One Level Down

Space colonization is hard; worlds that seem golden from light years away turn out to be deadly up close. This is where Clawhammer Corporation sweeps in, with its simulated environments and too-good-to-be-true contracts. In a universe of pocket worlds nested inside one another like dolls, Harkin Town is one world among many, a colony that sold Clawhammer its rights in return for a version of the colony the way it should have been. It’s not nearly as idyllic as it seems in Harkin Town, where one man controls every aspect of the colonists’ lives—and the life of his perpetually five-year-old daughter most of all, until she escapes, grows up, and comes back to free the inhabitants of Harkin Town. Thompson’s novel takes the classic sci-fi thought experiment about the universe as a gigantic simulation and blends it with a fascinating take on absolute power corrupting and then adds a big scary “wow” for such a small world that is learning who pays the price for safety.