34 | New Scientist | 22 August 2020
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REID MALENFANT wakes up from
a cryogenic coma in the year 2469.
It was 2019 when he crashed a
space shuttle and entered medical
deep freeze, just as Earth’s citizens
were taking their first steps to
colonise the solar system. The
world he wakes in 450 years later
is unrecognisable. We burned all
our fossil fuels for the space race
and the consequences are in
full bloom: London, New York,
Florida and many coastal areas are
drowned, and the planet is tropical.
Those are just the cosmetic
changes in World Engines:
Destroyer, the first in Stephen
Baxter’s series. The human project
has ended – we retreated from the
solar system, recognising our
inability to thrive outside our
biosphere. We retreated on Earth
too, with a population fallen below
100 million, both as a result of
centuries-long destruction and
as a way to let nature heal.
As Malenfant digs deeper,
though, he discovers another
contributing factor. A solar
system-rending cataclysm has
been foreseen in about 1000 years,
so Earth is in a period of manageddecline. It isn’t a bad existence for
the people. There is no pollution
and no waste, with every car, cup
and plate made to last generations.
Universal basic income (UBI)
means no one is poor. People still
have children. But there is no drive
to do more than exist in this Eden.
Yet the 25th century woke up
Malenfant for a reason, of course.That reason takes him to the
Martian moon Phobos, which
has been displaying idiosyncracies
that turn out to be a hatch to other
universes. By the end of the first
book, Malenfant has set out to
discover who built the portal and
what kind of entities play snooker
with entire solar systems.
It is these questions that are
addressed in the second book,
World Engines: Creator, and their
answers leave deeper questions
about humanity’s relentlessOur place in the multiverse Stephen Baxter’s World Engines series examines
whether humanity can get off this planet without destroying the universe – or,
at least, not every universe. It is gripping but frustrating, says Sally Adee“ In one universe,
Richard Nixon
created a Star Trek-like
programme that had
boots on Mars by 2005”Book series
World Engines
Stephen Baxter
GollanczSally also
recommends...Books/Comic
The Space
Between Worlds
Micaiah Johnson’s stunning
debut is impossible to put
down. It nails the stakes of
the multiverse and employs
a beautiful character
transformation arc.The Number
of the Beast
Robert A. Heinlein’s
book is the first and
best in this genre.Infinite Vacation
Nick Spencer’s comic world
puts alternate versions of you
up for sale. You choose the
version you prefer that day,
but there is always a price.obsession with expansion. What
do we risk by embarking recklessly
into the solar system, the universe
or even the multiverse? What is
this impulse to colonise? Are the
only choices eternal expansion
or managed decline?
Many readers may have given
up on the first book after some
200 pages because of Malenfant, a
jerk ripped straight from the pages
of 1960s sci-fi at its most toxically
masculine. But the clue is in the
name. Soldier on and it is clear
that Baxter has written Malenfant
to reflect our current condition
as a species: selfish, greedy and
full of toxic individualism.
As Malenfant begins to evolve,
the books hit their stride, asking
questions that telescope out into
brain-exploding territory. Baxter
has an encyclopedic knowledge
of early space and military history
that he remixes into delightful
mash-ups. In one universe, instead
of sinking in the Watergate scandal,
US president Richard Nixon set up
UBI, leading the world to follow
suit – and to the creation of a Star
Trek-like space programme that
had boots on Mars by 2005.
In another, Winston Churchill
is ousted by his opposition rival,
Neville Chamberlain. This creates
a British-led dominance of space
in steampunk space behemoths,
spreading diamond-cut accents
and Victorian repression.
Other books have grappled
with our place in the multiverse,
but few have Baxter’s vision and
ability to work at very different
scales. World Engines: Creator
isn’t always evenly paced, gets
bogged down in science pedantry
and can be exasperatingly opaque
at times, but I am crossing my
fingers for a third book. ❚GORODENK
OFF/GET
TY
IMAG
ESWhy do we risk so
much in the hope
of colonising space?The sci-fi column
Sally Adee is a technology
and science writer based
in London. Follow her on
Twitter @sally_adee