Raft - Stephen Baxter

   1991; 303 pages.  New Author? : No.  Book 1 (out of 17) in the “Xeelee Sequence” series (so sez Goodreads).  Laurels: 1992 Arthur C. Clarke Award (nominated); 1992 Locus Award for Best First Novel (nominated).  Genres: Hard Science Fiction; Colonization Sci-Fi.  Overall Rating : 7*/10.

 

    Rees is a clever young lad.  No doubt he’ll go far in life somewhere out in the Nebula.

 

    But alas, not here on the Belt, where there’s only one job for all inhabitants: mining a burnt-out star kernel for ore.  It’s brutal toil and while Rees may be clever, he’s not physically built for hard labor.

 

    The ore is vital to survival on the Belt, since nothing grows naturally there.  Every so often, the privileged class who live high in the sky above in a place called the Raft, send down a transport device called the Tree.  It’s loaded with food, which they somehow have lots of, and are willing to trade for the Belt’s ore.

 

    Rees is determined to get off the Belt, even though that’s forbidden.  Raft people are Upper Class and mining people are Working Class.  The system only works when everyone knows, and conforms to, their social class.  However Rees is desperate, and has come up with an escape plan, albeit a risky one.

 

    Have I mentioned that Rees is a clever young lad?

 

What’s To Like...

    Raft is Stephen Baxter’s debut novel, and the first of 17 of his books set in the “Xeelee” universe, albeit many of which are novellas and short story collections.  In effect, this is a prequel, telling the backstory of how a ragged crew of humans arrived at, and subsisted in, a far-flung bit of the time-space multiverse where galactic physics has played out quite differently.

 

    There are actually two main storylines: the aforementioned class struggle with its inherent hostility; and a looming cosmic Armageddon that will wipe out the entire Raft and Belt colonies: the life-giving Nebula is dying.  Rees plays an integral part in both storylines.

 

     The world-building is unique and masterfully done.  There are no extraterrestrials (yet), and only a few strange space creatures, such as sky wolves, skitters, and flying whales.  The latter are sentient and reminded me of the dolphins in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

 

    I liked Stephen Baxter’s attention to detail in presenting this space world to the reader.  Time is now measured in “shifts” instead of hours or days; logarithms were found to be useful (which is something I’ve yet to discover here on Earth); and the classic situational-ethics dilemma of “too many passengers in the lifeboat” is still a vexing problem.

 

    The ending has a hopeful tone and sets the stage for the entrance into the far more expansive world of the Xeelees.  The primary plotline of what to do about the dying nebula is resolved.  Other plot threads remain up in the air, and will presumably be addressed in the next sixteen books.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.1*/5, based on 407 ratings and 40 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.69*/5, based on 4,055 ratings and 283 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “Men don’t belong in this universe.  We came here in a Ship.  We passed through something called Bolder’s Ring, which was a kind of gateway.  Somewhere in the cosmos on the other side of the Ring is the world we came from.  It’s a planet, incidentally; a sphere, not a Raft, almost eight thousand miles wide.  And its surface has a gravity of exactly one gee.”

    Rees frowned.  “Then it must be made of some gas.”

    Hollerbach took the orrery from the shelf and studied the tiny planets.  “It’s a ball of iron, actually.  It couldn’t exist . . . here.”  (pg. 83)

 

    “Sir, the lists of passengers have not yet been published; and until they are it is up to all of us—”

    “They don’t need to be published.  We all know who’ll be on that trip . . . and it won’t be the likes of me.  Rees, I should have sucked your brains out of your skull while I had the chance down in the kernel.”  Roch held up a rope-like finger.  “I’ll be back,” he growled.  “And when I find I’m not on that list I’m going to make damn sure you’re not either.”  He stabbed the finger at Grye.  “And the same goes for you.”
    Grye turned ash white and trembled convulsively.

    Roch stalked off.  Gord hefted his jet and said wryly, “Good to know that in this time of upheaval some things have stayed exactly the same.”  (pg. 255)

 

“You’re a Boney now, lad!  Welcome to the arsehole of the Nebula.”  (pg. 163)

    There cussing is relatively sparse in Raft.  I counted just 20 instances in the first 20% of the book.  Most of those were damns, and I don’t recall any f-bombs in the entire book.  Often, the occasions for profanity were covered by made-up phrases, such as “bonesucker”, “by the bones”, and the oft-used social pejorative “mine rat”.  I love it when an author does this.

 

    The book is written in English, not American; so words are spelt, the mood can be sombre, and you can munch of airborne titbits.  If you’re perplexed by any strange spelling, you can look it up in an Encyclopaedia.

 

    The main issue I had with Raft, as did lots of other reviewers, was the way the science-y parts were presented.  The laws of physics in Raft are radically different from those governing our universe.  But instead of laying this all out at the start of the story, those differences are revealed piecemeal along the way.  This made for a difficult read.

 

    But enough quibbling.  I enjoyed Raft because it was an equal-parts blend of a “lost-in-space” scenario with some hard-hitting social commentary.  And it did this in a very “hard science fiction” manner.  The storytelling may be a bit rough around the edges, but it still got the job done and promises an exciting series to follow.

 

    7 Stars.  Book 4, Ring, has sat on my TBR shelf for quite a while.  Now that I've read Raft, I just have to decide whether to jump directly into its Xeelee-inhabited world, or first go looking for Books 2 and 3.  This is a pleasant problem to have.