The Ganymedan - R.T. Ester

Behind all the unfamiliar science-fiction technological terms associated with its Martian setting and a sense of being thrown into the deep end, what happens at the start of R.T. Ester's The Ganymedan is clear enough and sets the ball rolling in a thrilling style. The short version is that Verden Dotnet, or V-Dot as he is known, has just assassinated perhaps the most important man in the system, Archer Lenox-Pileser - known to all as LP - but while trying to make his escape on a spacecraft leaving Mars, he has been identified and killed while trying to evade the authorities. The longer version of what actually happened inevitably is a little more complicated. As indeed is the nature of 'death'.

For some wealthy individuals - of which LP was definitely one - the technology that LP helped develop means that you can take frequent backups that can be restored to a new body. Indeed he has been assassinated several times already and used this technology before, but this time his killer has employed a scrubbing device which ensures that all his backups are erased. V-Dot's own existence however will be just as final should he be caught - which we have been told is the case - even as he used a scrambler device to hide his identity. The question over why V-Dot has killed LP so definitively and at such great risk is the real question that you want to see resolved, as well obviously as the full story of what happened.

Archer Lenox-Pileser's business evidently has a lot to do with it. While the development of sentients, simulated environments and even an After world that humans can permanent 'retire' to (like Iain M Banks' subliming) has made LP "the closest to a god any human had come" for some, but it has also been controversial and the subject of a war with some activists on Ganymede. Previous assassinations of LP have been claimed by the revolutionary Gan terrorist group, Manathema, but V-Dot has a very personal reason for killing "the most revered human in the Frontier", and also a mission to carry out in the aftermath...

That's the easy bit, at least as far as the reader is concerned, and for me the most fun part of The Ganymedan. The background of this part of the universe is intriguing, exploring the relationship between humans, sentients, non-sentients, the simworld, and the gradual realisation of the importance of LP while V is on the run. His team-up with a sentient space ship, TR-8901, who is unaware of his true identity but suspicious about his passenger's behaviour, adds a level of awkward camaraderie as well as tension running against the scrambler clock. About half-way through the book, by the time we get to Polemia, things get a lot more complicated and not just for V-Dot, as R.T. Ester explores V-Dot's prior relationship with his boss.

In the process you also get more of an insight into the philosophical existential questions around the nature of sentience and consciousness, god nodes and human nature that no one really has any definitive answers to. LP might know but he is no longer around to answer of those any questions, but in a way his own existence and his corruption over his long life point in a certain direction. The momentum of the novel kind of stalls at this point however as those concepts and beliefs are considered along with matters arising out of them - The Pact, Gardenism, the After - introducing new concepts and technology that are difficult to grasp. I'm not sure R.T. Ester gets the right balance between the SF action and the ideas or adds anything new to the questions around Artificial Intelligence that are ever more important now, but The Ganymedan still has plenty of character and invention in its science-fiction plot and premise.


Reading notes: The Ganymedan by R.T Ester is published by Rebellion Publishing on the 4th November 2025. I received an advance eBook download from the publisher through NetGalley.

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