Lincoln Michel’s new novel, Metallic Realms, is a skillful send-up of science fiction fandom and writing group dynamics, set in contemporary Brooklyn. Crafted as a book within a book, readers meet the members of a sci-fi writing group known as Orb 4 who are struggling to get along, pay rent, and work on a series of short stories.
Metallic Realms contains Orb 4’s stories as compiled in a metafictional anthology, Memoirs of My Metallic Realms: The Collected Star Rot Chronicles, complete with fictional commentary and notes. The anthology is the project of fictional editor and narrator Michael Lincoln, whose obsessive devotion to Orb 4 burns as brightly as a supernova.
The Orb 4 stories themselves take place “thousands of years in the future when the Earthian empire has expanded across the stars, crested, and collapsed. The current time is known in-universe as the Unending Decay.” Sound familiar? Though the novel is closer to literary fiction in genre, like good science fiction, Metallic Realms is interested in spotlighting and critiquing social norms amidst our current reality, accomplished through the Orb 4 stories, as well as the in-world issues faced by the group’s members.
In Orb 4’s stories, the characters aboard the good ship Star Rot have grand adventures in the tradition of pulp sci-fi, battling void lice and vlorps, “a kind of cosmic whale … [that] hatch in the hearts of stars,” among other encounters. The anthologized work takes various forms, exploring the tensions between genre and literary fiction through a mix of short stories, a stage play, transcripts from fictional interviews, and an excerpt of a character’s autofiction novel-in-fragments. The latter is written by an Orb 4 member who is steeped in MFA culture and whose mantra for overcoming writer’s block (“What would Italo Calvino do?”) hints at Michel’s keen character development as well as his irreverent sense of humor.
Countless footnotes throughout the book are used to great comedic effect, including an early example in which fictional editor Lincoln includes an epigraph of a Nabokov quote: “I love science fiction with its gals and goons, suspense and suspensories.” The footnote, in turn, reads, “This quote … appears on some websites as ‘I loathe science fiction …’ I can only assume this was an autocorrect error that has propagated across the internet or else a verbal typo by Mr. Nabokov himself … One cannot believe everything one reads online. This is a truth I hope you, dear reader, will keep in mind if you encounter any of the distortions, fabrications, and outright slanders that have been spread about me since the tragedy.”
Not to be confused with the author Michel—a Charlottesville native known for his short stories and previous novel, The Body Scout, which was named one of Esquire magazine’s 75 Best Sci-Fi Books of All Time—fictional narrator Lincoln is an entitled and self-important law school dropout whose love of science fiction is equal only to his hatred of “Star Trek” and its fans. As far as doppelgängers go, Michel’s use of Lincoln is hilarious and references not only literary predecessors but also the Mirror Universe convention of “Star Trek,” in which crew members come into conflict with their evil counterparts in a parallel universe. In Metallic Realms, however, Lincoln is mostly just ridiculous, petty, and narcissistic, making comments like, “Reader, I was ensorcelled,” and referring to himself as a “literary Ronin,” despite the fact that his own fiction-writing project remains unrealized.
Lincoln’s disdain for “Star Trek” becomes a running gag throughout Metallic Realms, for the enjoyment of genre fans and Trekkies alike. There are asides about redshirts, Breens, Tribbles, and other “Star Trek” lore peppered throughout. One Orb 4 story begins, “Space. There’s not a lot going on,” riffing on the iconic “Star Trek” intro monologue, and many borrow heavily from plot points and narrative arcs of the series, giving a nod to the derivative nature of Orb 4’s writing, whose “literary inventiveness” the fictional Lincoln nonetheless sets out to prove.
More generally, Michel is generous with the puns, anagrams, and wordplay that his narrator embraces, giving him a parrot named Arthur C. Caique and a former pet axolotl named Isaac Axolmov, in addition to references to the work of other well-known science fiction writers, from Ursula K. Le Guin to Kim Stanley Robinson. While the novel will certainly be enjoyable to those unfamiliar with science fiction, Easter eggs like these enhance the reading experience for genre fans.
In the end, Metallic Realms is a well-told and entertaining tale of creative collaboration, group dynamics, obsessive fandom, and the stories we tell ourselves about reality. To borrow Lincoln’s comical description of the Star Rot stories, the book is “stacked with so many layers of references and themes that [it is a] veritable lasagna of meaning. One could feast upon [it] for many meals and still have leftovers to mull. I invite you now to tuck in a bib and take a bite.” Dig in, dear reader.
Metallic Realms, Lincoln Michel’s complex, funny, science fiction book within a book, will be published on May 13. Supplied photo.
