Teaser

Beyond our universe, there is a nebula, and within that nebula lies the Raft. Trapped in a universe that operates by different laws, a small band of humanity clings to survival . . .

Review

One of the books I’ve been tracking down for a while is Stephen Baxter Xeelee: An Omnibus, which gathers his first four novels in the Xeelee universe. Last month I finally found a copy (at the low, low price of three pounds), so naturally it landed near the top of my TBR. Since each novel is effectively a standalone, I’ll be reviewing them individually. Today we’ve got Baxter’s debut novel, 1991’s Raft.

I am torn on this book. On the one hand, it’s classic Baxter. It has just about everything I love about the man’s work. On the other hand, it is very clearly a debut. So while all the right elements are there, the execution is a little shaky.

The narrative is fairly simple. We follow a young man called Rees. He may actually be an adolescent, but time works differently in this book. For now, he’s young and inexperienced, though he matures throughout the novel. Right at the outset, he’s unhappy with his career as a miner, and we are dragged along with him as he seeks a better life. Reese spends the entire book on the move, from an academy for scientists, to a new job, to imprisonment, to banishment, to a heroic return, and through to the messy end of a rebellion. That’s a lot to pack into under two hundred pages, and as a result everything does come across as rushed. Baxter jumps between locations on a whim, constantly throwing new ideas at us. Yet as soon as I think I know what’s going on, we’re hurtling headlong into some new, and dangerous, wonderland.

Those wonderlands are truly wondrous. We’ll start with the basic premise. The titular Raft exists in a nebula wherein the laws are physics are different. There is a lot of quite frankly headbending physics at play, but essentially gravity is far more powerful there, and so the flow of time is different. It kind of makes sense to a layman like me, but if any physicists want to take issue, I’m sure there’s a lot for them to discuss. Th wildlife of the nebula is truly bizarre, consisting most importantly of whales and trees. the whales were easy enough to visualise, but the gravity-defying trees I did have more of a struggle with. There’s just so much going on here that I couldn’t take it all in properly. Still, it’s nice to pick up a book and be hit by that good old sense of wonder every chapter.

Then there’s the social aspect. The dividing of society into Scientists, Officers, Engineers, and so forth is a little predictable, but makes perfect sense. As does the inevitable conflict between them I want to call out the Boneys, though. Baxter is very open about the influence of H. G. Wells on his work in both content and style, and I see a lot of Wells’ Morlocks in the Boneys, with their remote yet ultimately intertwined relation with the Raft at large. Though it makes for bleak reading, I could easily have spent more time in the world of the Boneys.

Stephen Baxter has come a very long way since writing Raft. His recent works are among my very favourite books. Raft is rougher around the edges, and its reality is ultimately exceeded by its ambition. Nevertheless, it’s a fascinating book, and all those Baxter hallmarks are already at play. You just have to sift through the prose a little in order to find them.

Book Stats

• A Standalone Novel
• Part of the Xeelee Universe
• First published in 1991