"Providence" is a 2020 science-fiction novel by Australian science-fiction writer Max Barry. Interestingly, while Max Barry wrote several works of cyberpunk science-fiction, "Providence" is a rather straightforward example of spaceship and laser gun science-fiction, albeit with a modern take, including a discussion of social media and artificial intelligence.
The book starts with a prologue describing the slaughter of human space explorers by a group of aliens that resemble ants (or other social insects) that can spit miniature black holes. The book then continues to the present day, where a crew of four are boarding a massive, AI controlled space battleship, the Providence. The crew includes the cerebral Gilly, the computer officer, the impulsive Anders, the weapons officer the thoughtful Beanfield, basically a ship's psychologist, and Jackson, the tough captain. It soon turns out that these four people crewing the ship are mostly extraneous---the ship's AI can do almost everything, and the only reason it includes real people on it is as a form of propaganda to increase political support for the war. The crew take short "clips" of their lives, which are broadcast back to Earth to give people a human face. Nothing the crew do, we are told, and they are told, really matters. At first, the book seemed to be a satire of the era of social media and the almost surreal comfort we find ourselves living in.
As a reader, I was also wondering if this would be a commentary on a manufactured war and propaganda in general. Would it turn out that the ant-like "salamanders" had attacked humans by accident? Both internally, from some statements in the book, and from the external events of the past few decades, I was wondering if that would be a turn that the book would take.
About halfway through this short book (my copy was a 300 page trade paperback), it turns out that the crew are a little more necessary, and after the ship gets into trouble, the book becomes a fast-paced and improbable war novel, a la Aliens, with the crew needing to fight and kill directly. After the cerebral set-up, the last 100 pages or so are a fast-paced war novel where the crew have to fight the aliens face-to-face.
There are a number of things I could talk about in this book---it has good characterization and an interesting setting. But without giving away too much of the ending, the biggest thing I am surprised about in the book is the disparity between the style and the substance. Some years ago, I wrote a review 13 Ace Double novels, and I continued to read Ace Doubles and other "pulp" science-fiction. And with a few exceptions, most of those square-jawed white male heroes in Ace Doubles ended up being tricksters who found a better way than violence. But this book, with its cyberpunk trappings and cynical look at media manipulation---ends up being much more jingoistic than that corny, classic science-fiction (although I don't know if that is not part of Max Barry's satire). This book is another example, to me, of how the scorn of the styles of the past has let people ignore their substance, and left us with cynicism that doesn't accomplish anything.