Back in August 2023, I was in London on my way to the Arthur C. Clarke Award ceremony, having been one of the judges that year, and spotted these in Forbidden Planet. We had rewatched Firefly the previous year, and loved it again, so I grabbed the two books; and then ran into the author herself at the ceremony, where she cheerfully signed them.

I confess that I had not actually got around to reading them until now, spurred by the fact that Una is the Guest of Honour at Novacon next weekend, but also they bubbled to the top of my reading lists anyway. One thing to say about both is that at the same time as reading them, I was also attempting to read one of the great classic Western novels set in the general area of Texas in the 1850s, and found the Firefly books so much more entertaining that I abandoned the other one. (More on that in due course.)

Second paragraph of third chapter of Firefly: Carnival:

“Trouble?” said Ava. She wasn’t anticipating trouble. She was heading off to the big city, like she’d always wanted to since Momma and Poppa had died. Free at last! Money in her pocket and all the big wide ‘verse to explore. “I’m a good girl! I ain’t plannin’ on gettin’ into trouble.”

This is set on a planet where the locals are preparing for Carnival, which means hedonistic enjoyment for the rich and hard work for the poor. The Serenity crew get tasked with the delivery of a sensitive cargo, which of course gets stolen from them, as a result of which their client holds Zoe and Shepherd Book hostage against its restitution. The crew also gets entangled with the story of 14-year-old Ava, who has left home to find her fortune in the city. Together they discover much more sinister goings-on, which the alert reader will work out before the characters do (in fairness because the characters are not able to share vital information between each other). We know from TV that human trafficking happens in the Firefly universe, and here we see how deeply it goes. You can get Firefly: Carnival here.

Second paragraph of Firefly: Coup de Grâce:

“Somethin’ the matter, Captain Reynolds?” I said. “Somethin’ you want to say to me?”

Here too there is a young woman at the centre of the story, the daughter of a lawyer who has been assassinated by a local gang. She hires the Serenity crew to get justice for her father, but the local politics turns out to be a lot more complex, with the gang enjoying a certain level of official and corporate protection. We end up exploring both the difficulties of post-conflict social and economic reconstruction, and there is vicious deconstruction of the Boris Johnson government’s “levelling-up” pledges. You can get Firefly: Coup de Grâce here.

Fans of the TV series will be very satisfied with either or both of these books. They both feature very good portrayals of the main cast, and interesting shuffling of the personalities to get pairings where the characters can banter off each other. I slightly get the sense that McCormack’s favourite is Simon Tan, but I may be wrong.

There are seven other Firefly novels, four by James Lovegrove and the others by Tim Lebbon, M.K. England and Rosiee Thor. I have read one book by Tim Lebbon and was on a 2005 Worldcon panel with James Lovegrove; perhaps I need to broaden out my Firefly reading.

Carnival and Coup de Grâce were the two SF books that had lingered longest unread on my shelves. Next on that pile will be Descendant Machine by Gareth Powell, but it will wait until I have finished all the other books I acquired in 2023. Carnival was also the top unread book on my shelves acquired in 2023. Next on that pile is Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle, by Paula Frederiksen.