Stephen Baxter (1) (1957–)

This third excursion into Pratchett and Baxter's shared 'Long Earth' universe started out pretty much the same as the previous book in the series, 'The Long War'; and like that book, I soon began to get the feeling that we were here under false pretences. Although the central conceit of the book is fairly clear from the title, it takes us until nearly half-way through before anyone seriously mentions Mars; up until then, we have the same languorous examination of life in the Long Earth, show more where any semblance of a plot can wander off into the wilderness, never to be seen again.

But then things begin to change. The Gap world, a parallel universe where the Earth has been destroyed in some ancient cosmic cataclysm, leaving - well, a Gap - turns out to be ideal for getting into space quickly and cheaply (as long as you're not too concerned over which space you get into). Just get into your spaceship, step into the Gap, and suddenly you are floating in space without all the drama and expense of that rocketry palaver.

So some of our characters travel to Mars, in search of sentience, hopefully with artefacts. Here at least are all the Marses you could wish for, including some where that planet's cosmically brief habitable period is long enough for life to evolve. The authors make a fair job out of imagining alien life, though one begins to wonder quite how much of this was Pratchett by the time this was published (in 2014) and how much was Baxter.

Meanwhile, back in the Long Earth, a race of advanced humans have appeared, who have many of the features of 1950s pulp sf 'mutants' - highly advanced intelligence, a group mind (though there are no hand-waving psi powers here, just a strong group consciousness, social interactions and intuitive inter-communication), and a cool disdain for those simple souls who cannot appreciate their greatness and talents (that's the rest of us, to make that clear). I found this plot strand chillingly prescient; it has parallels with some of our political realities in the 2020s, with authoritarian politicians promoting a line of technocratic superiority which the rest of us voters are too simple or too hoodwinked to understand. In the end, these 'Napoleons' (whose charisma is one of their strong points) are accommodated within the reaches of the Long Earth. That may turn out not to be a lasting solution.

There are some problems over the novel's structure. The first of these 'Napoleons' is introduced in a series of flashbacks, and those flashbacks aren't handled particularly well. The very nature of this story will mean that it is going to have multiple p.o.v. characters; there are those readers who find this approach to story-telling unfathomable, though a story about an infinite number of parallel universes was always going to be too big for just one or two central characters. But the introduction of the Napoleions, with this series of flashbacks that are themselves scattered over two or three chapters might well infuriate some readers.

We begin to see some speculation as to the cosmology behind the Long Earth - some ideas on the topology implied by its existence, the reasons why Gap worlds exist, and the question of just how the situation arises in the first place - is there a strong anthropic principle at work here, that it's the existence of Mind that causes the quantum fluctuations that call the parallel worlds into being? And if so, then why do so many Earths appear devoid of intelligent life?

Non-UK readers should beware; although most of the characters are Americans, the whole novel is infused with a certain kind of Britishness. There are a lot of British names resoundingly dropped. A crustacean civilization is discovered on the shores of a distant Earth which is nothing more than the rock pool crabs who worship the Eyeballs in the Sky in the 1960s Daily Mirror cartoon strip 'The Perishers'. And one of the Long Mars settings is the Mars of Gerry Anderson's feature film 'Thunderbirds are Go!'. Genre fans everywhere will cope with this, but more general readers beyond the UK who have been attracted by the status of the authors might find this puzzling or off-putting.

I was beginning to think that this series had run out of steam; I'm pleased to be proved wrong. I shall now happily continue to the final two volumes in the series. show less

When Stephen Baxter had been writing for a few years, there was an opinion amongst many sf readers that "Baxter can do Big Dumb Objects, but he can't do characters for toffee." Then along came "Voyage" and blew that opinion out of the water.

The premise - an alternate universe where Kennedy survived assassination (just), and, invited by Nixon to the Oval Office to share in the reflected glory of the telephone call to the Moon in 1969, steals the show by publicly calling from his wheelchair show more for the next goal to be Mars, and no-one has the heart to raise any practical objections.

The story then develops as NASA devise a plan and begin to work towards it using 1960s technology. The characters have stepped straight out of "The Right Stuff" but they are beginning to get out of their depth. There are accidents, and there are human stories as the double standards of using Nazi rocket science come home to roost. Finally, the mission is accomplished, but at a price. And with a twist that shows that the alternate history Baxter portrays is truly different to ours.

(Baxter developed the universe of this novel in a short story [not collected, AFAIK] where a British attempt to put a man - Roly Beaumont, top test pilot of the 1950s - into orbit fails...) show less

This fourth excursion into the shared Long Earth of Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter extends the scope of the series but does not represent any sort of improvement in the story telling. By this stage, it has become very clear which parts of this book were Pratchett's, and which Baxter's; and most of this book is Baxter's, with a detailed description of a Dyson planetary motor. Plenty of sf writers have employed a Dyson Sphere in their stories, but very few have thought about how you show more actually go about building one. Freeman Dyson obviously thought his concept through, and realised that to enclose a planetary system, you will at some point have to dismantle one or more planets. This is fine as long as everyone agrees that their planet has to be dismantled.

This book has an interesting take on the von Neumann machine/xenoforming* worlds trope; parts of it reminded me a lot of Greg Bear's The Forge of God, which also dismantles a planet in considerable and painful detail. But the fragmentary nature of these novels is even more emphasised in this book. Years can pass between chapters; and indeed, one character from previous books is brought back merely to set up a big flashback to the family history of Joshua Valenté. When I reviewed the first volume in the series, I speculated that it might have been nice if this universe had been opened to other writers to play in; the family history segment of this book would have made a reasonable novel all of its own. It could have been a bit steampunky and would ideally have been written by Kim Newman.

Mild spoiler alert for the previous volume: in The Long Mars, one of the main characters travelled to another version of Mars in the company of her father and discovered an abandoned space elevator there. I had hoped that this would set the series off along a new path, and for a while it revitalised it for me. but we do not return to that setting in this novel, leaving all the questions - who built the elevator, when, and why? - unanswered. We now find that 15 years later, the knowledge about that elevator has been brought back to Earth and now a corporation is building one here. But that is only used as a setting for some unrest amongst the construction workers at the elevator base. This was a disappointment to me. Add in the absence of Terry Pratchett's wordplay, which by now had deserted him, and the shortcomings of this book become clear. It would have been better if Baxter had written his own novel about xenoforming and Dyson motors; and overall, for me this book is a let-down.

*Terraforming is the act of modifying other worlds to make them suitable for human habitation; xenoforming is modifying our world to make it suitable for alien life (and not so much for humans). show less

Bronze Summer is the second book in author Stephen Baxter’s Northland Trilogy and centuries have passed since the first story. The British Isles are still connected to the European mainland with the ocean being held back by an enormous wall. The connecting land has become a rich farming and trading country. With both drought and famine gripping Eastern Europe and Asia, traders are arriving that see these Northlands as a key to their future. Meanwhile, a volcanic eruption in Iceland is show more chilling the air and heralds a change to the ecosphere.

The author continues to excel with his research into ancient cultures and the natural history and he uses this information to build a world that feels authentic and real. Peopled by powerful characters the story is gripping and smart. The story follows a number of various characters from survivors of the Icelandic volcano, traders from eastern Mediterranean and people of the Northlands.

Although I found this book to be a little over long, this imaginative prehistoric saga continues to hold my interest and I am looking forward to the concluding volume. show less