For forty years, Colony 3245.12 has been Ofelia’s home. On this planet far away in space and time from the world of her youth, she has lived and loved, weathered the death of her husband, raised her one surviving child, lovingly tended her garden, and grown placidly old. And it is here that she fully expects to finish out her days—until the shifting corporate fortunes of the Sims Bancorp Company dictates that Colony 3245.12 is to be disbanded, its residents shipped off, deep in cryo-sleep, to somewhere new and strange and not of their choosing. But while her fellow colonists grudgingly anticipate a difficult readjustment on some distant world, Ofelia savors the promise of a golden opportunity. Not starting over in the hurly-burly of a new community . . . but closing out her life in blissful solitude, in the place she has no intention of leaving. A population of one.
With everything she needs to sustain her, and her independent spirit to buoy her, Ofelia actually does start life over–for the first time on her own terms: free of the demands, the judgments, and the petty tyrannies of others. But when a reconnaissance ship returns to her idyllic domain, and its crew is mysteriously slaughtered, Ofelia realizes she is not the sole inhabitant of her paradise after all. And, when the inevitable time of first contact finally arrives, she will find her life changed yet again—in ways she could never have imagined. . . .

IN A NUTSHELL
This was wonderful. It was one of the best Science Fiction books I’ve ever read. 
It is a beautifully imagined First Contact story, but it was the character of Ofelia that made it extraordinary. I was completely immersed in her view of the world. I admired her pragmatism, her self-knowledge, her willingness to take risks and, most of all, her enduring compassion.
Watching her choose to end her life in solitude as a means of achieving freedom and then seeing her bloom when she is pulled back into the world by her curiosity, her empathy and her realisation that she can be more if she chooses to be, was an uplifting experience. 

‘Remnant Population’. is a gentle, low-key story about a woman in her seventies who seizes an opportunity to live by herself, free from the expectations and demands of others, who then finds herself being the human first contact with an alien race.

I enjoyed everything about this book. It murmured rather than shouted, but it got under my skin all the same.

I loved the tone of the storytelling: unrushed, deeply observant, aware of things left unsaid. Despite, or perhaps because of, the unhurried pace of the storytelling, I found the plot compelling and propulsive. 

Ofelia is a masterful creation. It was great to see a science fiction protagonist who is realistically old but far from helpless. It was even better to find that she was so deeply imagined. She anchored the story so that her humanity and her eccentricities provide a scale against which the aliens can be measured.

I empathised deeply with her decision to remain behind alone on the planet that had been her home for forty years. I understood her joy in finally being free to live her life the way she wants to live it, with no one telling her what to do, no male egos to soothe, no one preventing her from learning more about the things that matter to her.

Just when solitude might be turning into loneliness and freedom might have become detachment from life she encounters the aliens, or rather the indigenous people of the planet she and her fellow colonists were sent to occupy forty years earlier.

The details of Oelia’s life alone and her encounters with the aliens built into an immersive story that felt real and relatable. So much so that when more humans arrived, they were the ones who felt like a threat. Their presence was disquieting. They managed simultaneously to patronise and marginalise Ofelia while demonstrating to the indigenes that not all humans can live up to Ofelia’s standards. I realised that, as soon as they arrived, I assumed everything would end badly. I couldn’t see how things were going to end, but it seemed unlikely that any of the outcomes would be happy ones. 

The actual ending surprised and pleased me. It’s how I wanted things to end, I just hadn’t been able to see a way to get there. 

‘Remnant Population‘ was beautifully written and flawlessly narrated. Suzanne Toren, was a joy to listen to. Click on the Youtube link below to hear a sample.