Voyager in Night by CJ Cherryh

This strange book holds its cards too close to its chest for too long, for me at least. When an excession ship (something vastly outside of human tech limits) visits Alliance-Union space it abducts a sublight mining ship with a brother-sister and her husband. The husband and sister die in the aliens’ examination of their physical bodies, through the process of the ship taking a full scan of their persons⁠—memories, postures, preferences, atoms, everything. It converts all three to computer programs who can project their forms throughout the ship, and it causes a conflict long-simmering to come to a head with the passengers and runners of the ship, who are program constructs themselves. It's an abduction that takes place after humanity has already reached the stars.

The supervisor hesitated from one foot to the other, wiped his face. The stationmaster was off-shift, asleep. It was hours into maindark. The supervisor was alterday chief, second highest on the station. The red-alert button was in front of him on the board, unused for all of Endeavor's existence.

The story deals with two themes, eventually, and another throughout the book. The first and most apparent theme shows humans trying to come to grips with the unknown. The three construct abductees face the sublimity of a senseless, manipulated, blacked-out existence; getting reset and coming to terms with death again and again; being experimented upon by the alien software. The live one is faced with the broken pieces of his ship and the nature of having a perfect copy of himself in Rafe Two, a construct that diverges more and more from him as their life experiences change; and with his brother-in-law and sister who are constructs of the computer system, a fact not known but eventually reasoned out by the characters. This theme relies upon the psychology of the humans pushed into this crazy situation, as their emotions yo-yo realistically to extremes. Cherryh does a great job creating three different characters, but having them all react to their shared situation in ways that echo each other, but also distinguish each as separate characters. She even manages to make Rafe and his construct feel distinct! This character creation amazes me. The responsibility obsessed ship captain, Rafe. The brother-in-law Paul, who lives up or down to the people around him. The pissed off Jillian, stubborn and self-reliant. The story offers a believable glimpse of what Cherryh imagines a group abduction would really feel like. As much of their agency is taken from them, this comes off very much like an Asimov story where dialogue reveals the plot, capped with a fight at the end. Yet Cherryh has characters instead of Asimov's typically flat people, which works brilliantly. As strong as this main theme is, it tries to carry three-quarters of the novel, and it lags a little for me. I don’t think enough is being said about humans out of context to really carry this much of the book. If more had been said from the alien point of view, it could’ve given away too much to the reader and stolen the power of the struggle the characters undergo, but as it is I feel overly lost and get bored a little—and I do mean a little. I like this book.

Dead, Paul reminded himself. You're already dead. Quit worrying. Time's short. And he wished that death was all.

Two further themes do not occupy the novel until the end, and these are slightly more interesting. One is the relentless search for knowledge. The ship is some sort of explorer, scientific discoverer, sacrifice set to wander the stars endlessly—something that cannot be expressed in human terms. They will never bring their knowledge back to the society or societies that sent them. Cherryh shows how this search for knowledge stales over time because it is pointless. I think she's trying to say that the search for knowledge can lose its zest, is not enough of a motive to make good people. The political infighting that comes to a head when the humans are picked up portrays an ugly side to the search for knowledge. The alien characters turn against each other when the humans arrive as potential tools in their long rivalries.

"We're its soft-structure. Its enablement. We're alive individually and collectively. We've been running, and growing, for a hundred thousand years. That's shiptime. Much longer-in your referent. That we're partitioned as we are was accident. It's also kept us sane. It provides us motive. In a hundred thousand years, motive's a very important thing."

The other is what life is worth. And this one is quite interesting to me, but it only occupies the last little bit of the novel, as Rafe is faced with a choice to abandon the two people he really cares about, his family turned constructs, for another chance at success in human space, or stay aboard the ship and be converted to a construct to maintain that familial connection. He chooses to stay, meaning there is now Rafe One and Rafe Two permanently on this unnamed ship, but Kepta also sends his physical body back to human space in the epilogue. The question is what is life—are these constructs that are identical to the humans they’re based on? Or are they just programs? In more broad terms, is life being set adrift, alone, in a life-pod, in a new system of humans Rafe doesn't know, but being still in possession of a breathing body? Rafe comes down on the side of construct with family. Cherryh supports this late addition of theme by having the alien AIs finally open up a bit and discuss how purpose is the only thing keeping them going, and it’s not something inherent, but something chosen.

"Passage of time-negates all motives. Survival is still intact. So is curiosity."

The writing supports the first theme through having symbols instead of names for most of the alien AI characters, though names do occur. These symbols go so far as to replace words like he, she, my, they. Stuff like "< / >y turn to be captain of the ship" is strange to see on the page, and helps alienate the reader like the characters are alienated. Experimental writing done well.

"It was <>y nature then," <> said. "Perhaps O've grown."
"Only older," < / > returned, gaining more of <>'s territory.

Too much of the novel relies on that first theme, where it begins to feel like a short story carried on too long. If this is really about the human psychology, then why did Kepta take so long to offer Rafe the choice? Why did Marandu take so long to discuss purpose? There’s a sense of "what’s going to happen next" because of the delay in reveal, but sometimes it becomes a sense of "what’s happening?" I like mystery in a novel. I like writing that helps the reader empathize with the characters. This takes the mystery a little too far, I’m a little too lost as a reader, like the characters. Maybe it's too effective without enough payoff.

"There's never translation of motives; only of acts."

I liked this book though, but not as much as some of Cherryh’s other works. This isn’t horror, it’s psychological thriller—in the sense that I don’t feel terror reading this, just the frustration and annoyance and specific fears of the characters, and there isn’t much physical action until the end. I think horror relies on more general terrors. The whole thing is sketchy on details and action, and if you need a book where you know what’s happening, don’t read this one. But if, like me, you enjoy searching through a dense forest of emotions to find some loose story and context with which to make up your own mind, this book is quite good. Better than most of Asimov, though doing similar things with the way the story is told. The characters' realization is masterful, and the sense of mystery is thick.