James Nicoll Reviews

2024’s Club Contango is the second work and first novel in Eliane Boey’s Tracerverse SF series¹.

By 2070, visionary South Asians had given humanity access to space2^. The rewards were doled out appropriately. For example, Freeport Station’s 210 oligarchs live pampered lives amid unimaginable luxury. 250,000 less fortunate Freeport temporary residents live one missed paycheck from being deported back to Earth.

Connie Lam is less fortunate. One could make the case that Connie is cursed.

Connie hoped for the best when she joined some dodgy get-rich-quick schemes; she trusted her sketchy friends and shifty business associates. It has not turned out well. A former employer unloaded all of his debt onto Connie. She fled to Freeport Station, hoping to defer the day of reckoning. But residence on Freeport comes at a cost: she needs to earn enough money to remain.

Currently, Connie has three sources of income: a part-time gig at Lucky 48 Extra-Terrestrial Chandlery, another part-time gig at insurance company Thevar and Tann, and co-ownership of Club Contango. The first two are legal, but don’t cover Connie’s bills. The Club is illegal and economically marginal.

There are two bright spots in Connie’s life. One is her daughter Sticky, on whom Connie dotes. The other is Connie’s charmingly roguish roommate Chance, about whose income and background Connie is determinedly uninformed.

Former business associate Bad Luck Jerry reappears with unexpected news of a windfall. On closer examination, it’s Jerry’s windfall but Connie’s misfortune. Insufficient diligence left Jerry with the rights to an AI with Connie’s image and skills. There are one or two details for which Jerry needs Connie’s cooperation, the cost for which will be that Connie will effectively become a mass-produced product.

In fact, Jerry isn’t the sort of man who sits on his hands waiting to cross every t and dot every i. Jerry has already populated strategic locations with Connie’s avatars, regaling passers-by with sales pitches. This is not ideal.

What’s even less ideal is that when Hong, another former business associate, summons Connie to a meeting, Connie finds Hong’s cooling body. Someone has murdered Hong. Inspector Jaz Singh would like to know who… and Connie is at the top of his list of suspects.

~oOo~

Having read the Tracerverse books out of order, I can attest that they are (or at least, this one is) stand-alone. Not a surprise, as one of the models here is noir mystery. Mystery writers tend to write self-contained narratives, perhaps because they are selling their books to people with an intense interest in crime and murder. No author wants to find out the hard way that a reader dissatisfied with lack of resolution knows where to source thallium.

This book reminded me a bit of The Taking of Satcon Station, not a sentence I ever expected to write. However, this novel’s perspective is from someone on the receiving end of an egregiously unjust system, not from that of an enforcer.

To quote Wikipedia,

In a contango situation, arbitrageurs or speculators are ​“willing to pay more for a commodity [to be received] at some point in the future than to purchase the commodity immediately. 

As economic terms go, contango isn’t the worst choice for the name of a club. At least it’s catchier than ​“Garman – Kohlhagen” or ​“Put – call parity.” Connie might think it expresses a certain level of optimism about the future.

They say that SF is always about the present. That certainly seems to be true with this novel, where precarity seems to have been dialed up a notch without changing its essential nature, and where the cultural references are all familiar to a modern reader. Presumably, the rich spent the next forty-five years after present funnelling every increase in GDP into their own pockets, while the success of spicy autofill meant that there’s no niche for novel creative endeavours.

As for the plot itself: Connie is very much the sort of noir protagonist whose terrible judgement drives the plot. She is sure she’s unlucky. However, one cannot help but notice that most of her associates are unscrupulous ne’er-do-wells who would not hesitate to kick Connie off the lifeboat. Yes, the economic system is biased against her, but Connie, for reasons that are not her fault, has a talent for making bad situations worse. Sucks to be her, but the reader can enjoy her travails.

Club Contango is available here (Dark Matter INK), here (Barnes & Noble), here (Bookshop US), here (Chapters-Indigo), and here (Words Worth Books).

I did not find Club Contango at Bookshop UK.

1: It appears the first book, Other Minds, is a collection that was released December 9, 2024, while Club Contango was released December 10, 2024. Authors of series should take note of this entirely reasonable pace.

2: USA delenda, for all the evidence that it still exists in this novel.