This is a review of the book, “Inner Space,” by Jakub Szamalek, with the translation from Polish to English by Kasia Beresford. The book takes place largely on the International Space Station and involves a United States crew and a Russian crew. But Earth-bound personnel also play a role, especially those in the upper echelons of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration. A small leak of ammonia begins not long after a new US crew has arrived to take their turn at manning the station, meeting a Russian crew that has been aboard for a while. Ammonia is the refrigerant that is used to cool the US side of the space station, and in large doses it can be not only smelly and irritating, but if inhaled in sufficient amounts, deadly. So, the American crew gets to work immediately trying to find the source of the leak. Is it coming from the American side, or the Russian side? The two have separate modules the crew members live in.
The overall commander of the Space Station is Lucy Poplaski of the American crew, and it’s her job to find that leak. But there’s much more to finding a simple leak of ammonia than just going around with a leak detector. There are personnel issues, personality divisions and differences, the division of the station into international sections, the various modules that make up the station (each one has a different name; I didn’t know that when I started reading), the highly complex and technical make-up of the station, and so forth. Each member of the station has a specific job to do, and the station must be maintained; it can’t just be shut down to find a leak. Work goes on. Did the leak start as an accident, say a meteorite strike or a piece of shrapnel from a destroyed or blown-up satellite of, perhaps, many years ago, or was it mechanical failure on the station, or, interestingly, sabotage? Could that even be possible? Do they even want to think about that? Thus begins a tale of detection and of personnel and personality that finally results in a complex web of intrigue worthy of a good detective story.
I enjoyed the novel thoroughly. Szamalek’s expert craft and Beresford’s readable translation puts together an entertaining novel that held my attention throughout. I recommend the novel to anyone who likes science fiction stories set in the present or near future.
A note on the author. Jakub Szamalek was born in Poland, but lives in Nova Scotia, and writes in Polish. He says he’s never visited the ISS, but he obtained his information about the station from openly available sources here on Earth, and from this book I learned a lot about the station. He even supplies a bibliography at the end of the book.
I highly recommend the book. I picked up a copy at Barnes and Noble.