Book Review: Skinship by James Reich

Ecology, Legacy, and Production

Applewhite is the navigator of the organic skinship The Charcot, one of the few remaining vessels carrying human DNA. Total ecological collapse on Earth has forced humans to seek out a new planet to live on. Knowing this could take generations, the skinship is outfitted to be self-sustainable and to reproduce the inhabitants for centuries. After years and years, the ship is approaching a solar system which may have planets sustainable for human life.

As the skinship approaches, a mutiny breaks out against Applewhite due to a deep disagreement on which planet to land on.

“On Earth, great dunes of ash shrugged toward stiff oceans, glaciers of acid foregathered, glittering as they wiped the cities from the surface of the world. London dissolved. Berlin perished. Sydney burned. Abuja drowned. Poison washed over the tundra.”

Skinship masterfully balances its high ideas and psychedelic imagery masterfully with its thriller plot of a power struggle between two factions. Applewhite plans to land the ship on a planet that has been programmed into the ship and his own memories. A faction within the ship, however, intends to kill Applewhite and land the ship on another planet nearby. Along the way, we learn of how the Earth collapsed, how the citizens of the skinship live, and how remnants of humanity remain in a society that’s been forced to become increasingly alien.

I’d previously read James Reich’s Mistah Kurtz!, a prequel to and retelling of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Like that book, Reich’s prose is vivid and descriptive. In Skinship, however, it reads a denser due to describing an alien environment. However, it remains readable, painting both fascinating and disturbing images.

The short-length and the fast pace also gives it something of a pulp sci-fi feel. However, it was a book I felt compelled to read slowly to really take in all of the details of the The Charcot that it describes. It reminded me of a mix of Ballard’s strange architectures, but alive like some sort of Giger-esque biomechanical landscape.

What struck me most, is that the story has a timeless quality to it. The creative speculative technology, divorced from almost anything existing in contemporary society, and the plot about a spaceship mutiny makes this novel feel as if it could have been published almost anytime between the 1950’s and today. Only minor details, such as Applewhite’s name being a reference to the cult leader of the same name, really give away when it was written.

Skinship is an excellent, well-crafted, and intelligent work of science fiction. Reich is a great prose stylist who can also tell an intriguing story inside a fascinating and unique world. Had I finished this in 2024, it likely would have gone on my year-end best list. As it stands, I’ll be very surprised if this doesn’t make my 2025 list.

Buy Skinship by James Reich here.

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My latest novel, If today the sun should set on all my hopes and cares…, is now out from Baynam Books. Get it here.