Mickey7

Mickey7 is a 2022 science fiction novel by author Edward Ashton. It is Ashton’s third novel and the first in the Mickey7 series, followed by Antimatter Blues (2023). Mickey7 was chosen by NPR as one of its Best Books of 2020 and nominated for a Goodreads Choice Award. In 2025, it was adapted into a film, Mickey 17, by Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho. Ashton is also the author of Three Days in April (2015), The End of Ordinary (2017), Mal Goes to War (2024), and The Fourth Consort (2025). With Mickey7, Ashton explores themes of Identity, Personhood, and Self-Awareness, The Ethics of the Human Drive for Survival, and The Conflict Between Individual and Collective Needs.

This guide refers to the 2022 St. Martin’s Publishing Group Kindle edition. 

Content Warning: The source text and guide feature depictions of graphic violence, sexual content, gender discrimination, illness, death by suicide, and death.

Plot Summary

The events of Mickey7 take place in the distant future, after humanity invented antimatter bombs and destroyed Old Earth during the Bubble War. The remaining humans formed the Union and began the Diaspora, during which they sent out potential colonists on antimatter-powered spaceships to create human colonies on new planets throughout the universe. The missions use humans called Expendables, who have agreed to perform dangerous missions that often kill them, at which point a new physical version of their body is printed with their consciousness and memories uploaded. 

Mickey Barnes is the Expendable on the Drakkar, a ship tasked with setting up a new colony on the planet Niflheim as part of the human Diaspora, the Union’s effort to establish new colonies after the Bubble War. The Niflheim colony is struggling to thrive, as most of the planet is covered in ice and there is not yet enough oxygen in the atmosphere for humans to breathe.

Drakkar left Midgard, a thriving Union colony, years before. After years of space travel powered by antimatter-based fuel, they reached Niflheim, a planet they had been told was habitable. However, the iciness of the planet was a shock, as was the lack of breathable oxygen. 

Mickey, who lived on Midgard, joined the expedition as an Expendable to avoid his debts to a dangerous loan shark and accompany his friend Berto Gomez, who joined as a combat pilot. The Expendable job is so undesirable that the expedition nearly had to conscript a convicted criminal, but Mickey’s desperation to escape his debts led him to ignore the warning signs about the role. When Mickey agrees to be an Expendable, his consciousness is uploaded. Expendables take on dangerous jobs that often kill them; when this happens, scientists upload his consciousness into his newly printed, cloned body.

Being an Expendable puts Mickey in conflict with Commander Marshall, one of the expedition’s leaders. Marshall belongs to the Natalist Church, a religious organization that believes in the unitary sanctity of the body and soul, meaning each person gets one body to house their soul. Natalists believe that when the body dies, the soul leaves, and so Expendables, or clones, are soulless creatures. Marshall antagonizes Mickey7 and sends him on dangerous missions to scout for creepers.

Mickey has died six times, so in his current iteration, he is known as Mickey7. He has most of the memories of his six previous existences, though when he fails to upload them regularly, he has blank spots. Mickey1 and Mickey2 died performing dangerous maintenance on the ship. Mickey3, Mickey4, and Mickey 5 died in agonizing medical experiments. Mickey6 died being eaten by creepers, the centipede-like creatures native to Niflheim. 

One day, Mickey7 falls into the icy crevice during a scouting mission with his friend Berto. Berto leaves him behind, doubting he could fit his airship into the crevice to retrieve Mickey7 and knowing that Mickey will just be reprinted when this iteration of him freezes. Nasha, Mickey7’s romantic interest, is a pilot flying nearby. She offers to come and get him, but Mickey7 decides it’s too dangerous. Instead of letting himself freeze to death, Mickey7 wanders through the crevice, finding a system of elaborate tunnels. He finds a giant creeper, larger and darker in color than any of the ones he’s seen before. It grabs Mickey7 and drags him through the tunnels before releasing him unharmed onto the surface. Mickey7 is shocked that he survived and hopes they have not yet printed Mickey8.

When he gets back to his room in the colony’s dome, Mickey7 finds Mickey8 asleep in his bed. This presents a problem: “Multiples” are seen as dangerous in the colonies because of Alan Manikova, a man who used his wealth to take over by printing hundreds of multiples of himself. Mickey7 and Mickey8 know that one of them must die, but they cannot do it. They decide to both pretend to be Mickey8 and hope that no one discovers them.

Marshall questions Mickey7 and Berto about Mickey7’s supposed death. At first, Berto tells Marshall that creepers took Mickey7, but Marshall reveals that he knows Berto left Mickey7 behind in the crevice. Mickey7 wonders what other prior deaths Berto has lied about. Marshall punishes them with a reduction in their allotted calories, which is especially bad given that Mickey7 and Mickey8 must already split the calories of one person. 

One day, a creeper bursts through the dome’s main lock and kills a security officer. While Mickey8 rests, Mickey7 goes on two dangerous missions to survey the creepers, during which several colonists are killed. Mickey7 bonds with Cat Chen, a security officer who loses a friend to the creepers, and obtains a sample of a dead creeper for the biologists.

Mickey7 and Mickey8 struggle to pretend to be one person as they deal with hunger and avoid being seen together. Berto slowly grows suspicious, and Mickey7 struggles with jealousy over Mickey8 spending time with Nasha. Mickey7 also wrestles with the philosophical issues resulting from being a clone, particularly the question of whether he is the same Mickey Barnes who left Midgard or just a copy who wears his clothes and sleeps in his bed. 

As Mickey7 and Cat grow closer, she becomes suspicious about his odd behavior. After she catches Mickey8 in an inconsistent story, she confronts Mickey7, who admits the truth. He returns to his room and finds Nasha and Mickey8 having sex—they tell him that Mickey8 told Nasha the truth after she guessed it. Nasha tells Mickey7 to calm down and join them. 

The three of them have sex, after which Cat walks in on them. She tells Command, and security guards take Mickey7, Mickey8, and Nasha to Marshall. Mickey7 finally tells Marshall the truth about the tunnels and the giant creeper. When he sleeps, Mickey7 dreams of a talking caterpillar. Meanwhile, Mickey8 seems to be sleep-messaging via his ocular implant.

Marshall agrees to let Mickey7 and Mickey8 live and to print out Mickey9 if they take antimatter bombs to the creepers' tunnels to blow them up. Mickey7 is morally dubious about the action, as the Union banned using antimatter bombs after the Bubble War. Mickey8 is willing to do it because even if they die, they know that Mickey9 will be printed. When Berto drops them off, he reveals that he lied about Mickey6’s death: Mickey6 was taken by creepers, and they took his ocular implant. 

Mickey7 and Mickey8 split up in the creeper tunnels, and Mickey8 is killed by creepers. Mickey7 gets another strange message on his ocular and realizes the creepers are trying to speak with him. The large creeper that helped him escape the tunnels before tells Mickey7 that he is the prime creeper. He asks Mickey7 if he is the prime. Mickey7 says he is and talks with the prime creeper.

Mickey7 leaves unharmed and returns to the dome, where he threatens to detonate his antimatter bomb unless Marshall speaks with him. Mickey7 tells Marshall that the creepers have Mickey8’s antimatter bomb, which Mickey7 told them how to use. Marshall cannot kill Mickey7, or the creepers will blow them up. He also refuses to be the Expendable any longer.

Springtime comes to Niflheim, and the snow melts. Mickey7 takes Nasha on a walk toward the creepers’ territory and reveals that he hid Mickey8’s bomb—he lied about giving it to the creepers. He plans to wait until Marshall dies and then tell the new commander about the bomb. They walk together in the sunlight.