In "Reality Dust," by Stephen Baxter, Earth has finally ejected the repressive Qax, aliens who imparted great longevity to collaborators called pharaohs. A surviving pharaoh manipulates a commissioner into a trip to the Jovian moon Callisto--where pharaohs were performing experiments into the possibility of visiting the metauniverse in which all realities coexist, like sand grains on a seashore. Baxter also follows Callisto, a woman thrust memoryless into an unreal world of caustic seas, bitter refugees and dangerous mutants.
Peter Hamilton's mystery "Watching Trees Grow" posits a Roman system that endured, thanks to emperors breeding noble families to longer life. Uninhibited by dark ages, the ruling families have automobiles by 1832, when Edward Raleigh unsuccessfully investigates another Raleigh scion's murder. With the patience of the long-lived, Edward moves on, awaiting future technology. Over centuries he faces his own creeping obsession as phenomenal forensic breakthroughs fail to unmask the villain.
"Making History," by Paul McAuley, is also post-rebellion--this time a suppressed uprising on a Saturnian moon. A historian, arrived to research the insurrection's Pendragon, is frustrated by conflicting reports and hero-worship. Soon he's distracted by a captivating environmental engineer, Demi. But the martinet in charge wants Demi himself, setting up a tragic conflict.
"Tendeléo's Story" revisits Ian McDonald's Chaga infestation of Africa seen in Evolution's Shore. Humanity flees before the spreading alien life-pattern; communities die abandoned, and with them ancient ways and codes. Broken refugees stream toward Nairobi, where jackals rule. Tendeléo, who once defied her father by walking to see the Chaga, finds independence running black-market Chaga spores. Ultimately escaping to Manchester, she finds love. But her rapid healing reveals what authorities cannot accept: She is infected, and must be sent home.
Nice places to visit, but ...
In his rambling introduction, Peter Crowther shamelessly talks up his own selections, comparing Baxter to Arthur C. Clarke, McDonald to J.G. Ballard, Hamilton to Larry Niven (and Agatha Christie) and McAuley to Isaac Asimov. These connections are both tenuous and a disservice to the newer authors. Science fiction has evolved since Foundation and The Drowned World, and that, presumably, is the point of collecting new and forward-looking writers.
While the backdrops are superficially similar--the aftermath of war, immortality, the inevitability of expansion--these stories assess us from starkly different viewpoints. In "Watching Trees Grow" we're bound for Utopia; "Reality Dust" finds us ultimately impotent; in "Making History" idealism still clashes with money; while "Tendeléo's Story" shows our shockingly familiar dark side. Though the cumulative effect reinforces our complexity, it also suggests that none of these talented authors has it right.
Baxter--usually classed as a hard-science guy--struggles valiantly to portray his metauniverse as a real place humans can visit; but he's mutated the once-human pharaohs into something unrecognizable, emasculating his point while eliminating reader empathy. "Trees" has great atmosphere but doesn't work as a mystery--not enough reader-usable clues (he's no Agatha Christie!); and while the longevity-breeding "sport of emperors" is intriguing it's difficult to see how it would result in a constantly expanding civilization free from the vices that destroyed Rome long before the Germans. "Making History" distills to little more than a foolish old man and a pretty woman; the science fiction figures only in solving his mystery, about which even he doesn't care.
"Tendeléo's Story" is a breed apart, if only because it's by a European and about non-Europeans. It's well told, but disconcerting. What happens to Tendeléo is unpleasant, and her choice at the end rebukes humanity en masse. Still, it's a scenario more believable than any of the other futures in this collection.
Tendeléo herself--a unique, fully developed, fascinating individual--is the only character I'll take away from this book. That's enough. -- Mark
