I often drive to church listening to good ol’ terrestrial radio. CBC Radio Two is a favourite—it has a great morning show. The FM signal’s strong, until I pull up to a certain traffic light. There’s electrical interference in the traffic light that disturbs the radio signal. When the flashing hand appears on the walk sign, I hear it as pulsing static over the music. When the hand turns solid, the signal’s lost.

Dead Astronauts is a dystopian story, but the signal is often degenerated—deconstructed—by noise. Just when you think you understand what’s happening, that moment you feel comforted by the familiar, the unusual breaks in. This is more than just a plot technique. The language itself breaks up along with the story. Consider this excerpt:

v.4.4 There had been a magical garden once, hidden in a secret room, and he

…

v.4.2 The fading thought that there had been no such moment with the globes, as much as he

v.4.1 Not at the beginning, the middle, or the end. That there had not been that radiant light, that he

v.4.0 Could not remember it because, if he were honest with himself, he (141)

Like much good literature, plot takes a back-seat to style. Dead Astronauts is darkly poetic. Here’s a brief paragraph about the Behemoth, for example:

Be calm. Becalmed. Slowed Behemoth’s breathing, sent stillness awash across it, sent a fluid language scrolling across the folds of his brain. Muddened, Obscured. Looking out through the eyes of another water creature. One suspended between life and death, between large and small. That signed language in the water, through its skin. (148)

By now in this brief review, you’ll already know if this is your type of book or not. If you like order and tidy story-lines, run! If the quotations intrigued you, Dead Astronauts is more than worth the read. If you’ve read Borne, this is its ‘sequel,’ although that word loses its meaning in Vandermeer’s hands.

Vandermeer, Jeff. Dead Astronauts. MCD, 2019.