Mindscape
Andrea Hairston
Hardcover/Ebook
ISBN: 9781250808769
Tor Books, August 5 2025, 448 pgs

Sometime in the near future, an impenetrable Barrier appears on Earth, isolating the planet from space and dividing the land into Zones. The sudden instability and interruption of international trade and cultural exchange plunges humanity into (further) conflict, deprivation, and inequality; however, it also gives rise to new social systems and classes. Vermittlers navigate through the Barrier at will, entertainers take acting to new death-defying heights and propagandic lows, and healers do what you’d expect with a psychedelic twist while meddling in the fraught social politics of this world. When joined by military officers, ambassadors, and scientists, the Barrier-bound world faces even more conflict than usual, despite attempts to preserve an interZone treaty—or destroy it, depending on who you talk to.

This book is not an easy read. I lost count of how many times I had to stop, peer at a paragraph, and say to myself, “Okay, what’s going on now?” It’s military science fiction without big battle scenes. It’s spiritual and metaphysical without relying on simplistic ideas of good and evil. It’s political without giving the reader an obvious hero to root for. There were aliens—but wait, were there? It’s challenging and futuristic, wildly imaginative, and even romantic at times. There are a lot of characters, a lot of smaller stories-within-the-story, and a strong sense of action on a massive scale.

But, despite the fact that I had to make a flowchart to keep track of all the political machinations going on here and flip back and forth to the Cast of Characters listed in the front of the book constantly, I really enjoyed this. In fact, I enjoyed it because of those things. Mindscape is Andrea Hairston’s debut novel, originally published in 2006 and nominated for the Philip K Dick Award the following year. I’m glad it’s been reissued this year because not enough people are writing like this now. Mindscape is unique and challenging, using its fragmented acid-trippy world to explore themes of race, class, culture, gender, and morality, among others. Multilingualism is standard in the Barrier world, so the text contains untranslated bits of German and Yoruba strewn through it like seasoning. Certain scenes and characters really push the envelope unapologetically, not as an attempt to shock, but to genuinely use the story to think through the ways different personalities react to crisis and conflict. There’s a strong sense of imagination throughout the book that veers pretty far out at times, but it’s all grounded in strong science and a deep understanding of social systems.

That said, despite being nearly twenty-five years old, there are parts of this book that are harder to read now because of how prescient they seem. While the Zone divisions caused by the Barrier are forced, there’s something sobering about the thought of a world speedrunning towards self-destruction because it has become so strongly defined by cultural, economic, and geographical separation. Despite the presence of flying dolphins and blue-haired medusan healers, the most jarring thing about this book is the way that interactions between Zones are controlled by powerful, squabbling factions that are mostly concerned with their own power. There’s really only one character in this book who seems to genuinely care about regular, everyday people, many of whom are suffering, none of whom are involved in the politics. I wonder now if that’s intentional.

You have to have your brain turned all the way on to get into this book, and you may have to let a little smoke come out of your ears before you really understand it all. Hairston assumes her readers are all just as smart as she is and expects us to catch up and catch on while she charges full speed ahead into the world and its story. I’d call it a wild ride, but no ride goes so many places, twists and turns so sharply, and drags so many real-world references behind it. It really does live up to the title. This novel is a mindscape, an unfolding of perception on several different levels of reality used to explore and diagnose an ailing world.