Kat Giles

Science Fiction Author

Kat Giles is a chronically ill librarian working in Kansas City. Her professional background and disabled experience often find their way into her work, along with her passion for terrible space facts. She has encountered many interesting things while working in archives, but so far, she hasn’t found any aliens. Planet Sickness is her first novel.

28-year-old archivist Alexandra Lawrence always dreamed of spaceflight, but her chronic illness left her grounded working in an archive for a defunct space exploration company. After she has an unsettling encounter with an alien specimen from the Tereus expedition, Xandra digs into the mission records and learns some of the crew never made it home. Xandra is used to being sick, so she can’t tell if the lingering effects of her exposure are something to worry about or one more way her body is letting her down. With multiple fatality notices in front of her, she needs to find out—fast.
As Xandra explores the records, she discovers more secrets buried in the archive: betrayal, violence, and crewmembers’ growing suspicion that something about Tereus isn’t right. Between contradicting narratives and corporate redaction, records alone won’t be enough. Xandra has spent years accepting the limits of her sickness. If she wants answers, she’ll have to embrace her dream and visit the expedition site herself to learn the truth of the mission’s end—or maybe meet the same fate as the doomed crew.Cover art by Racheal Bruce