I read this novella for the indie novella competition, SFINCS. The following review is my own personal opinion as a judge and does not reflect the views of the team as a whole. Find out more about the competition here and my team, The WIPs, here!
Proxima Station by Mike Mollman is a whacky space adventure where a young doctor of anthropology is ordered to take part in a secret mission to spy on some alien allies of humanity on a distant space station around the planet Proxima Centauri. Anthony, less than prepared and barely enthusiastic, needs to navigate his situation without any truly useful information about these aliens and with no help from the self-serving military leaders of the project. Humanity’s future in the alliance might depend on him, after all! Also, his aunt is there. And the aliens are dogs.
Well, no. But it quickly becomes clear that the novella doesn’t take itself very seriously. As Anthony goes through his short preparation at a military base, then, after a whirlwind travel on an alien spaceship, arrives at Proxima Station, we’re drawn into a tale of zany encounters and humorous/exasperating banter, both with humans (Anthony’s scientist mates, some buff spy-looking guys, various military personnel) and aliens: the bureaucratic, self-important Napoleon, Crighton, the warrior-like Umbra, Shadow, the goofy and enthusiastic Bwetnib, Buddy, the mysterious and distinguished Erate, Kalliope, and the taciturn Yeti, Grendel. It feels like no one really knows what they’re doing here, but everyone is quick to argue and cause trouble. Anthony, our “simple guy” (with a PhD) stumbles through his first shift as a member of this committee of a sort, obviously getting into much more than he thought he would (even knowing about the aliens). I have to say, even if his character didn’t become my favourite, his often immature but somehow still endearing presence lent a gentle groundedness to the strangeness of this story, even as he stressed about irrelevant things, didn’t ask questions I would have been interested to hear about, or overcomplicated others that did not need to be overcomplicated. Anthony is (mostly) nice, and he tries to do a good job which made him sympathetic.
The thing I enjoyed the most was definitely the interactions between the aliens and Anthony, even if these did go in circles a lot of the time. The personalities of the different species are distinct and well-conveyed, occasionally leaning into stereotypes but at the same time, at least for now, I didn’t feel like there was much more to this aspect than “different cultures more or less willingly trying to coexist”—while humans meddle, as always, and on that note, the novella seems to show that perhaps the invariant property/stereotype of humans should indeed be The Meddling. The little plot intrigue that is presented (an encounter with another, somewhat special “alien race”) also echoes the theme of coexisting, which I appreciated, even when I wished for a little more examination of this (perhaps in the following novellas). It was also clear that what carries the novella is the humor, and there were indeed times when I did smirk about the antics, but I should say that the particular sense of humor in the dialogues and narration did not necessarily work for me that well. I felt some things weren’t that logical, consistent, or well-presented to my taste, and I did wish a little more depth to the characters and the world, and this, together with the absurd-ish tone, was a bit too distracting for me. I also wished Anthony’s anthropology degree/very specific studies played more directly into the plot, other than his underlying attitude of wanting to understand instead of spying or warring, because that detail caught my attention at the beginning very quickly. However, I think there will be a lot of people that the humor and the style will work for, so it’s definitely worth a try. And yes, about the dog thing…there are art pieces scattered between the chapters and at the end of the book displaying the different aliens as inspired by the author’s pets, which I thought was charming.
Proxima Station is a very lighthearted sci-fi look into encounters with different species through the eyes of a simple guy, and might be a perfect quick, wholesome, and entertaining read for sci-fi comedy fans.
Helyna L. Clove 
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