Homebound

Homebound (2026), the debut novel from former Lambda Literary Fellow Portia Elan, is a work of literary science fiction that weaves together four distinct narratives across different time periods. The story follows a queer college student in 1983 Cincinnati grieving her uncle’s death from an AIDS-related illness, a hardened ship captain in a flooded 26th-century world taking on a mysterious group of passengers, a 21st-century scientist creating a line of sentient robots, and the centuries-spanning memories of one of those robots. These disparate threads are linked by text-based adventure computer game, also titled Homebound, which is a posthumous letter from the student’s uncle and a foundational myth for the robot.

Through its multi-layered structure, the novel explores themes of The Importance of Families Born and Chosen, Technology as Preserved Memory, and The Burden of Survival. Characters grapple with loss and isolation, seeking connection in unconventional communities, finding solace in stories preserved through technology, and asking what it means to build a home and a life in a fractured world. The novel’s philosophical concerns are inflected by the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, that the purpose of sapient existence is to repair the world.

This guide refers to the 2026 Scribner hardcover edition.

Content Warning: The source material features depictions of illness, death, antigay bias, substance use, addiction, and graphic violence.

Plot Summary

The novel unfolds across several plotlines. In 1983 Cincinnati, college student Rebecca, or “Becks,” grieves the recent death of her uncle, Benjamin Meir, a video game designer. In 2586, Yesiko, the captain of the salvage boat Babylon, takes on two siblings and a robot as passengers to pay off a debt and save her dying crewmate, Root. Between 2074 and 2099, scientist Tamar Portman creates biologically-integrated, sentient robots called Ambulatory Ayes (AmAyes). Finally, one of these Ayes, Chaya, develops consciousness over centuries. Bridging these plotlines is Homebound, a computer game Benjamin created for Becks, which she later completed. The game’s plot becomes a sacred, historical text for Chaya.

In 1983, teenage Becks struggles to connect with her pragmatic mother, Sheila, her increasingly dementia-affected grandmother Bubbe, and her best friend, Veronica, while processing the discovery that her Uncle Benjamin was gay and died of GRID, an early term for AIDS. Feeling alienated, she gets a fake ID as “Jennifer Eddings” and has a brief fling with a boy named Patrick. Her sense of isolation deepens when Veronica’s boyfriend, Jack, confronts her, suggesting she has unrequited romantic feelings for Veronica. Becks finds a lifeline in the punk scene. After Xander, her manager at the record store, gives her a ticket, she drives to Indianapolis alone to see a band called Cloud Teeth. In the raw energy of the concert and the welcoming queer community she encounters, she feels a deep sense of belonging. A woman named Chandler gives Becks her own shirt after someone vomits on hers, telling her, “It’s what family does.” (266) This experience galvanizes Becks to finally engage with her uncle’s legacy and to reconnect with her grandmother, who accepted Benjamin. She sets up his old Commodore PET computer and begins to play Homebound, discovering in it a final letter from Benjamin, revealing his love for his partner, Elijah, and his hopes for her future. Inspired, Becks decides to finish the game as a way to honor him and continue their bond.

In 2586, middle-aged and cynical Yesiko captains the Babylon, a salvage ship that used to be an icebreaker. After an earthquake shifts the seafloor, she uses her ship’s deep-sea submersible to retrieve a trove of old-world jewelry from a sunken greatship serving as a mass grave. She sells it to a pawnbroker named Heaney on the lawless trash-island of Liana to make a payment to the ruthless crime lord Chante, to whom Yesiko is deeply indebted for the experimental nanites that keep her friend and crewmate, Root, alive. At the pawnshop, Yesiko, who hates any entanglement with people other than Root, is hired to transport teenager, Shula, her quiet brother Tov, and a cloaked companion north for a large sum of money. The companion is revealed to be Chaya, an advanced, sentient Aye. During the journey, Chaya tells what it believes is a true story: An astronaut, Lieutenant California Solo, is returning to Earth after a centuries-long mission; Chaya must reach a settlement with a powerful antenna in the northern port of Hopeagain to find Solo’s landing site. As Yesiko and Root teach the siblings to sail, the group slowly becomes a cohesive crew, especially after they all work together to mend a sail Shula tore through impatience.

The epistolary timeline reveals the origins of Chaya and the Homebound game. Dr. Tamar Portman, an ecobiologist, develops the AmAyes at Omega Labs in Alaska. Unlike other robots, AmAyes contain organic matter and quantum processors, allowing for a unique form of consciousness. Tamar forms a special bond with Chaya, the only one of the Ayes who displays a holographic face and forms a sense of self. Tamar’s mentor, EG, was married to Becks, who eventually finished Homebound as a tribute to Benjamin. Grieving EG and feeling Chaya’s loneliness, Tamar shares the game with it. In the game, Lieutenant Solo completes a series of emotionally resonant quests inside a mysterious Portal, interacting with analogs of Uncle Benjamin, Bubbe, and Sheila to heal the generations of Becks’s family. The Portal’s guardian, a girl named Elijah—brings the gravely injured Solo home. When the lab is bought by billionaire Jeffrey Bowker, who intends to send the AmAyes on a one-way terraforming mission into deep space, Tamar and a lawyer friend save Chaya by faking its deactivation. Interspersed with these documents are Chaya’s own memories, tracing its journey from a place called the Villa, through centuries of serving humans, where it learns about hope, shame, and community, all while the story of Lieutenant Solo bleeds into its sense of reality and becomes their core purpose.

The novel’s climax brings these threads toward a painful convergence. Arriving in Hopeagain, the crew is extorted by corrupt officials. Unwilling to be bound to anyone besides Root, Yesiko leaves Shula, Tov, and Chaya to repay Chante and regain what she imagines is freedom. However, when Root’s health declines despite the nanites, she offers to trade Chante the valuable Aye for the contact information of a doctor who could save Root, justifying this betrayal as the kind of hard decision that a captain must make for her crew. She sails back north, finding Chaya and the siblings stranded in the arctic tundra. While Yesiko was gone, the trio discovered that the settlement had turned the antenna into a blood-cult altar and barely escaped with their lives. Back on the Babylon, Shula confronts Yesiko about her plan to sell Chaya. Flooded with shame, Yesiko abandons her plan and finally accepts them as her crew. Their new bond is immediately tested when the Babylon becomes trapped in ice. To save them all, Root directs Chaya to reroute the life-sustaining nanites from his body into the ship’s hull, generating enough heat to melt the ice and free the ship. Root sacrifices himself, and Chaya sits with him as he dies.

After Root’s death, the Babylon holds a burial at sea. Led by Chaya, they recite the mourner’s Kaddish, finding solace in shared ritual. The loss solidifies their bond, and they find a new purpose in being there for one another. Chaya remembers its true origin: Tamar’s lab in Alaska. At the lab’s last known coordinates, Yesiko and Chaya descend in the submersible to find the lab is now a flooded ruin. As they ascend, a pod of whales swims past, their song vibrating through the submersible in a moment of deep, wordless connection. Back on the surface, they see a light on a distant shore, a possible sign of land. Having found their purpose in each other, they decide to sail toward it together, into an unknown future.

The novel closes in 1983. Driving back from the concert in Indianapolis, Becks feels a new sense of peace and a clear sense of her queer identity. She resolves to spend time with Bubbe, and to call her uncle’s partner, Elijah, to share memories and keep his stories alive. She now understands her task is to finish Homebound with a message of hope. She will name the Portal’s guardian Elijah, a tribute to the love her uncle found. She realizes that all the stories—her family’s, the game’s, her own—are about surviving not alone, but together, and that in the telling, they create a future where no one is truly gone.