Star Splitter by Matthew J. Kirby

 

Publication Date: April 25th, 2023

Read: July 30th, 2023

Rating: 4/5 stars

Synopsis

Star Splitter is a YA sci-fi story about Jessica, a teenage girl who is traveling via teleportation to a planet light years from Earth in order to help her parents research. She resents her parents for leaving her when she was a kid, and doesn't really want to do any of this. That's one timeline. In the other, Jessica wakes up on the surface of the planet in a crashed lander, accompanied only by another version of herself who seems to be keeping some secrets.

I really enjoyed Star Splitter. It's tense, atmospheric, and pretty existential, all things considered. Teleportation is at the core of the philosophical questions posed by this book. In this world, the way that teleportation works is that your body and memories are scanned, you're put into stasis, and then you're "printed" at your destination from the atom up. This is what allows for two Jessicas to be present in one timeline of the book.

The way teleportation works in this world leads into some interesting issues, like the mind-body dualism required to be okay with letting your initial body be destroyed in favor of your new teleported one. We get intriguing hints into the controversy that exists on Earth, as well. One of the supporting characters is no longer in contact with his father because his father believes him to be dead now that he's teleported.

As for the two Jessicas, are both of them Jessica? Are neither of them Jessica? Over the course of the two timelines, both of them become different people from each other and from pre-teleportation Jessica. This question of identity is interrogated throughout the story, but ultimately, Star Splitter is less interested in easy answers than it is in hard questions. I enjoyed that about it.

While reading, I had a couple of interesting discussions about this version of teleportation with my friends, which was fun to discuss. Would you be willing to teleport if it meant waking up as an exact copy of yourself somewhere else? Et cetera. This book is fun simply for the thoughts it provokes, but it's also fun for the slowly ramping tension and thriller aspects. I definitely recommend it to those who like sci-fi and/or thrillers with a philosophical edge.