Kepler 438-B: Volume 1 (SF) - The Kepler Files ***

This is a very beautiful book, though it's in an odd format that's more like a TV screen in aspect ratio. The topic is a future mission to an exoplanet, the Kepler 438-B of the title. This is a little larger than Earth, orbiting very close to its dim star. It has been proposed as a possible habitable planet, but some suggest that the level of radiation from the star would be too high for life.

Rather than present us with a conventional narrative, what we have here is a series of pages dominated by images, along with a whole range of different types of text, from interview quotes to log entries. Many of the images are stunning, AI generated with lots of detail. It's a very visual design from the Kepler Files team who, from the biographies are highly design-oriented.

The book was without doubt fun to flick through, but there is one big issue with it. This is fiction, and fiction needs to have a basis in story. What happens here is that a spacecraft is built, takes off, travels to a distant star (Kepler 438 is over 470 light years away), arrives and does a quick survey. That's all we get in the first volume. There is very little dramatic narrative. For a story to be engaging, there need to be obstacles overcome. Okay, there's the building of the huge craft (which bizarrely seems to be assembled on Earth, rather than in space) and the technology to enable faster-than-light travel (here wormhole-based) and stasis so most of the crew sleep their way to the destination - but there is no sense of anyone really making anything happen, and far too many characters are introduced to get any engagement.

There is one incident along the way (two if you count a stowaway cat) when in the agricultural zone 'Analysis of the hybrid's volatile organic compounds reveals a 58% match to known toxins' and the skeleton crew's executive officers are asked to determine next steps, but then on the next page we just get 'The threat has been contained and managed.' That's okay, then - dramatic tension or what? I can see the idea of the approach is to make it feel like a factual write up - but even non-fiction requires narrative and tension where things are overcome. And there is so little detail - for example we just get told there's 'recent development of advanced stasis technology, cryogenic stimulation and neurostimulation', and 'the hyperdrive's use of wormhole propulsion technology' - and that's about it.

Now it's possible that the drama and narrative content will build with future volumes. In the opening we are told that the information we receive forms 'part of a puzzling mosaic of information' and 'we hope the excitement that fuels this mission inspires you to join us in decoding these clues' - but as it stands at the end of volume 1, there seems very little to puzzle over and decode.

This is a genuinely original and innovative take on how to present science fiction. Innovation always comes with risk. You've got to be bold, and the team behind this book and more at the Kepler Files website (where the aim is to have more multimedia content in the future) are certainly that. But for me, beautiful though it is, taken as a science fiction book it doesn't do enough to engage me.

Hardback: At the time of review, the book is only available from the website address above, though it should be in bookshops soon.

Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here