Pink with attitude.
No one wanted to pick a fight with a chick with a robotic arm.
- Bubbles, Tropical Punch
Bubbles in Space is a Cyberpunk Fantastic Noir Detective Literature series by S.C. Jensen.
Strippers, drugs, and headless corpses? All in a day’s work for Bubbles Marlowe, HoloCity’s only cyborg detective. Does she like her job? No. Is she good at it? Also no. She can’t afford to be too good. The last time she got curious it cost her a job, a limb, and almost her life.
But when a seemingly simple case takes a gruesome turn, and Bubbles discovers a disturbing connection to the cold-case death of an old friend, she is driven to dig deeper. And deeper. Until what she uncovers can never be buried again…
The series contains the following books:
- Tropical Punch
- Chew 'Em Up
- Pop 'Em One
- Spit 'Em Out
- Cherry Bomb
as well as the spin off:
- Dames for Hire (HoloCity Case Files)
- HoloCity Hard Boys (HoloCity Case Files)
- Neon Goldfish (HoloCity Case Files)
This series contains the following tropes:
- Advanced Ancient Humans: Bubbles finds out that her Barrens ancestors were among the humans who once had far more advanced technology than their present Cyberpunk future.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The Last Humanist Church is a cover for a bunch of murderous psychopathic AI that want to kill all humans.
- The Alcoholic: Bubbles is a recovering alcoholic. Her condition was brought about by losing her arm and her betrayal by her fellow officers but after bottoming out she's worked diligently at avoiding all temptation as well as keeping herself restricted to a diet of water (plus water substitute).
- Anime Hair: Bubbles has bright pink hair that is her natural hair color.
- The Beautiful Elite:
- Cosmo is part of this as he's rich enough to afford any and all beauty treatments.
- The ruling caste of Echelon Ridge (also known as the Barrens) is this.
- Betty and Veronica:
- A non-romantic version with Bubbles contrasted to her more glamorous friend Rae.
- A more traditional male version with Tom and Cosmo.
- Big Bad:
- Chief Swain plays this role for Bubbles' early career as he arranged for her maiming and was responsible for most of the corruption in HoloCity. He shares it with the Rose in Tropical Punch to be a Big Bad Duumvirate.
- Nathaniel Price is an ultra-rich Mad Scientist and Corrupt Corporate Executive who is responsible for the majority of Bubbles' problems.
- Johanna takes Price's place once he's dead, becoming Bubbles' Archenemy.
- Butt-Monkey: Poor Rae has more terrible things happen to her than Bubbles and never lets it get her down until the final book and her method of showing her despair is to start wanting to eat meat.
- Camp Straight: Cosmo is one of the most fabulous men in the world and looks like a glam rocker but (primarily) has eyes on Bubbles. All of the other subjects of his attentions are women as well.
- City of Adventure:
- HoloCity is a wretched hive full of criminals, crooked cops, cyborgs, weird cults, and monsters in the sewer.
- The Barrens is believed to be a backwater by comparison but proves to be this as well.
- Cyberpunk: Bubbles is a private detective operating in a corrupt and crooked city with everyone seemingly against her. She's a cyborg and most of her cases deal with crooked corporations, weird technology, and enhanced goons.
- Cyborg: Played with. Bubbles hopes that her artificial arm will give her super-strength or have weapons. Instead, her friend just installed a bunch of aps and services on it.
- Crapsack Only by Comparison: The Barrens to HoloCity from Bubbles' opinion as while the citizens of the former have less freedom, they also have food, employment, and healthcare.
- Cruise Episode: Bubbles needs to escape from HoloCity quickly in order to avoid being assassinated by Chief Swan and finds out she's won an all-expense paid trip on a luxury space cruise liner. Bubbles finds this incredibly suspicious but lacking the money to escape by other means, goes on the trip anyway and ends up involved in a related mystery. She also enjoys the buffet.
- Defective Detective: Bubbles Marlowe is The Alcoholic and just not terribly good at her job but her obviousness as well as willingness to go right up to people and accuse them often results in her unwittingly solving the cases anyway. The fact she's in a conspiracy filled Cyberpunk setting and has an amazing habit of surviving impossible situations helps even more.
- Dirty Cop: The police of HoloCity underneath Chief Swain are heavily involved with organized crime, take bribes, and even were willing to kill Bubbles when she refused to play ball.
