Book Review: Plasticosis

Plasticosis (free pdf available here) is a novel by Ikse Mennen about a postapocalyptic future in which it turns out that microplastics make people very, very sick with “plasticosis.” The resulting political disruption caused the United States to fracture into thousands of city-states. The lucky minority live in Enclaves, which successfully filter the plastics out of the water and which manage to maintain a standard of living fairly similar to the average American today. But most people live in poverty, barely on the edge of survival, purifying their water as best they can and dying young from plasticosis.

Elko is dying of plasticosis. She and her friend Rowan have heard that Yellowstone Enclave sometimes adopts children from the outside, purifies them, and raises them within the Enclave. They speculate that, if Yellowstone Enclave is that charitable, perhaps it will take pity on Elko. So they decide to walk from Lake Superior to Yellowstone to ask for help. Meanwhile, in Yellowstone, a young doctor is troubled by the ethics of denying treatment to everyone outside the Enclave. And a researcher is developing a fungus that eats plastic and might end plasticosis forever.

As you can tell from the description, this isn’t cozy science fiction. But Plasticosis did remind me a lot of Becky Chambers, particularly To Be Taught If Fortuante and her Monk and Robot series. Almost every Plasticosis character with significant screen time is a well-intentioned, emotionally mature person who cares about others and is sincerely doing their best to improve the world. Even the relatively rare villainous characters are good people. It’s not that Plasticosis doesn’t have internal and interpersonal conflict: the emotional and relationship effects of Elko’s imminent death are particularly realistic and touching. But the conflict always comes from good, emotionally competent people being placed in an impossible situation.

And yet Plasticosis doesn’t lack suspense. Plasticosis is a Man vs. Nature story. The primary villains are disease and material scarcity. No matter how competent, intelligent, and determined our protagonists are, they’re facing obstacles they have no realistic way to overcome. Any victory (until the very end) is hard-earned and partial, and Mennen intelligently leaves us uncertain whether the fungus will save the world or doom it. I never got the sense that Mennen was cheating. Often, you feel the hand of the author on a book, making sure that nothing will go too badly for the protagonists. I felt sure throughout Plasticosis that, if realistically a character would die, Mennen would kill them.

Plasticosis is hard science fiction. Mennen has clearly put a lot of research into microplastics, and they show their work. I really like infodumps-- I read Cryptonomicon on purpose-- so to me some of the most charming passages of the book are the lengthy meetings, introductory biology classes, and training sessions in which we learn about microplastics, plasticosis, and plastic-eating funguses.

Mennen also shows their work on the setting. Each place Rowan and Elko visit feels different and real, with a strong sense of the physicality of each location. Mennen pays particular attention to the plants, which makes the story feel genuinely postapocalyptic: the cities have retreated, but nature is still there.

I recommend this novel to the sort of people who would enjoy it.