Published 7th May 2024

Gabi's Review 

Australian writer Ceridwen Dovey’s new short story collection, Only the Astronauts, tackles the important social and ethical topic of AI. While Dovey’s earlier and acclaimed collection Only The Animals, dealt with the lack of rights for non-human life forms, her new stories in which space objects and robots are given emotional depth, exposes the wilful indifference and negligence of their human creators.

The book is both a serious social critique and wickedly funny. One character, Starman, a mannequin launched into space by Space X's Elon Musk, is a sentient AI forced to endure the appalling conditions of the journey while nostalgically recalling details of his secret love affair with his creator. In another story, Voyager 1 appears as a sentient AI vessel captured by Oortians, members of a technologically advanced civilisation with a Viking-like disposition. Voyager 1's mission to deliver the messages contained within the revered gold disc, far from conveying the intended poignancy of extending a human hand in greeting, is met with humiliating and relentless mirth.

Only the Astronauts creates a vividly imagined future in stories that blends pathos, caustic humour and an avowedly feminist perspective. It will appeal to lovers of sci-fi, creative inventiveness and humour, and seems destined to become a cult classic. 

Publishers Reviews

Only the Astronauts creates a vividly imagined future in stories that blends pathos, caustic humour and an avowedly feminist perspective. It will appeal to lovers of sci-fi, creative inventiveness and humour, and seems destined to become a cult classic. 

A transformative new collection from the award-winning author of Only the Animals.

'Ceridwen Dovey has a rare, wild genius. The stories in Only the Astronauts are extraordinary, funny, delightful and moving. Dovey sees tenderly what it is to be human - from a perspective that is out-of-this-world imaginative.' Anna Funder

Starman, a lovelorn mannequin orbiting the Sun in his cherry-red car, pines for his creator. The first sculpture ever taken to the Moon is possessed by the spirit of Neil Armstrong. The International Space Station, awaiting deorbit and burial in a spacecraft cemetery beneath the ocean, farewells its last astronauts. A team of tamponauts sets off on a perilous mission to Mars inspired by the courage of their predecessors. The Voyager 1 space probe - carrying its precious Golden Record - is captured by Oortians near the edge of the solar system and drawn into their baroque, glimmering rituals.

By turns joyous and mournful, these object-astronauts are not high priests of the universe but something a little . . . weirder. From their inverted perspectives, they observe humans both intimately and from a great distance, bearing witness to a civilisation unable to live up to its own ideals. And yet each still finds in our planet - in their humans - something worthy of love.