Teaser

What once was known as Planet Nine is revealed to be a black hole the size of a woman’s head. A black hole that is emitting a signal. And that is only the start of the wonders about to be revealed . . .

Review

I’ve been a Stephen Baxter fan for a little under two years now, which means I didn’t rush out and buy Creation node when it released in 2023. By the time I realised how much I was enjoying his books (seriously, only one misfire out of more than twenty is a phenomenally good batting average), the paperback was out, and I grabbed a copy the first time I saw it. Somehow, that was over a year ago, which makes Creation Node the longest living resident of my TBR that I can remember. Fourteen months is more than enough though, so I made it a priority for April. Having been absolutely blown away by all of Baxter’s recent standalones, my expectations were sky-high.

As I’ve written before, Baxter’s books are in the grand tradition of the scientific romance. This means they combine massive, existential ideas with characters going on an adventure. Those adventures largely serve as a vehicle to explore some incredible thought experiments, but the storytelling itself is usually pretty solid. Creation Node is rife with grand, cosmic ideas, so it gets a big tick from me on that front. However, I do feel like the character arcs are weak by Baxter’s standards. Even as someone who loves these books for the ideas they generate, I can’t help but be a little disappointed in how little impact the story itself has on things.

The story is fairly typical of Baxter. Scientists of varying philosophies come together to study an unusual phenomenon, which proves to have existential implications. Back on Earth, there’s a little bit of political drama, and a somewhat brief exploration of how we got to the year 2255 without killing ourselves. The story covers a few decades, but we don’t spend enough time on Earth to see any real change, and there’s not much development for the characters either. What I did like, however, is the resolution for the political thread, which folds in religious ideas in a remarkably sensitive and interesting way. It left me with a few chills, let me tell you.

The big draw, as with any Stephen Baxter novel, is the big idea, however, and on that front the book shines. A lot of the early chapters of scientific investigation were honestly not that interesting, and I felt like more could have been done with the arrival of Feathers into the equation. It’s only with the big shift in scale (a Baxter hallmark) and the arrival of Terminus that the big picture becomes clear. In the hands of most other authors, one character explaining quantum physics to a group of hostages would be dull as ditch water, but this kind of infodumping is what Baxter has always excelled at.

It helps that at the core of the science is the Fermi Paradox, an idea I have long been fascinated by. For those who don’t know, the Fermi paradox basically asks ‘where are all the aliens?’ The most common answers are that the universe is so big we’ll never meet them, or that the universe is so old that we’ll never meet them. Baxter folds in elements of both ideas, updating the paradox to take account for newer theories about multiverses and other timelines. As always, it’s fully cited in an afterword, so the true nerds among us can go wild with research.

Creation Node isn’t Baxter’s best work. Not by some margin. But it’s still a book that’s rich with ideas. Even with cardboard characters and a threadbare plot, those ideas are worth investigating.

Book Stats

• Standalone
• Published 2023 by Gollancz
• 436 Pages