New Scientist Book Club picks Slow Gods for July

An extract from Claire North’s “Slow Gods” arrives as the New Scientist Book Club’s July selection, following a narrator who traces their own origins back to Glastya Row and the United Social Venture’s debt-based system.

For July, the New Scientist Book Club has chosen Claire North’s “Slow Gods” — and now readers get a first walk into its machinery of inequality.

The excerpt begins with an event that dwarfs personal lives: a supernova known as Lhonoja. By the end of the story. the narrator says. several planets will have burned. a couple of civilisations will have fallen. and they will have spoken to an entity some consider a god. while its theological status remains unresolved. Before any of that arrives, the narrator insists on something quieter and more intimate: how they came to be.

They send us back centuries to Glastya Row, which started as a landing strip on the planet Tu-mdo. The early logic was familiar to colonised worlds: Tu-mdo offered comfortable gravity. a good magnetic shield. temperatures “not too hot. not too cold. ” and was not tidally locked. It already had a moon. meant to stir the “great big mixing bowl” of Tu-mdo’s oceans once water was thawed out in sufficient volume. The first colonists didn’t have to wait centuries in arcologies for atmospheric conditions to settle; a couple of pioneering generations were already breathing on their own.

Two millennia later, Glastya Row is no longer a frontier outpost. It has become a borough within Heom. described as a middling hub of profit and endeavour in the interplanetary-spanning United Social Venture. The Venture’s reach is so deep that even parents’ ambitions show up in what they name their children. The passage lingers on the odd intimacy of that detail.

In Antekeda. the Venture that ran the narrator’s city. common middle names included “Chairman” at 15 per cent. “Entrepreneur” at 10 per cent. “Director” at 9 per cent. “Abundant” at 5 per cent. and “Diligent” at 4 per cent. In Theymann, a Venture specialising in deep space habitation, the distribution skews towards Pioneers and Engineers. In Halsect, there’s an almost sentimental emphasis on children called “Aspiring.”.

When the narrator is born, their name is registered as Mawukana “Respected” na-Vdnaze. It’s a declaration of respectability. even if the rest of the system makes that hard to turn into a life. The excerpt turns cruelly practical. They are told they cried an “unhallowed amount” at birth, though no one can explain what “unhallowed” means. What follows is the financial accounting of being human.

A Chint is implanted in the top of their plump left bicep — a body modification tied to the debts accrued to the Venture that ran the hospital that sheltered them. The price is laid out in numbers: 400 Glint for a standard birth. plus another 1. 873 Glint for basic costs such as bedding. vaccinations. postnatal checkups. and vitamin shots. Before the narrator is placed upon their mother’s breast. they are marked with the overriding feature of life on Glastya Row: the debt owed.

Their parents, the excerpt says, were not irresponsible. They had saved for this moment and bring the initial debt down to 700 Glint. while keeping up with 1.5 per cent child-rate interest payments. To welcome the narrator, Antekeda gifts them fifty shares, making them a citizen of the Venture. By the time they turn fifteen and sit their assignment exams. those shares are worth nearly 600 Glint — but educational and civic debts are far beyond that. at well in excess of 92. 000.

The story frames this system as fairness. taught as such: in a world of scarcity. hardship and struggle. the Venture sweats resources. bled for it all. and debts become the marker of “the needful labour” owed in return. The guiding promise is repeated like a creed: “All are born equal. and by their labours shall they rise.” In the excerpt. that philosophy is tied to the Venture’s underlying constitution. called Shine.

But Shine doesn’t land evenly. The narrator’s family is described as low-Shine. Their parents run a small restaurant serving cold-broth dumplings to hot middle Managers. They chase improvement through business growth and long-distance learning diplomas offered by Antekeda representatives every six months. Sometimes the narrator’s mother signs up. pays fees. does coursework. and talks at the table about “the change we needed to get out. move up.” The change. however. “never came to anything.”.

As a child, the narrator works as a waiter during their “cute” years — seven to eleven — hoping for tips. By twelve. the excerpt says. you can see the shape of the adult they’ll become: overgrown black hair around a face that has a “sunset-through-smog” look. green-grey eyes that narrow to almost impossible lines when they squint. and pale lips that don’t smile “enough. ” or “smiled wrong. ” or simply don’t quite do the smiling properly. Their mother’s solution is blunt: “Smile with your eyes.” The narrator tries to master it in a grubby upstairs bathroom by squeezing eyelids. waggling eyebrows. and inventorying tiny muscles.

That effort comes with a consequence — they’re relegated to the back of the kitchen so their mother can stay out front. charming and bamboozling customers. And by fourteen, with schooling getting unfeasibly expensive, it becomes clear they will not have a Shiny life. Classmates drop out into menial labour, described as the heart of every Venture. Those who remain prepare for adulthood through a cycle of alliances. enmities. petty cruelty and theft. and a warning about consequences: bullies thrive so long as they aren’t caught. and being caught is worse than stealing. lying. or being cruel.

The excerpt then widens to a broader observation about how Shine works socially. The passage says many economists, observing Shine, have “marvelled” at the low levels of educational obtainment across its population. While other worlds consider education the most interesting use of expansive time — with systems powered by sunlight or atomic reactors and agricultural architects who can dispatch drones — education. the excerpt warns. breeds curiosity. And curiosity is one of the first qualities the leaders of Shine seek to eliminate from the population.

The result is a story that begins with a distant supernova and keeps returning. chapter by chapter. to what happens to individuals long before the sky changes. In July’s choice for the New Scientist Book Club. “Slow Gods” uses debt. naming. implants. and schooling to show how a society can ration not only resources. but also the urge to wonder.

Slow Gods Claire North New Scientist Book Club July pick Glastya Row Tu-mdo United Social Venture Shine Lhonoja supernova science fiction