Titan by Stephen Baxter, Voyager, 拢16.99, ISBN 0002254247
THE year is 2004. Isaac Rosenberg, maverick ponytailed NASA scientist, thinks
he has detected signs of life on Saturn鈥檚 satellite Titan. But the shuttle fleet
has been grounded, the space programme lies in ruins and the American government
is about to fall into the hands of creationists and gun nuts. Xavier Maclachlan,
widely tipped for President at the next election, despises science. Shadowy
figures high up in the US Air Force want NASA closed down and will stop at
nothing to achieve it.
Ex-astronaut and grandmother Paula Benacerraf is kicked upstairs to manage
NASA鈥檚 decline. Rosenberg has a different idea, and it鈥檚 a doozy鈥攗se
NASA鈥檚 leftover hardware for a manned mission to Titan. He has the details all
worked out. One shuttle will take the space-station habitat module to provide a
base. Another will carry five astronauts on a six-year journey, landing them on
Titan in mothballed Apollo capsules. Everything else that鈥檚 needed goes into
orbit on refurbished Saturn V rockets and stripped-down shuttles.
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The trip will be one-way.
Stephen Baxter handles a complex and gripping plot with his customary aplomb.
The writing is crisp and convincing. The mission is a desperate lash-up, liable
to come adrift at any moment; the rouge faction in the USAF intends to make
damned sure that it does. Yet, against the odds, the shuttle Discovery is
Titan-bound, with Benacerraf on board as leader.
Two years into the flight, a lot is going wrong. One of the crew is dead,
another verges on madness. The rest are withdrawn, barely acknowledging each
other鈥檚 existence. Maclachlan is installed in the White House, American schools
are teaching creationism and the astronomy of the Middle Ages. Officially,
Discovery鈥檚 destination no longer exists. The US withdraws into a shell and goes
into a steep decline, the frontier spirit forgotten. China, the new geopolitical
hub, is putting up military rockets while American space capability has withered
to nothing.
And there are still four years to go.
Baxter weaves these threads and dozens more, expertly building the tension.
The closer Discovery gets to its goal, the less Earth notices鈥攐r cares.
The characters are realistic, and the plot has enough twists to keep a
sidewinder happy. The ending, in which we learn the right way to colonise the
Universe, will blow your mind.
Buy Titan,read it鈥攁nd then go out and buy everything else that
Baxter has ever written.