There’s something wonderfully grim about a future in which humanity has worked out how to colonise other planets but still can’t resist finding new and inventive ways to exploit the people doing the actual work. Mickey 7 takes that familiar bit of human stupidity and pushes it to a rather literal extreme. Edward Ashton has written a science fiction novel that’s funny, unsettling and surprisingly thoughtful, with a central predicament that becomes increasingly complicated the more you think about it. I went in expecting an entertaining story about a man who keeps dying, and came away with rather more to chew over than I’d anticipated.

Mickey Barnes has managed to land himself one of the least enviable jobs in the universe. He’s an Expendable, a human volunteer sent on the dangerous missions that nobody else wants to undertake. Whenever he dies, his body is regenerated from stored biological material, complete with his memories up to the last backup. It’s a clever solution to the problem of keeping a colonisation expedition moving when the planet you’re trying to settle is determined to kill you. It’s also an arrangement that raises some fairly obvious questions about employment rights, personal dignity and just how much suffering a person can be expected to tolerate when their employer considers them replaceable. Mickey, naturally, gets to explore these questions through repeated practical experience.

What makes the premise work so well is that Mickey isn’t some fearless action hero who treats death as an amusing inconvenience. He’s a fairly ordinary bloke who has made a spectacularly bad career decision and is now trying to get through the day without being killed again. His humour and self-deprecation make him an engaging narrator, but there’s a vulnerability beneath the wisecracks that stops the character from becoming a one-note comedy routine. He knows perfectly well that his life has less value in the eyes of his colleagues than theirs do, and although he’s learnt to live with that knowledge, it hasn’t stopped it hurting.

The situation becomes considerably more awkward when Mickey 7 is presumed dead and a replacement, Mickey 8, is created before the original returns. The rules of the expedition are quite clear about multiple instances of the same person, and for good reason. Two Mickeys are a logistical nightmare, a threat to the carefully maintained order of the colony and, above all, a problem that could get them both killed. I loved the way this development turns an already entertaining premise into a genuinely tense predicament. The two versions of Mickey share a past and a collection of memories, but they’re also separate people with their own immediate experiences and their own interests. The question of which one deserves to survive is no longer a straightforward matter of determining who arrived first.

That’s where the novel becomes more interesting than its black comedy might initially suggest. If a person can be recreated with the same memories, does that make the replacement the same individual? And if the original and the copy exist simultaneously, what happens to the comforting idea that identity is something singular and continuous? Ashton doesn’t bog the story down in philosophical lectures, thankfully. Instead, he lets the problem emerge from the characters’ predicament, making it something that matters to Mickey in the most immediate and personal way possible. It’s difficult to treat questions about consciousness as abstract thought experiments when the alternative is that someone might decide you’re the disposable version.

The wider colony provides plenty of scope for further commentary. The expedition’s leadership has its own priorities, and the gulf between those making the decisions and those expected to live with the consequences feels uncomfortably familiar. There’s a particularly sharp edge to the way the Expendable system is treated as an entirely reasonable arrangement by the people who benefit from it. Mickey’s willingness to accept his lot is understandable, but the novel also makes it clear how easily an exploitative system can become normal when everyone involved has a convenient reason not to question it. Add the precarious business of trying to establish a human settlement on a hostile world, and there’s no shortage of things to go wrong.

The pacing is generally brisk, with the central mystery and the growing complications keeping the story moving. There are moments when the explanations and backstory slow things down a little, and some of the supporting characters could have used more room to develop beyond their roles in the plot. However, the book never loses sight of Mickey himself, and his perspective gives the more serious ideas an accessible, human focus. The humour is another considerable strength. It’s often dark, occasionally absurd and particularly effective when Mickey’s casual attitude towards his own mortality exposes just how bizarre his circumstances have become.

Katherine Chin and John Pirhalla both deserve credit for the audiobook narration. Their performances help give the characters distinct personalities, while maintaining the conversational quality that makes Mickey’s account so appealing. There’s a good sense of expression in the delivery, with the humour landing naturally rather than being pushed too hard, and the more serious moments receiving the emotional weight they need. That balance matters in a story that shifts between comedy, tension and questions about what makes someone human. The narration keeps those changes feeling coherent, and makes the characters’ predicament engaging to listen to rather than merely an interesting idea on the page.

Ultimately, Mickey 7 succeeds because it combines an entertaining science fiction adventure with a premise that keeps generating worthwhile questions. I enjoyed Mickey’s wry outlook, the increasingly ridiculous complications of his existence and the way the story uses an extreme situation to expose some very ordinary human failings. It occasionally leaves supporting characters a little underdeveloped, but that’s a relatively minor reservation in a novel with such an effective central idea.

This is the sort of science fiction I particularly enjoy: imaginative enough to make me reconsider something I take for granted, but grounded in a character whose immediate problems I can understand. Mickey might be expendable according to the colony’s paperwork, but he’s considerably more valuable to the reader. I came away thoroughly entertained, with plenty to think about, and would happily recommend it to anyone who likes their science fiction with a generous helping of dark humour and a few uncomfortable questions about the value of a human life.

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