Mickey7 by Edward Ashton

Mickey7 by Edward Ashton

Now experience where the hit movie from Academy Award-winning director Bong Joon Ho, starring Robert Pattinson, started in Mickey7 (the inspiration for the film Mickey 17).

Dying isn't any fun...but at least it's a living.

Mickey Barnes is an Expendable: a disposable employee on a human expedition sent to colonize the ice world Niflheim. Whenever there's a mission that's too dangerous--even suicidal--the crew turns to Mickey. After one iteration dies, a new body is regenerated with most of his memories intact. After six deaths, Mickey7 understands the terms of his deal...and why it was the only colonial position unfilled when he took it.

On a routine scouting mission, Mickey7 goes missing and is presumed dead. By the time he returns to the colony base, surprisingly helped back by native life, his fate has been sealed. There's a new clone, Mickey8, reporting for Expendable duties, and there can only be one Expendable. If Mickey7 reports his survival to Command, one of them is going into the recycler. If he doesn't and they're caught, they both are.

Meanwhile, life on Niflheim is getting worse. The atmosphere is unsuitable for humans, food is in short supply, and terraforming is going poorly. The native species are growing curious about their new neighbors, and that curiosity has Commander Marshall very afraid. Ultimately, the survival of both lifeforms will come down to Mickey7.

That is, if he can just keep from dying for good.

Edward Ashton lives with his adorably mopey dog, his inordinately patient wife, and three beautiful but terrifying daughters in Rochester, New York, where he studies new cancer therapies by day, and writes about the awful things his research may lead to by night. His short fiction has appeared in dozens of venues, ranging from Louisiana Literature to Daily Science Fiction. Three Days in April is his first novel.