Edge Of Oblivion by Kirk Weddell (book review).
‘Edge Of Oblion’ by Kirk Weddell is a near-future science fiction thriller that asks serious questions about mankind’s future. It is adapted from the author’s screenplay, ‘Alone’, which was a finalist in the Academy Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting in 2016.
Mitch is in an emergency escape pod fleeing the burning Sentinel, the USA’s space stealth defence platform orbiting Earth that was being commissioned. He admits he could not stop the fire to the ground crew. As the pod spins round, he sees the Sentinel blown apart, then the Earth breaking into pieces. His last thoughts are of his dead wife, Kathryn, saying, ‘Enrico Fermi once asked: Why, with so many potentially habitable planets in the universe, are we still alone? ’ Then part of the Earth crashes into his pod.
The date is 4th July 2047. He is on the Sentinel, having commissioned his invention, an AI quantum computer, Amie. She wakes him up, noting he has had a disturbed sleep. The manuscript from his dead wife’s thesis slides from his chest to the floor. Its title is ‘The Silence Of The Stars: Are We Alone In The Universe?’ He misses her terribly, and he keeps remembering what they did and how she died of cancer. It was her disease that made him develop Amie to try to design a cure for her. Instead, he discovered that he was assigned to join the Sentinel.
His crewmate had to take his emergency pod back to Earth for medical reasons. So Mitch has been up there on his own for twenty weeks. The ground crew are concerned about his mental wellbeing and are trying to do their best to get a rescue mission up to him. He gets a call to say it will be on its way up later that day. He is happy about that, but it will mean leaving Amie behind on her own to fulfil her new role of protecting the USA.
That is when the problems start. At first, they are minor technical ones. Then they build up into bigger ones. What is the root cause of all these issues? Finding out is like being treated to watching an onion being peeled layer by layer.
‘Edge Of Oblivion’ is a thriller from start to end, whether it be in the action scenes or in the slow, intense emotional scenes. We really get to know Mitch’s character and feel for the loneliness he suffers from both the loss of his wife and being stranded for so long on the Sentinel. I felt the secondary and walk-on/walk-off characters lacked in roundedness, even Kathryn and Amie. The distancing of these characters may be Weddell trying to emphasise the loneliness Mitch feels, but that did not work for me.
The main difficulty I had was the mix in pace of science and technology advances portrayed in ‘Edge Of Oblivion’. I appreciate that developments can come in spurts in narrow sectors, but I cannot understand why Mitch had to do an EVA when mini-drones and robots are so readily available and preferred for use on safety grounds even today. As for the artificial gravity inside the Sentinel, why does it stop at the airlock and not have its effect extended to outside of the Sentinel?
Then there is Mitch playing hyperchess in 2047. He said he used it to teach Amie. Even today, it is known that the game Go is a better game to train AIs on. The list of temporal science and technology inconsistencies goes on. So I for one cannot believe the world Weddell writes about will ever exist. But it is nevertheless a very enjoyable read if you suspend this disbelief. More importantly, it ends up asking some very deep questions about where humanity as a whole is heading. ‘Edge Of Oblivion’ leaves you thinking about them well after the last page is read.
Rosie Oliver
January 2026
(pub: Troubador Publishing, 2025. 245-page enlarged paperback. Price: £10.99 (UK). ISBN: 978-1-83628-546-5).
Check out the website: https://troubador.co.uk/bookshop/sci-fi/edge-of-oblivion