🚀 Book Review: How It Unfolds by James S. A. Corey (Kindle Edition, The Far Reaches Collection #1)
A poignant, big-idea science fiction short that fuses cosmic scale with intimate human emotion—James S. A. Corey delivers a story about love, regret, and the infinite possibilities of identity.
🧠 Overview
Published on June 27, 2023 as part of Amazon Original Stories’ The Far Reaches collection, How It Unfolds is a 38-page near-future sci-fi tale centered on Roy Court, an astronaut on a mission unlike any other.
In this future, humanity has developed a light-based duplication technology capable of scanning and copying people—sending countless versions of the same few individuals, complete with shelter and supplies, to distant, potentially habitable worlds. Each copy will live out its life alone on a new planet, tasked with seeding humanity’s future.
For Roy, the mission is more than exploration—it’s a chance at redemption. Haunted by the collapse of his marriage to Anjula, he wonders if, across the infinite branches of possibility, some version of himself might find a way back to her.
🌌 Key Themes & Highlights
- 🪞 Multiplicity of self: Explores what it means to have infinite versions of you living divergent lives
- 💔 Love and regret: At its core, the story is about a relationship—its loss, and the longing to repair it
- 🧠 Memory and identity: Raises questions about whether copies truly share the same emotional truth as the original
- 🌍 Colonization and isolation: Each duplicate faces the loneliness of being humanity’s first settler on a new world
- 🌀 Nonlinear storytelling: Shifts between perspectives and timelines, with seemingly stray moments that click into place by the end
“The vastness of space mirrors the potential for hope and new beginnings”
💬 Reader Reception
- ⭐ Goodreads rating: ~4.0/5 from nearly 10,000 ratings
- 📖 Praised for its emotional resonance, original premise, and tight pacing despite the short length
- 💬 “Beautiful, devastating, hopeful—Corey packs a novel’s worth of feeling into a short story”
- 🧾 Some readers note that the number of similarly named characters can be briefly confusing, but most agree the payoff is worth it
⚠️ Considerations
- 📄 Short format: At under 40 pages, it’s a concentrated dose of sci-fi—don’t expect deep technical exposition
- 📚 Standalone: Works independently within The Far Reaches, but thematically complements the other stories in the collection
- 🧠 Emotional focus: The science is intriguing, but the heart of the story is human connection
🏁 Final Verdict
How It Unfolds is a compact yet expansive sci-fi gem—a story that uses cloning and interstellar colonization not for spectacle, but to explore the fragility and persistence of love. James S. A. Corey proves that even in the farthest reaches of space, the most compelling journeys are the ones that lead us back to each other.
