My review of: Murder by Memory, by Olivia Waite

I read this (epub) in one sitting on 12 May 2026.

This novella is up for a 2026 Hugo Award. If you become a voting member, you can download the voters packet and read it yourself.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book and immediately wanted to send copies to other people who I thought would also enjoy it. To me, this is the most important metric for a work of art – do I have an urge to share it?

The book is a cozy murder mystery (high-skilled knitting is a theme and a plot-point) in space on a ship that takes a unique approach to generation ships, uploaded consciousness, and immortality through body replacement.

From a sci-fi perspective, it was… fine. The majority of the setting was a hand-wave post-scarcity utopia that still had fatal technological flaws and capitalism – not so utopic. Most of it was easy to read through but there were moments where the tech was not smoothly explained. The crux of the story is that folks have their souls/consciousness uploaded to The Library between life-long sessions of occupying their own cloned bodies. Some folks, like our intrepid narrator and Ship’s Detective, Aunt Dorothy Gentleman, choose to spend years archived in the Library rather than occupying a body, safe and secure in the knowledge that the uploading and storage process is safe and secure.

Until it fails, resulting in true deaths through the loss of the archives. And, it seems, someone has figured out how to destroy the indestructible soul/memory units using souped-up flashlights printed from the ship’s replicators.

This could have been an opportunity to talk about the follies of man, and probably men, and the failings of capitalism, and the tragedy of trying to rush scientific progress. How can this ship, destined to fly for thousands of years, have such a simple and devastating weakness? I’m glad there was no proselyting screed, but I would have liked a bit of an explanation to paper over the gaping security hole that feels like a plot hole.

Then again, is it really a plot hole if it is the tunnel the plot drives through? I dunno. It was stylistically and aesthetically in keeping with the universe, and you need to make murder possible to have a murder mystery, but I still think the murdering was a bit too easy.

The murdering, from a mystery perspective, was actually pretty neat. Our detective, who had been on a break from living in a body, awakens to find herself uploaded into a body other than her own, and is thrust into solving murders (both temporary and permanent). The twisty bits are not shocking, but perhaps that is part of what makes the story feel cozy.

That and the knitting. A person of interest runs the ships lovely yarn store, and Detective Aunt Dorothy just so happens to love knitting. After a predictably pat resolution to the murder case (and plenty of groundwork for subsequent stories), Dorothy settles in to a new apartment, overlooking the fiber shop.

Oh yeah, and every relationship is queer, but that’s not really dwelled on. Just fact of life – references to men’s husbands and women’s wives, and some simmering tension between Dorothy and the dangerous women she meets. Also an aside about being able to choose the sex of you body each time you download into a new one.

The murder twists didn’t trick me, and the sci- was mostly -fi, but I really enjoyed reading the book and instantly wanted to recommend it to several people. It’s worth your time!