- Doom Magnet: Bubbles believes herself to be one of these and does have a history of accidentally stumbling into complicated evil conspiracies through no fault of her own.
- Driven to Suicide: Zimon Ohls kills himself to deprive his daughter the chance of doing it as well as removing the chance he could give away his information to her.
- Earth-Shattering Kaboom: Preventing one of these is the plot of Cherry Bomb but it turns out the superweapon was disarmed ages ago.
- Evil Luddite: The Last Humanist Church forbids all form of cybernetic augmentation because they are disguising the fact its leadership are all androids.
- Failure Hero: Bubbles is actually terrible at her job, let alone relationships, and succeeds primarily by sheer accident. That and her enemies greatly overestimate her and overplay their hands. Any successes she has are on the Bittersweet Ending side of things and frequently just make more problems.
- Fantastic Caste System: The Barrens have one of these with The Beautiful Elite, the Enforcers as Elite Mooks, and their servant class.
- Fantastic Noir: It is a combination of cyberpunk dystopia and noir detective series with many references to classic Noir detective fiction. Our protagonist, barely functional private detective Bubbles, has a cybernetic arm and frequently solves cases related to everything from AI to cloning.
- Fish out of Water: The first book, Tropical Punch has Bubbles try to escape the crooked police of HoloCity by taking a free vacation on a space luxury liner. She is completely bamboozled by the ultra-wealthy guests and their odd habits.
- Frame-Up: Bubbles was kicked off the HoloCity police force for being a Dirty Cop. This is, ironically, due to her being the only honest cop on the force except for Tom.
- Friend on the Force: Tom is Bubbles' ex-lover and partner but they broke up due to him not having her back after her maiming.
- Frothy Mugs of Water: Clean water is so rare that it is sold in bars for large amounts of credits.
- Future Slang: Played with. Bubbles and the rest of HoloCity use 1930s and 1940s slang like dame, skirt, hooch, and other terms to add to the sense of otherness about the future.
- Homage: Many to classic noir detectives like last name Marlowe and her pig Hammett.
- Kill All Humans: The goal of the Rose with Tropical Punch.
- Made a Slave: A danger for any individual that travels to the space colonies. It is all too easy to end up in debt and sold off to brothels or mining concerns.
- MegaCorp: Libra and LunAstro are both powerful corporations that wield limitless power across the solar system.
- Misery Poker: Johanna and Bubbles do this over whether the poor in the Barrens have it better or worse than citizens of HoloCity.
- Neon City: HoloCity that, as its name implies, is a place utterly deluged in advertisements and holograms that sell a bright materialist culture while distracting from the utterly miserable conditions the majority of the public live in. Pure water is, for example, an expensive luxury while brothels as well as purchase apps on your cybernetics are an eveyrday part of life.
- Non-Human Sidekick: Bubbles has a sobriety companion AI named Hammett (after Dashiell Hammett) that takes the form of a cute pink pig.
- Offing the Offspring: The plan of Wallace Flint in order to inherit his stepdaughter's fortune.
- Organ Theft: In the future with so much cybernetics and attempts to live longer, this is a thriving market. Bubbles comments that there's more bodies than missing persons. This is Foreshadowing that the organ traffickers have been targeting refugees from the Barrens.
- Mad Scientist: Nathaniel Price is one of these, basically being HoloCity's version of Lex Luthor.
- Perpetually Broke: Bubbles is always living from case to case and barely has money for ramen noodles.
- Pink Elephants: Bubbles is annoyed that her friends assume she's been drinking when she finds a very much alive previously thought dead fiance of her friend. Alcohol does not work like this and Bubbles has been keeping to her sobriety well.
- Religion of Evil: The Last Humanist Church is revealed to be this when it is revealed to be a murderous AI-driven cult out to overthrow humanity.
- Sewer Gator: Bubbles encounters one of these on her way through HoloCity's sewer system.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist:
- The WhiteTech Witches and their leader Johanna. Except Johanna proves to be The Sociopath.
- Zimon Ohls Johanna's father proves to be a much more straight example of this.
- Wretched Hive: HoloCity is a city full of corruption, crime, and corporate malfeasance. The poor live in horrid conditions with no social safety net and violence is a daily part of life. Also, everyone talks with outdated slang.
