October 21, 2004
Flux by Stephen Baxter
Post-human. Hard-SF. Look no further: this is the book. Hard-sf often does not attempt to look too far into the future to keep the speculations rooted in hard science. Stephen Baxter does not need to follow these rules to mould his flavor of hard-SF. He takes us far into the future; a future which is realized with (apparently) solid scientific speculations. The choice of location determines everything in this far-future story.
The protagonists of this novel are submicroscopic humans composed mainly of tin nuclei engineered to live in the superfluid mantle of a neutron star. This is science-fiction so hard, it's supercarbon.
Baxter is perhaps the ideal ubergeek built to tackle such a daunting project. His meticulous attention to detail in building this world pays off -- everything seems to fit together. The nagging doubt in my head was that this was perhaps a One-idea book whose inventiveness will fizzle out after the first few chapters. Surprisingly, this was not true. Long after the novelty of the constructed universe begins to wear off, the story is still compelling.
Baxter, unfortunately, fumbles in the last few chapters as he struggles to tie up all the threads in his epic. The pseudo space-operatic finale is disappointing. However, the book is still worth reading for the rest of the ride.
%T Flux %A Stephen Baxter %I HarperPrism %D 1993 %G ISBN: 0061008370 (pb) %P 409 %K science-fiction
Date written: 2000/04/12
Posted by anoop at October 21, 2004 12:54 PM