All Around I See
Disgraced Return of The Kap’s Needle
By Renan Bernardo
17 Jun, 2025
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Renan Bernardo’s Disgraced Return of The Kap’s Needle is a collection of hard SF stories. All share a setting.
Oh well. I can’t like everything.
On the surface, this looked like my sort of thing. The glowing accolades — not to mention the “Nebula and Ignyte Finalist” on the cover — instilled in me great optimism. Plus, the author is from Brazil and I don’t think I have many pushpins in that part of the world map.
Even twenty seconds of research would have informed me that the Nebula and Ignyte nominations were for A Short Biography of a Conscious Chair (Breve Biografia de Uma Cadeira Lúcida in the original Portuguese), not the three works in this collection.
What I found not to like: the prose, which I found entirely average, and the characters in Kap, none of whom I particularly cared about.
In a better world I could also object that certain plot developments could not possibly work out the way they do in the novella but… We live in a world where you cannot rule out any daft idea because who knows what head office will decide is a good idea? Case in point: before starting this review, I had to waste fifteen minutes researching how to remove copilot.
I am probably being too hard on one of the characters, Reva, who after all just wants to keep her remaining child alive. It would help if said child made any kind of case that he was worth killing legions of people to protect. On the other hand, a little mass murder is at most the third worst thing the crew of the Needle manages to do.
Anyway, not my thing. On the off-chance I am just grumpy or this is an atypical sample, I’ve purchased the author’s other collection, Different Kinds of Defiance.
Let’s inspect this in more detail.
Disgraced Return of the Kap’s Needle • (2023) • novella
The crew of the Kap’s Needle undertook a ten-year-voyage1 to Kapteyn d confident that a habitable, life-bearing, Earthlike world awaited them.
Two of three predictions were correct. Kapteyn d had life, was in many respects Earthlike. However, ubiquitous fungi found terrestrial lifeforms tasty and defenseless. Unprotected, careless, or unlucky humans died quickly and unpleasantly.
Humans cannot survive on Kapteyn d2. Therefore, the Kap’s Needle is retracing its ten-year-voyage back to Earth. There’s just one small catch. The drug needed for cold sleep ran out with nine thousand crew still awake. The O2 will run out long before the journey is over.
Therefore, Captain Horvat mandates extreme measures. Low-productivity crew will be consigned to the Orion‑1 section, whose low O2 levels ensure a slow, unpleasant death. It’s sad but the failing ship cannot afford to support unproductive parasites.
Reva’s son Rômulo is very much an unproductive parasite. He is also Reva’s only surviving child. Thus far, Reva has successfully abused her senior rank, protecting Rômulo and prematurely sending debtors off to Orion‑1 in his place.
Horvat’s sweeping anti-corruption campaign will expose Reva. Therefore, she has only one choice: ally with equally corrupt First Officer Torres to depose the captain. The catch is, that officer is Reva’s worst enemy.
“A Lifeline of Silk” • (2023) • short story
A medical robot struggles to circumvent its directives in an effort to protect a helpless human from his abusive partner.
“Callis Praedictionem” • (2023) • short story
A fungal infection offers glimpses of the future… at a terrible cost.
Disgraced Return of The Kap’s Needle is available here (Dark Matter Ink), here (Barnes & Noble), here (Bookshop US), here (Chapters-Indigo), and here (Words Worth Books).
I did not find Disgraced Return of The Kap’s Needle at Bookshop UK.
1: Kapteyn’s Star is about thirteen light-years away. Therefore, the Kap’s Needle must get close enough to the speed of light for significant relativistic effects to come into play.
2: The implied carnage that precedes the grudging acceptance that the planet is functionally uninhabitable reminded me of an 17th or 18th century account of exploring the Amazon that I once read. Toward the end of his chronicle, the explorer noted with some irritation that all of his bearers had died. He had previously ignored what must have been a steady drumbeat of fatalities.
USA delenda est.