I’ve been a fan of Mann’s science fiction for many years, but I was disappointed by his last sf novel (he died in 2022), The Disestablishment of Paradise (2013, New Zealand), which was shortlisted for the Clarke Award. He had one more novel published, Chevalier & Gawayn (2022, New Zealand), only in New Zealand. I have a copy, bought online a couple of years ago.

The Paradise Mission (2014, New Zealand) is a novella aimed at teenagers and set on the same planet as The Disestablishment of Paradise, called, er, Paradise. One of the areas where The Disestablishment of Paradise scored highly was in its world-building. And that’s what The Paradise Mission sort of is. It’s a quick run-through of the more notable lifeforms on Paradise, as encountered and experienced by a somewhat breathless narrator.

Hetty is an Explorer, an interstellar scout sent on solo missions to survey planets. Previously, she had been on two-person missions with Crispin, but now Crispin is missing. He landed on Paradise, and no one has heard from him since. Except for a puzzling message saying he has found gold.

Hetty makes her own way to Paradise to hunt for Crispin. She finds his ship and lands beside it, but there’s no sign of him. Notes in his cabin point to three locations around the planet, which she then visits in her air-sled, finding him at the third. The bulk of the story is Hetty making sense of the flora on Paradise, which includes: the Dendron, 220 metre tall three-legged ambulatory tree-like creatures; Monkey Jokers, which are a sort of plant spider; the Michelangelo, a pitcher plant with psychic abilities; and a plant that creates vast tubes in the mountains, which act like organ-pipes and leads to Crisping labelling the range the Windsong Mountains.

Hetty has adventures. She finds Crispin, who is trying to help a Dendron which is ready to reproduce but can’t without help from another Dendron. Hetty uses her earlier encounter with a Michelangelo to call for a Dendron. Afterwards, Hetty and Crispin decide Paradise should remain untouched, and so falsify their reports to the Space Council.

Given The Disestablishment of Paradise is about the closing down of a colony on Paradise, it seems Hetty and Crispin were unsuccessful in protecting the planet. Having said that, there’s no indication how much earlier to the novel The Paradise Mission takes place. As for the novella being aimed at teenagers… other than Hetty being quite, well, excitable, as a narrator, and the frequent mentions of the young age of Explorers – and their capacity for risk-taking, and curiosity, etc, which justifies this… Well, there’s not much that makes it a YA novella – although the two characters are not explicitly described as teenagers, they’re at minimum not far from it.

Mann’s oeuvre, while small, packed a punch. The Story of the Gardner – Master of Paxwax (1986, New Zealand) and The Fall of the Families (1987, New Zealand) – is a superior space opera, and very much unlike most space operas. The A Land Fit for Heroes quartet (1993-1996, New Zealand), an alternative history in which Rome did not fall, presents a fascinating portrait of an alternate Britain. His other sf novels were high-quality literary sf of a type you rarely see these days. But The Paradise Mission is one for completists, I suspect. It’s hardly a good introduction to his work… 

Although it is a good introduction to the setting of The Disestablishment of Paradise.