Volatile Memory (The Volatile Memory Duology, 1) by Seth Haddon Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: artificial intelligence, queer romance, science fiction, space opera
Series: Volatile Memory Duology #1
Pages: 176
Published by Tordotcom on July 22, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
Ex Machina meets This is How You Lose the Time War: Seth Haddon's science fiction debut, Volatile Memory, is a heart-filled, vengeful sapphic sci-fi action adventure novella.
With nothing but a limping ship and an outdated mask to her name, Wylla needs a big pay day. When the call goes out that a lucrative piece of tech is waiting on a nearby planet, she relies on all the swiftness of her prey animal instincts to beat other hunters to it.
What you found wasn’t your ticket out—it was my corpse wearing an AI mask. When you touched the mask, you heard my voice. A consciousness spinning through metal and circuits, a bodiless mind, spun to life in the HAWK’s temporary storage. I crystallized, and I was alive.
Masks aren't supposed to retain memory, much less identity, but the woman inside the MARK I HAWK is real, and she sees Wylla in a way no one ever has. Sees her, and doesn’t find her wanting or unwhole.
Armed with military-grade tech and a lifetime of staying one step ahead of the hunters, Wylla and HAWK set off to get answers from the man who discarded HAWK once before: her ex-husband.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
My Review:
Our story begins in a hail of blaster fire on a misbegotten moon in a space scavenger free-for-all. One that isn’t likely to be free for anyone at all, based on the hail of deadly projectiles coming from all directions.
But Wylla doesn’t think that she has much of a choice – or at least that all of her choices are even worse than this one – blaster fire and all. The automated message broadcasting a big payday for whichever scavenger reaches the mysterious prize is her one chance at life on her own terms and not the terms that the all-encompassing, all-powerful corporate hegemonies would reduce her to.
Unless they reduced her non-conforming ass to its component atoms – which is the most likely outcome for Wylla. Unless her patched-together ship’s many patches disintegrate in space – and her along with them – first.
But that big payday isn’t exactly what Wylla expected it to be. It could be, if she’s willing to jettison her humanity to fulfill her dreams. Which she isn’t, because it’s her humanity and her dogged determination to cling to her version of her very own self at all costs that has kept her going as long and as far as she has.
The prize that Wylla has latched onto – and very much vice versa – is a piece of experimental tech that houses the one thing tech really, really shouldn’t. Embedded into the volatile memory of what was intended to be a high-tech, state of the art, military AI system are the thoughts, feelings, memories and personhood of the one and only person to survive the experiment that put her there.
She wants revenge on the person who killed her. And she wants as much of the life that was denied her as she can still manage to get – with Wylla at her side. Or in her head. Or however they can make it work.
Escape Rating A-: I did not know what I was getting myself into when I picked this up, and honestly, the blurb doesn’t help. Ex Machina is a title that gets used OFTEN in SF, so that didn’t tell me all that much. I didn’t actually LIKE This is How You Lose the Time War, so for this reader that’s not a recommendation.
(If you did like Time War, the part of Volatile Memory that is a bit like it is that this story is also written from two first-person perspectives that are written from a briefly, and somewhat weirdly shared existence.)
But it still looked more than interesting enough – and 176 pages is just not that big a read so I decided “Why not?” and I’m glad I did. Also, the blurb turned out to be half right, as Volatile Memory absolutely IS “a heart-filled, vengeful sapphic sci-fi action adventure novella” from beginning to end.
There are multiple ways to approach this story. The easiest, and the highest-energy part of the story is the vengeful part. Sable, the woman IN the mask, certainly earned her right to serve something ice cold to the ex-husband who used her up, spit her out into the world of high-tech experimentation, and got her erased and killed in return for a big promotion. That she wants to return the favor is one of the most human parts of her.
The heart-filled, heartbreaking sapphic romance side of the story is that Sable needs Wylla to own her own righteous rage in order to be on board for making Sable’s revenge happen. And that’s a rocky road in more ways than one.
And very much on my third, cybertech hand, this is a story about identity. Wylla is an outcast from society. Not exactly because she’s trans, and yet exactly because she’s trans. It’s not about gender or sex or sexuality – her outcast status is because her willingness to listen to that voice inside her that tells her she’s not what the corporations expect her to be means that she’s too independent to be a good, efficient, productive corporate drone – and THAT’s the ultimate sin in this world. So she runs, and she hides, and she hacks her records quite thoroughly and she lives a small life on the fringes so as not to draw attention to herself – at least not until Sable upsets everything in her quest for revenge and a way for Sable and Wylla to BE together in some way that works even though Wylla is the only one with an actual body.
In the end, this turned out to be one of those book blender things, because between the three elements I saw lots of different pieces coming at me from lots of places. So for this reader, Volatile Memory reads like Murderbot meets World Running Down, along with the search for identity of These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart and the rebellion against the evil corporate hegemonies of Sisters of the Vast Black by Lina Rather and Firefly.
Now that I’ve thought about this a bit, the story that this reminded me the most of is by Max Gladstone after all but isn’t This is How You Lose the Time War. It’s Empress of Forever, which I loved a whole lot and wouldn’t mind seeing more of. So I’m really happy to say that we’re not done with Wylla and Sable – at least not yet. Volatile Memory is now listed as the first book in a duology, so there’s more to come. And this reader is absolutely here for it!
