Teaser

The conquest of space. Long a dream for humanity, yet all but abandoned after the Apollo missions. But what if things went differently. And what if the exploration of space was the only way to keep humanity alive . . ?

Review

This year I’ve fallen down a bit of a Stephen Baxter rabbit hole. It started off innocently enough with a copy of Proxima, which I very much enjoyed, and has really spiralled from there. Galaxias and The Thousand Earths secured his place in my personal pantheon of great authors, and to my mind he stands as the reigning champion of hard science fiction. And what do we do when we become obsessed with an authors works? Speaking purely for myself, I grab every book of theirs that I can find. Baxter has written a lot of books, so I limited myself to those that involved space in some fashion. There were a lot to choose from, even so, and I was drawn to one of his earlier works, the NASA trilogy. And here I am, three books later, feeling rather let down by the whole encounter.

The first thing to know is that this trilogy is not actually a series in the normal sense. Each book is completely standalone, and set in a different universe to the others. What connects them is not narrative, but theme. Each book takes a hard, and maybe even cynical, look at the exploration of space.

Voyage depicts an alternate version of the space race, imagining what might have happened if the US government had committed more funding to NASA. It’s very reminiscent, or rather prescient, of AppleTV show For All Mankind, though perhaps more limited in scope. I’m a sucker for a good alternative history, and the storyline in this one is rather good, though the sheer volume of technical details did get in the way from time to time.

Titan is a far more brutal novel. This one is set in what was, at time of publication, the near-future, but is now the recent past. Here we see a US government turn its back on space entirely as fundamentalist religion takes control of the White House. Naturally, there’s a last gasp effort by scientists to achieve something of note. This book in particular suffers from a truly crazy final act, in which astronauts wake up in the distant future for no discernibly valid reason.

Moonseed takes things to an apocalyptic level, with nanomachines from the Moon destroying the Earth as people scramble for survival. It’s the shortest of the trilogy, yet has the most moving parts. Parts that aren’t all moving in the same direction. Between divorced scientists, frightened refugees, and cult leaders, there is simply too much going on. Even the literal apocalypse gets lost at times.

Every author has a bad book in them, and the more prolific an author is, the more likely they are to see it published. If the NASA trilogy were my first encounter with Baxter, I don’t think I would have pursued his work further. Even now, I’m glad I decided to be picky with what I’ve already purchased. There are worse books out there, but this is a far cry from the best of Baxter. The writing is unrefined, the stories are bloated by far too many characters, and the theme is so strong it comes across as preachy. I happen to agree with Baxter that we should be getting back into space pronto, but these feel like books written in anger. These books are just too raw to hold up against his newer works, and it’s clear to see just how much he has refined his books in both style and substance in the decades since.

All things considered, I would recommend Voyage as an decent alternative history to those interested in such things, but aside from that, these books sit squarely at the bottom of my Baxter recommendations list.

Voyage

Titan

Moonseed