The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older dares to ask the age-old question: what if Holmes and Watson were lesbians on Jupiter? Come on, you know you’ve wondered.
The Mimicking of Known Successes
Malka Older
Tordotcom
March 7, 2023
Luckily for all of us, the answer to this age-old question is a lot of fun. In fact, not since Murderbot has there been a book I felt needed to be recommended to so many specific people in my life.
The Mimicking of Known Successes takes place several centuries in the future on Jupiter, a gas giant with a roiling surface; all human activity is on built platforms above this surface connected by rail.
So when someone goes missing on this planet, which the characters call Giant, they haven’t just wandered off.
The plot features exes thrown together by circumstance. When Investigator Mossa is tasked with figuring out what happened to a missing person, she asks her academic ex-girlfriend for help since the missing person was employed by the same university.
The characterizations of both Mossa and her ex Pleiti are deft and enjoyable, and the plot features all the adventure and intrigue you’d expect from a story so clearly inspired by both the shared adventures and roommate relationship of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. The stakes get larger and larger as elements of the mystery are revealed, but overall the relationship elements, the focus on remembering to eat meals, and the solution to the mystery all contribute to a feeling of coziness.
As I probably could have anticipated from Older’s short stories, I appreciated the extremely thoughtful worldbuilding as much as the fun plot. Jupiter’s surface produces swirling gases that may not be quite the same chemical makeup as Victorian London’s fog, but it certainly provides ambiance. There’s a lack of wireless tech due to that atmospheric interference, and the fact that they must travel by rail, all serve the Holmesian vibes admirably. It even allows for gas lamps.
The planet’s settling and society seem very researched, which is nice for my willing suspension of disbelief. But maybe more important for me, a nonscientific reader, there’s a restaurant called Slow Burn. There’s a canteen that serves stew called The Stretch Goal. “Classics Scholars” study things like what “sea level” might have meant and I am charmed.
While this is a spoiler free review, I can say the resolution of the interpersonal relationship between the ex-girlfriends echos the larger exploration of what’s at stake in solving the mystery: we’ll never have what we once did, but we can work together to have something else great. Something building on the past but not merely an attempt to recreate it.
There’s some nice thematic resonance there, between this message and the homage to Holmes and Watson in The Mimicking of Known Successes. It feels like Older is building on the tropes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle popularized to make a new and innovative story, rather than flatly attempting to replicate it.
While the ending of the book is satisfying and it can easily stand alone, I was thrilled to learn that a sequel, The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles, is already in the works and I will get to revisit these characters and their future Jupiter soon.
