Dusted by Stars
by G.A. Matiasz
reviewed by William P. Meyers

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Dusted by Stars
author: G.A. Matiasz
publisher: 62 Mile Press, San Francisco, CA
year of publication: 2022
reviewed date: September 25, 2023
format: paperback and ebook
Dusted by Stars Amazon.com link

Dusted by Stars is a science fiction action story set in space a few centuries from now. It is a novella packaged with The Death of David Pickett, a longish short story. I thought David Pickett was the stronger story, or at least more to my taste, so I will begin my review with it.

Imagine San Francisco, mostly the Mission District, in the near future. There and thereabouts live the people of the fringes, always ready to express anger at the police, government, and corporations. They are part of a greater bohemian community, once predominant in the city, before the high-paid tech people drove up housing prices. The narrator, Jesse, is at the punk rock fringes: he knows the radicals, had a past with them, but now has a gig that enables him to enjoy the small things in his artsy neighborhood: beers and cuisine in small businesses that cater to those who have a rebel identity, be it artistic, political, or just personal.

One day Jesse hears that David Pickett, a local political activist of the trouble-maker sort, has died in mysterious circumstance in Mexico. As the day progresses we visit Jesse's haunts, ones that he shared with Pickett and other underground types. We hear stories of Jesse's death from several people, all with a different, usually paranoid, slant. We watch a crowd fight the police and riot, and then murder a store owner. We watch police murder some Hispanic young men. But a puzzle appears: Jess receives a message from Pickett.

Now a man with a mission, Jesse sets out to try to find out what is really going on, including whether Pickett is really dead. Having been a witness to a murder, Jesse is accused by the police of having been a participant. But they just want him to talk, to ID the actual murderer, and in the end release him. This romp through the remains of punk rock San Franciso alas, comes to an end too early. It is a great story, but it should be longer. Hopefully the story will be continued at a future point.

The main attraction, Dusted by Stars, has somewhat of the same look and feel, even though it is set centuries from the present in a galaxy swarming with a variety of other sentient civilizations, or at least rampaging hordes. It starts with a bar fight between aliens, but often veers into discussions of various human space colonial attempts at socialism and syndicalism. The main character has her own spaceship, a freight hauler, and gets hired to move an artifact from earth back to its home space structure/artificial planet. She has two friends, some sort of alien box and a more anthropomorphic alien, along for the ride. After some adventures involving yet more humans and aliens trying to steal the artifact, and more fighting, it is delivered, and rapture ensues.

Dusted by Stars is fast-paced enough that it works as a short novella, but it feels like it should be a full-length novel. Descriptions of aliens and their cultures are extremely brief. I am all for avoiding unnecessary B.S. in novels, but here I think more would have added to a sense of realism. Hopefully Matiasz will fill out his universes, both present day and in the far future, in future works.