Teaser

Fearing an invasion, humanity sealed away the solar system, restructuring known space and imposing the strictest imaginable regime. A thousand years later, the scattered children of humanity wish to come home. But will it be a home they recognise . . ?

Review

Science fiction is a very American genre. Even if Hugo Gernsback built his reputation on reprints of HG Wells and Jules Verne, the age of the pulp magazines was a uniquely US time. Look at space operas (a term that originally evoked what we would now call Westerns), and you’ll see a love of the new, with daring heroes opposing tyrannical empires, and nobody blinks twice about carrying firearms in public. The genre has broadened a lot since those days, but those American echoes still carry through. Even in something as fantastical as Star Wars, the setting is sprinkled with American expectations like cheap diners and having to pay for healthcare.

Stephen Baxter is a writer from a different tradition. Though he writes what I would happily term ‘Hard SF,’ the real roots of his storytelling can be found in the annals of scientific romance. Baxter cites the likes of HG Wells and Olaf Stapledon as influences, and there is very little in his books that I can pin down as based in American culture. This perhaps goes some way to explaining why Baxter so rarely features on awards shortlists. For an author of his calibre, it’s stunning that only The Time Ships has made it onto the Hugos shortlist. His uniquely British outlook on science fiction may also go some way to explaining why his works feel so special. Put simply, there are no contemporaries who write science fiction the way Stephen Baxter does.

Fortress Sol is the latest in a strong run of standalones that embody the best aspects of Baxter’s work. In this one, Baxter has constructed a vision of the future that sees humanity cut off from the rest of the universe. Taking place a thousand years in our future, humanity responds to the threat of alien invasion by hiding the entire solar system behind a vast mask. There are echoes of Cixin Liu’s dark forest theory in play, but Baxter is less concerned with aliens and more with the societal changes it would take for humanity to remain hidden in such a manner. Paralleling this isolated system is the arrival of a generation ship, a similar set-up on a much smaller scale. Naturally, conflicts and debates arise from this meeting of minds. Conflicts, I hasten to add, that are resolved through dialogue rather than firepower. Even in its darkness, Baxter’s future is a congenial one.

Every Baxter book has some kind of mind-blowing idea at its core. In Fortress Sol, it’s the physical restructuring of the solar system. I won’t give away the details, because exploring this new world is a major part of the novel, but I will say that the front cover is far more representative of the book’s contents than it initially appears to be. There are points that Baxter’s work feels more like a travelogue than a narrative, but the ideas and philosophies discussed herein are light-years beyond what you’ll find in most science fiction.

As ever, Baxter’s sense of scale is unparalleled. Fortress Sol may have a shorted time span (barring the prologue) than much of his work, but the journey it takes us on is incredible nonetheless. Not content with envisioning a future Earth, Baxter reshapes Mercury, Venus, Mars, Neptune, and Uranus as he builds his future history. Each stop along this fantastical journey is a piece of a much larger jigsaw, with a final picture that leaves me scratching me head in awe. I wrote in a recent review that there are authors who confuse me, but who I still enjoy reading. Baxter is one such author. I can grasp the basics of what he describes, but the implications are so awesome as to leave me dumbstruck. This is how you do a sense of wonder. This is how you do science fiction.

That Fortress Sol is not my favourite Baxter novel speaks volumes as to the quality of his back catalogue. He may not offer exploding space ships and gunfights against bug-eyed monsters, but he does offer science fiction like no one else. If you haven’t read Baxter, you owe it to yourself to give him a go.

Book Stats

• A Standalone Novel
• Published 2024 by Gollancz
• 404 Pages