The Explorer

By James Smythe

A tense, claustrophobic and gripping science fiction thriller from the author of The Testimony.

When journalist Cormac Easton is selected to document the first manned mission into deep space, he dreams of securing his place in history as one of humanity’s great explorers.

But in space, nothing goes according to plan.

The crew wake from hypersleep to discover their captain dead in his allegedly fail-proof safety pod. They mourn, and Cormac sends a beautifully written eulogy back to Earth. The word from ground control is unequivocal: no matter what happens, the mission must continue.

But as the body count begins to rise, Cormac finds himself alone and spiralling towards his own inevitable death … unless he can do something to stop it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Dec 20, 2012
• ISBN: 9780007456772

James Smythe

James Smythe is the winner of the Wales Fiction Book of the Year 2013, and was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2014. He is the author of The Testimony, The Machine and No Harm Can Come To A Good Man, as well as The Anomaly Quartet, which currently includes the novels The Explorer and The Echo. James lives in London and teaches creative writing. He can be found on Twitter @jpsmythe

Reviews for The Explorer

[pantalaimon01 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An unusual take on an exploratory journey into deep space. The main character - Cormac, soon finds himself alone as the sole survivor of his crew. It's thoughful, and contemplative, the storyline swings back and forth between present and past, and only gradually does the reader begin to understand what is really happening.

[imyril · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The first manned expedition in years will go deeper into space than anyone has gone before. It's a thinly-veiled PR stunt, an attempt to reinvigorate interest in manned space exploration, and of course it all goes wrong. Cormac Easton is the journalist on board and the last survivor, chronicling the disasters and his own mental and emotional deterioration as he faces up to the inevitability of his own death.This book knowingly embraces well-trodden tropes, and winks to them about two-thirds of the way through when the journalist writes how things could have been: everything going smoothly, returning heroes, a best-selling book - followed by a pulpy scifi novel based on familiar tropes and an attempt at a more human angle. On the nose.It's also one of those books that kept me turning pages to find out the details of the unfolding past and the ultimate outcome, yet without ever achieving emotional engagement. I was curious to find out what happened to Cormac, but I didn't really care either way. Perhaps it felt a little too much like it was playing for the movie deal itself (and to be fair, it would work well on screen); perhaps Cormac just wasn't very likeable (he isn't, as the second half of the book goes to some lengths to illustrate).But it's a good enough read. I think it's just a little too knowing, if successfully (and painfully) human. Plus, while the resolution works just fine, some of the loose ends bothered me.That said, I suspect this novel may grow on me the longer it sits with me. Which may simply be my relatively low exposure to the core trope; I'm familiar with it, but not over-exposed. Yet.

[adonisguilfoyle · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Went on a mad book download, and this was one of the titles I picked. Overall, a good read - clever concept, great characterisation, and so many surprises that I'm not sure I can describe what happens without giving away the plot. The pacing comes unstuck towards the end, right about where I was hoping that everything would come together, or be explained - Cormac's fevered introspection drones on and on, and then the book suddenly ends - but that's not too much of a detraction. The Guardian's review of 'an episode of Star Trek written by JM Coetzee' - or indeed Ishiguro - is spot on.

[gregandlarry · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Good premise but the book just dragged.

[edgeworth_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I picked this up because I’ve been reading and greatly enjoying James Smythe’s two-years-and-running project at the Guardian in which he is re-reading every single Stephen King novel. Without that, I doubt I’d even have heard of him, so once again we see how all this extra stuff writers do to pay the rent (and, of course, for their own interest) does contribute towards a wider readership.The Explorer is set in the near future and follows narrator Cormac Easton and the voyage of the Ishiguro, an exploration vessel heading out into interplanetary space. Cormac is a journalist, selected to join the crew because the entire thing is more or less a PR exercise; a way, as Cormac repeatedly reminds us, to rekindle a passion for space travel in the human race. The Ishiguro actually has no aim beyond just going out there, further than humans have been before, and then coming back. That’s a little sketchy in my opinion, but never mind, because when the novel opens all of the other crew members have died in various accidents and Cormac is the last one left.The Explorer is not exactly a hard science fiction novel; Cormac’s cluelessness stands in for Smythe’s and for our own, and we don’t get so much as a description of the ship. (There were also far too many “panels” and “crates” full of “spare parts” for my liking – not to mention a ducting system full of convenient, plot-servicing vents.) Neither, however, is it pulp science fiction. It’s what would generally be termed a “literary” novel, with most of it revolving around Cormac’s relationship with his other crewmates, extensive flashbacks, and various neuroses. Cormac’s narrative style (and I’ll call it Cormac’s, because I’m not sure if this is how Smythe normally writes fiction, or if it was a device to serve the tone) is excessively wordy; almost rambling, in fact, and focusing far too much on the minutiae of physical actions. Here’s a totally random example:I quickly loosen the straps on another crate, behind where I am, and slide under that, watching the shadows made by the light outside the room as Guy approaches. I stay totally silent as I hear the door slide across, Guy heaving it, locking it open. He grabs the box he’s looking for, drags it toward the light from the hallway, peels back the lid and rummages.There’s pages and pages of this sort of thing. It’s also seriously depressing. I get that this is necessary for the tone, but Cormac spends what felt like half the novel ruminating on his life of regret, even before he got on a doomed spaceship. There is no sense of humour, and any sense of joy or amazement at the cold splendour of space feels hollow. One could easily argue that this is an appropriate tone for a novel about a lone survivor in a claustrophobic environment, but here’s the thing: what the novel says it’s meant to be about and what it actually feels like it’s about are vastly different. Cormac rarely lets a chapter go by without rabbiting on about how important space travel is; how important it is for humans to explore beyond their safe harbour. There is no doubt in my mind that these are Smythe’s own sentiments (and my own, for that matter). He is clearly disappointed by the scaling back of humanity’s ambition in recent decades, and wishes we could see a more fast-paced exploration and colonisation program, like we did in the 1960s; not just that, but he’s also clearly disgruntled by this lack of passion and believes it reflects a paucity of spirit and imagination in modern civilisation. These points are repeated too often throughout the novel for the author’s intent to be mistaken (and, again, I agree with him 100% about all of this).Why, then, he chose to make The Explorer an examination of just how hostile and unforgiving space can be – physically and mentally – is puzzling. The conclusion of The Explorer almost seems to suggest that we should stay where we are, and be grateful for it; to discourage curiosity and exploration. It’s a very mixed message.Throughout much of The Explorer I kept comparing it to Chris Beckett’s Dark Eden. Both of them are English science fiction novels with the clash of danger and exploration at their core, but I felt that Beckett’s novel was more successful in balancing and reconciling these conflicting themes; The Explorer, on the other hand, is a less compelling read and fails to achieve a satisfying resolution, and also fails to attain the same desired sense of claustrophobia as Dark Eden. (Another interesting comparison is that both authors got stiffed by their cheapskate publisher on the second imprint, turning vital black covers white just to save on ink.)This is overall a fairly negative review. But on the other hand, The Explorer received mostly favourable reviews in the press, and my own enjoyment of Smythe’s non-fiction writing at the Guardian means I will not give up on his fiction entirely. I have no desire to read what is apparently planned as a quartet (The Explorer’s sequel, The Echo, was released earlier this year) but I will keep an eye on what he writes in the future.

