Proxima - Stephen Baxter

   2013; 489 pages.  Book 1 (out of 2) in the Proxima series.  New Author? : No.  Genres: Hard Science Fiction; Colonization.  Overall Rating : 7*/10.

 

    It is an unprecedented opportunity.  One of the planets that orbits Proxima, the nearest star to us (not counting of our own sun), a mere four light-years away, appears to be able to sustain human life.

 

    Of course, four light-years is still a tremendous distance to travel, but this is 2155 AD, and there must be lots of intrepid people out there who’d love to be included on the first spaceship to another star system.  It would be just like being one of the Pilgrims on the Mayflower when it first set sail to the New World a half a millennium ago.

 

    Hmm. Come to think of it, life was pretty brutal for those settlers back in the 1600s.  Disease, hostile natives, and starvation all took their toll, and when things got tough, the nearest help was on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.  It’ll be even worse here: just sending an SOS message from Proxima back home to Earth takes four years.  So maybe we won’t get many volunteers for the mission.  Maybe we won’t get any at all.

 

    We better think of alternative ways to “recruit” settlers for the Proxima mission.  I seem to remember one method found to be effective was called “shanghaiing”.

 

What’s To Like...

    Proxima is a “hard science-fiction” novel, wherein Stephen Baxter presents a plausible scenario for traveling for the first time outside our own Solar System.  The two main protagonists are Yuri Eden, who discovers he’s been drafted to be one of the first colonists, and Stephanie “Stef” Kalinski, a leading authority on “kernels”, a high-energy/high-density ore-like material discovered on the planet Mercury.  Kernels can be used to build propulsion systems capable of unheard-of power, although Einstein’s principle remains sacrosanct: you still can’t go faster than the speed of light.

 

    Yuri arrives on Proxima around page 50.  Stephanie remains in our Solar System, although she planet-hops a bit.  Each gets his/her own storyline, and although you know they’ll eventually meet up with each other, trying to guess just how that's going to happen is one of the delights of the story.

 

    The first half of the book deals mostly with the challenges that the exoplanetary settlers face on Proxima-c, or, as they rechristen it, “Per Ardua”.  Stephen Baxter has a lot of fun speculating about what divergent paths evolution might take on a different world.  He also mixes in a dash of quantum mechanics, but to say more about that would entail spoilers.

 

    Critter-creating on Per Ardua is done sparingly.  It’s mostly confined to “kites” and “builders”, although evolution allows for lots of variety within both of those species.  I enjoyed flying through the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud on the way to Proxima, as well as the concept of “programmable matter”.  The use of a “silo” habitation system in harsh environments reminded me of Hugh Howey’s Wool trilogy.

 

    The history of Earth from the present to the start of Proxima was both detailed and thought-provoking.  Some reviewers didn’t like the way China was portrayed in this, but I thought it was eminently plausible and liked that the Chinese characters in the book were developed as 3-D entities.

 

    The ending is mainly just a stopping-point along the way.  It’s not a cliffhanger, but there’s a major and weird twist at the very end that changes the complexion of the tale thanks to one of the fascinating facets of quantum mechanics.  None of the plot threads are tied up.  It is important to realize that Proxima is Book One in a duology, with Book Two, Ultima, presumably assigned the job of bringing everything to a satisfactory conclusion.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.1/5 based on 32 ratings.

    Goodreads: 3.81/5 based on 5,960 ratings and 552 reviews

 

Kewlest New Word ...

    Conurbation (n.) : an extended urban area, typically consisting of several towns merging with the suburbs of one or more cities.

 

Excerpts...

    “I am Angelia,” said the woman.

    That puzzled Stef.  “That’s the name of the starship.  The Angelia."

    “I know.  I am Angelia.  I know what you’re thinking.  That I am a PR stunt.  A model, hired by your father to personify—”

    “I don’t actually care,” Stef said abruptly.

    That surprised Lex.  “You’ve got an impatient streak, haven’t you, Kalinski?”

    “If somebody’s being deliberately obscure, yes.”  (pg. 31)

 

    “So you may as well keep going, right?”

    “Through another door, yeah.  And another.  What else is there?”

    “I’ll tell them what became of you.”

    Yuri grinned.  “Well, maybe we’ll be back to tell it all ourselves.”

    “You really think so?”

    “No.”  (pg. 449)

 

“I still say you’ve got big dreams for a bit of farm machinery.”  (pg. 146 )

    There are some things to quibble about.

 

    The book’s timeline is both extensive (2155 AD to 2217 AD; for a total 62 years) and non-linear.  There are valid reasons for that, which we won’t disclose, but it does mean trying to figure out where and when both Yuri and Stef are at any given moment is a bit of a challenge.

 

    As for R-rated stuff, the book is relatively clean.  There is some violence, mostly offstage, and a small amount of cussing (9 instances in the first 10% of the book), but nothing really lurid or graphic.

 

    Perhaps the biggest gripe is the pacing.  The first half of the book dragged at spots as the colonists try to avoid starving to death on Per Ardua.  But I imagine the Pilgrims had lots of tedious stuck-in-a-rut days too.  Things move along faster in the second half, but the bottom line is: this is a Hard Science-Fiction story, not a Space-Opera Star Wars type of tale.  Tediousness is a part of being a settler, and it beats being sick, starving, or having an arrow in your throat.

 

    Lastly, it bears repeating that this is not a standalone novel.  When you decide to read Proxima (at 500 pages), you’re really signing on to read Ultima (another 500 pages) as well.

 

    7 Stars.  It’s hard to give a proper rating to Proxima since I haven’t read the sequel yet.  Ultima is on my TBR shelf, awaiting my attention, and it will be interesting to see whether the weird tone-shifting plot twist plays out for better or for worse.