Free (Kindle) Black Star Rising by Peter Kalu [Sci-Fi Space Mission Psych Thriller]

[ATDrake]

Black Star Rising: A Cybernoir Space Adventure by British author Peter Kalu (ISFDB, SFE), an award-winning playwright, is a standalone science fiction psychological thriller-ish novel apparently written with noir sensibilities unless the subtitle actually refers to Afrofuturism (Wikipedia), where astronauts crew a space mission with little explanation, as pawns in a conflict where their lives are considered of little worth and they confront adversity as best they can in an untrustworthy future environment with little help from the on-board Computer, free for a limited time courtesy of publisher Endeavour's Venture imprint.

This was originally published in 1998 by Nia / The X Press which seems to have been a small non-genre publisher specializing in works by black writers rather than one of those self-pub house names, and ISFDB says this was reviewed in an issue of Interzone.

Currently free @ Amazon (available to Canadians & in the UK and pretty much everywhere worldwide that they sell, since this is being done via their KDP Select exclusive or else program)

Description
Boldly going where no black writer has gone before, Peter Kalu has written the UK's (and possibly the world's) first Cybernoir novel.

The time is a distant future. SunOne Command has drafted four black astronauts to crew a remote engineering aft -- zsf-e5 -- on a far-flung tour of duty. The crew do not know why they've been drafted. The on-board Computer might know, but isn't telling. Command offers no explanation and anyway its explanations cannot be trusted.

Black Star Rising tells of the crew's lives together -- the pains and possibilities, conflicts and celebrations. Pawns in the war between Logos and SunOne, subject to the whims of Command Control in a future world where black lives still count for less, the crew battle on. When adversity strikes, the key question is: can they hold together long enough to survive?

Featuring four richly drawn characters in Captain Mandella, Sky, Kaya and Triple, Black Star Rising projects a black future that is at once engaging and challenging. It is minus 100 degrees in the void. Colder when love freezes.