Praise for We Are Satellites
“We Are Satellites is a compassionate, richly textured look at how one ordinary family deals with the next wave in productivity technology. When brain implants become the only way to get ahead in life, what do parents and teachers do to prepare their children—or to help them resist? Sarah Pinsker asks these questions and more, always with subtlety and a keen eye for the ambiguities of social progress. Best of all, the novel’s futuristic premise feels as realistic and lived-in as its characters’ love for one another.”
—Annalee Newitz, author of Autonomous and The Future of Another Timeline
“Pinsker writes intensely human sci-fi, exploring with nuance and heart the ways technology impacts the emotional lives of her characters. Yes, We Are Satellites is a thought experiment on posthumanism, on how we divvy up our attention between signal and noise. More importantly, it’s a deeply empathetic story of a family struggling with everyday impossibilities. We Are Satellites will drill a tiny—entirely painless—aperture in the side of your skull, snake its way inside, and rewire how you think about the lines between yourself, technology, and those we love.”
—Bob Proehl, author of The Somebody People
Praise for Sarah Pinsker’s A Song for a New Day
“An all-too-plausible version of the apocalypse, rendered in such compelling prose that you won’t be able to put it down. . . . A lively and hopeful look at how community and music and life goes on even in the middle of dark days and malevolent corporate shenanigans.”
—Kelly Link, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Get in Trouble
“You’d better keep a copy of A Song for a New Day with you at all times, because this book will help you survive the future. Sarah Pinsker has written a wonderful epic about music, community, and rediscovering the things that make us human. Pinsker has an amazing ear for dialogue, a brilliant knack for describing music, and most importantly a profound awareness of silence, in both its positive and negative aspects. A Song for a New Day restored some of my faith in community, and I didn’t even realize how much I needed this book right now.”
—Charlie Jane Anders, national bestselling author of All the Birds in the Sky and The City in the Middle of the Night
“Experiencing Sarah Pinsker’s A Song for a New Day is like listening to a fine, well-rehearsed song unleashed live. It’s a deeply human song of queer found family and the tension between independence and belonging, thoughtful and raw like the best live music. It’s also a cautionary tale of what happens when we privilege convenience over connection. If you love performance—the magic of head-thrown-back ecstatic musical communion—read this book.”
—Nicola Griffith, author of Hild
Other Works by Sarah Pinsker
A Song for a New Day
Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea
(short story collection)
BERKLEY
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
penguinrandomhouse.com
Copyright © 2021 by Sarah Pinsker
Readers Guide copyright © 2021 by Sarah Pinsker
Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.
BERKLEY and the BERKLEY & B colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Portions of the first section of the book were originally published as “Headlong” in The Future Embodied, an anthology published by Simian Publishing.
Portions of the second section of the book were originally published as “Monsters, Beneath the Bed and Otherwise” in Fierce Family, an anthology published by Crossed Genres.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Pinsker, Sarah, author.
Title: We are satellites / Sarah Pinsker.
Description: First edition. | New York: Berkley, 2021.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020035483 (print) | LCCN 2020035484 (ebook) | ISBN 9781984802606 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781984802613 (ebook)
Subjects: GSAFD: Science fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3616.I579 W4 2021 (print) | LCC PS3616.I579 (ebook)| DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020035483
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020035484
First Edition: May 2021
Cover design by Tim Green/Faceout Studio
Cover silhouette of woman holding girl’s hand by Alma Gonzalez
Book design by Elke Sigal, adapted for ebook by Kelly Brennan
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
pid_prh_5.7.0_c0_r0
For Amira & Ellie,
best of sisters,
and for everyone who has ever been disbelieved about their own health.
Contents
Cover
Praise for We Are Satellites
Other Works by Sarah Pinsker
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Part Two
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Part Three
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Six
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Chapter Seventy
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Readers Guide
About the Author
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
VAL
There was a blue light in the balcony. Val lingered in the stage wing, looking out on a darkened auditorium and one illicit pinprick, electric blue. The girls squirmed and tapped their feet and whispered to one another by the glow of the ancient anti-drunk-driving smash-’em-up film. A mournful pop song that had been old long before she herself hit high school gave their boredom a soundtrack.
The school had a strict policy on electronics: no checking phones except between classes, tablets in school mode to allow work and emergency contact, but no social media. She slipped away from the stage. The light probably wasn’t worth chasing, but this assembly always felt interminable, and the hunt gave her something
