Review of “THE SEVEN MARGARETS” by Sheri S. Tepper – Nova Ed B

I love Sheri Tepper and how she writes. This book is no exception. I imagine that a good part of the reason I like it so much is that it is feminist science fiction, and that is not very common: in her books, Tepper's protagonists, in addition to fighting against enemies of any race or planet, must also fight against their own societies.

In The Seven Margarets Furthermore, the author is able to surprise us with an original, fresh, interesting, well-crafted and developed script with a narrative that hooks you from the first page.

The plot is as follows: the story begins on Phobos (Deimos's companion Martian satellite) in a small community of scientists where our protagonist lives, a girl who is so bored among adults that she invents six imaginary companions based on six traits of her personality.

For reasons that we do not discover until the end of the book, 6 times during the girl's life, some of her fictional characters separate from her plane of reality, to create another reality that is superimposed on the original and coexists with it. That is, in 6 decisions that are crucial for her life, at the same time, the protagonist makes one decision and its opposite, splitting herself, without her knowing it, and living parallel lives, which for relativistic reasons related to space travel, also end up becoming different times.

In the universe in which all this takes place, we find an Earth on the verge of being exterminated by alien races who do not consider us rational, an Earth with a large part of its ecosystems destroyed and whose only exportable good is its own population, who die of hunger and thirst, and who are sold by the rulers of the planet in exchange for drinking water, in 30-year slavery contracts. We also find other alien races who wish to give us a chance and who help humans spread throughout the galaxy to survive in hostile worlds and societies.

The Seven Margarets These are the 7 personalities of the girl with whom the story begins, who end up living different lives, depending on luck and the decisions they have made, and who end up converging in an original and unexpected ending.

When you finish the book and the days go by, you still think about the main character, about their lives and about the number of times you yourself have made decisions that have changed your life… without going any further, I should have studied Telecommunications at La Salle, I should have built spaceships and right now, I should be on Mars colonizing the planet (these were my future plans at 18 years old [I’m not joking, it’s just that my current self, the one you know, decided at the last minute to study Economics at the UAB and start working in a Bank])… I hope that in some other reality, a Montserrat is installing water treatment plants and greenhouse gas generators to create an atmosphere on Mars. I send her my regards from here! 😉

In short, a highly recommended book to escape to during the hours that it lasts to read, and to reflect on oneself, a few days later.