are conscripted after Theta kills a few who tried to dispose of him.
• That Man Is Dead: Theta's name before his death and amnesia was "Myshel", but after starting to regain some memory he decides that he can't really call himself that anymore and thinks "Theta" is as good a name as any.
• Thrown Out the Airlock: When Theta's memory starts coming back he attempts to bypass an airlock's safeties to eject himself into space. Fortunately Jale and the ship's engineer manage to stop him long enough for him to become more lucid. Later some pirates threaten people with airlocking, several times.
• Uncoffee: Megvha, the stimulant beverage of choice on Brynton. It's also extremely addictive and really shouldn't be drunk more than once or twice a day. And it's illegal on some planets. "Safer" hot stimulants consumed on ofher planets include verti.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Knoskali is known on Brynton as a brilliant leader who brought his house from relative obscurity to the most powerful on the planet, and the house that frees the most slaves (Jale wondering how many slaves they buy in comparison). But most on other planets would consider him a genocidal dictator.
• Wolverine Claws: Theta's natural claws were replaced with metallic ones, among his many other discrete augmentations.
• Would Be Rude to Say "Genocide": Brynton's native Elechen were wiped out when they resisted the aggressive exploitation of their world's resources by the Brynti colonists, and then all records of their existence were simply paved over.

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