[marek2010_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A sci-fi novel about time travel & being adrift in space... Quite tense & well written. I enjoyed this, & it has a good few twists.

[eyejaybee · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is an intriguing science fiction novel, with shades of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It begins with Cormac Easton recounting how he came to be the last survivor of the crew of Ishiguro. The Ishiguro's expedition had seemed fairly simple: hurtling from Earth into deep space for the specific purpose of travelling further than any previous space expedition, and then returning. What could be simpler?Sadly, if predictably, it proved to be rather less straightforward than that. Unlike his colleagues Easton was not a career astronaut but a journalist, commissioned with chronicling the expedition with a view to reviving public excitement about space exploration. The Ishiguro represented the pinnacle of technological attainment, and it was programmed to speed out from Earth as far and fast as possible before turning when half of its fuel had been consumed. The crew were put into hibernation-like suspension for the early part of the journey, and scheduled to wake as the Ishiguro approached apogee. However, it was at that stage that things started to go wrong. The crew's captain was due to be roused first to make the ship ready for the emergence of his colleagues, but tragically he never awoke. The other emerged from their suspension to find that he had died . This proves merely to be the first of a series of disasters which culminates with Cormac being the last sentient member on board. It is at that point that he starts to notice something strange about the computer readouts …Smythe builds the scenario very deftly and the reader empathises completely with the predicament that Cormac faces. I read a lot of science fiction when I was younger but have tended to give it a wide berth over recent decades (though I couldn't begin to explain why that is the case). However, this book reminded me of what I was missing, and I am sure I will be returning to the genre again more often.

[lavinient · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Scary or suspenseful stories that take place on spaceships freak me out a lot. For me, the setting is claustrophobic and alien and just generally makes my skin crawl. But I'm always drawn to them and always have to watch the show or read the book. This one was well worth my small anxieties. This story is more suspenseful than scary. The mission for the people on this ship is to travel the farthest any human ever has and then turn around and travel back to earth. Cormac Easton is the ship's journalist. He is observing and writing about the mission for the folks back home. But the mission is far from successful. First they find the captain dead in his hypersleep chamber upon waking. Then the crew, one after another, die, all in different ways, until Cormac is the last man standing. And once he realizes the ship does not turn around towards home like it's automatically supposed to, Cormac knows he is doomed.All that I've got up here is tranquility now, I suppose.That's just the first quarter of the book. I'm not going to give away the rest of the story other than it includes flashbacks to the months and weeks leading up to the mission. During these flashbacks we learn more about the crew and Cormac's relationship with his wife. These flashbacks are revealing and important to what is happening on the ship. And what's happening on the ship is enthralling. The reveal is slow going, but never boring. It's dark and beautifully written.That was how it was sold: a voyage to rival Columbus, to rival the stories of Jules Verne. ARC provided through Edelweiss

[jjbooklvr · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It didn’t take long for the first book of the New Year to wow me! This is a scifi book, but even if you don’t normally read this genre I think anyone can enjoy it. The premise is a crew is sent on a space mission to fly farther than any previous manned flight before. Things go wrong right away as they come out of hypersleep to find one of their crew member dead. As time goes by more crew members die and Cormac, a journalist recruited to document this historic mission, has to try and figure out why people are dying and just what is their mission. What I loved is how the story unfolded layer by layer letting the reader know what is going on through a series of flashbacks and a bit of time travel. It felt like a great episode of the Twilight Zone and I mean that in a good way!