太空的六场葬礼 (2017)

《太空的六场葬礼》（Six Wakes），是慕儿·拉佛提的科幻推理小说。2017年1月，以平装本和电子书出版。

故事概要

因基因工程与心智黑客恶意修改心智图（mindmap）等滥用，针对克隆技术制定许多法律，即《克隆人国际治理法附加条例》，简称“附则”（Codicils）。附则将克隆技术限制在延续个体生命上，即当个体死亡之际，利用心智图，将记忆移转到克隆人身上，延续生命。

沉睡号（Dormire），是艘载有数千名潜在殖民者的星舰，项目从地球前往天仓五星系。所有乘客都处在冷冻睡眠；在漫长旅程中，只有六名的前罪犯仍保持清醒，透过不断重新克隆自己，更新记忆，以在岗位上继续工作。旅程预计需要几个世纪，由莎莉·明尼亚伦领导，她是位古怪的亿万富翁，资助了建造沉睡号，也是乘客。

故事之初，最新被克隆的船员玛丽亚·亚瑞娜在航行25年后醒来，发现她最近一次克隆的自己，以及其他船员的自我遭到谋杀，而她关于整个旅程的记忆遭到抹去。其他船员新的克隆人醒来时也一样失忆。复制区遭到破坏；星舰的导航人工智能伊恩（IAN）已瘫痪，而星舰正偏离航线。6名船员——舰长卡翠娜·迪·拉克鲁兹、副舰长暨船上安全主管拉夫冈、领航员佐藤明弘、医官乔安娜·葛拉斯、工程师保罗·秀拉，及玛丽亚本人，试图解开这起密室谋杀事件，找出谁是六人中的幕后黑手，并试着让航行重回正轨。

获奖

《太空的六场葬礼》获2017年BSFA最佳小说奖的提名，及2018年菲利普·K·迪克纪念奖、2018年雨果奖最佳长篇小说奖和2018年星云奖。

Six Wakes is a science fiction mystery novel by Mur Lafferty. It was first published in trade paperback and ebook by Orbit Books in January 2017.

Summary

The story takes place aboard the Dormire, a starship carrying thousands of prospective colonists from Earth to a planet in the Tau Ceti star system. All the passengers are in coldsleep; only a six-person crew of cloned former criminals remains awake through the generations-long journey, each of them recloned and imprinted with their continually updated memories as they age and die. The journey is anticipated to take several centuries, and is sponsored by Sallie Mignon, an eccentric multi-billionaire who financed the construction of the Dormire and is currently aboard as a colonist. Cloning technology is not restricted to shipboard life, and a number of laws, called the "Codicils," have sprung up around cloning after numerous abuses of genetic engineering and the "hacking" (deliberate altering) of mindmaps.

The latest clone of crew member Maria Arena awakens twenty-five years into the voyage to discover her most recent self, and those of the rest of the crew, murdered, and her accumulated memories of the whole trip wiped. The new clones of the other crew members prove equally amnesiac as they awaken; the cloning tanks have been sabotaged; and IAN, the ship's guiding artificial intelligence, has been crippled and is taking the starship off course. The result is a locked-room mystery as the six crew members—Captain Katrina de la Cruz; pilot and navigator Akihiro Sato; security chief Wolfgang; engineer Paul Seurat; ship's doctor Joanna Glass; and Maria herself, general housekeeper for the ship—try to determine which of them has murdered their previous selves and sabotaged the voyage, and how to get the voyage back on track.

As the crew attempt to unravel the mystery, each character's history—often extensive, as all of them are clones with lifespans stretching back hundreds of years—allows Lafferty to continue worldbuilding, as many of them were present for significant events in the story's fictional history. As an example, Dr. Glass turns out to have also, in a previous incarnation, been a lawmaker who was instrumental in proposing and ratifying the Codicils, earning her the ire of those whose abuse of genetic engineering and mindmap hacking have now been outlawed. These moments turn out to be crucial in helping the crew decipher the mystery, because somewhere over the course of history, each of them managed to piss someone off...

Awards

Six Wakes was a preliminary nominee for the 2017 BSFA Award for Best Novel and a finalist for the 2018 Philip K. Dick Award, the 2018 Hugo Award for Best Novel, and the 2018 Nebula Award for Best Novel.

Reception

The reviewer for Kirkus Reviews seems puzzled by the author's "venture into science-fiction horror" after her "hilarious" earlier novel The Shambling Guide to New York City, opining "[y]ou have to wonder why, given Lafferty's manifest talent for humor, she didn't simply play it for laughs." The initial setup is rated "familiar to mystery fans" and "[m]aybe ... just too devious for its own good." Moreover, "the narrative never quite lives up to [its] remarkable opening. Momentum dissipates amid frequent pauses to belabor the cloning process and laws relating to clone succession, not to mention a succession of scientific howlers ... Still, as the characters delve separately and together into their previous lives in search of an explanation for their predicament, the tension rises, personalities are revealed, and common factors emerge—some of them, we learn, are retired, recovering, or repurposed homicidal maniacs." In summation, the reviewer concedes that "readers easily captivated and not overly concerned with structural dependability will find much to entertain them."