"Radiate"

C. A. Higgins is the author of Lightless, Supernova, and the newly released Radiate. She was a runner-up in the 2013 Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing and has a B.A. in physics from Cornell University.

Higgins applied the Page 69 Test to Radiate and reported the following:

From page 69:

A strange ship, all alone. Maybe System. Maybe not. Ivan said, “Let me and Mattie see it.”

“What? The ship?”

What else? But he reined his temper in. “We might be able to help.”

The Macha had been a long way off from the strange ship when the alarm had been raised. By the time they were near enough to get detailed scans, the Badh was zipping around overhead. Ivan leaned on the railing separating the upper level of the Macha’s control room from the lower, staring toward the distant ship, half expecting to see a graceful seashell spiral emerge out of the black.

“Life support is on, but the engines don’t seem to be working,” one of the Macha’s crewmen reported.

Mattie was all nervous energy next to Ivan, jittering his leg when he leaned against the railing. Ivan said to the crewman, “How large is the ship?”

“Civilian class. Smaller than the Nemain and unarmed.”

“Centripetal gravitation,” Mattie said under his breath to Ivan, pointedly.

On page 69 of Radiate, while flying as the guests of some revolutionaries, Mattie and Ivan encounter a mysterious downed spaceship. To anyone but the two of them, there would be no clear significance in the encounter—the broken-down spaceship is ominous, but could have easily been caused by the violence of the civil war shaking the solar system. But Mattie and Ivan recognize the force that has destroyed this ship: for the first time since they escaped the Ananke, they have encountered a sign of her presence.

In the beginning of the novel the Ananke mostly passes beneath the characters’ notice: they have more immediate concerns. But she is a threat outside of and greater than the civil war shredding the solar system, and page 69 hints at the influence she has and the danger that is still to come.

Visit C. A. Higgins's website.

The Page 69 Test: Lightless.

Writers Read: C.A. Higgins.

--Marshal Zeringue