tephen Baxter, a trained mathematician and engineer, is one of the leading—and perhaps most prolific—of the British hard-SF school of writers that first emerged in the late 1980s. His novels have won the Philip K. Dick Award, the John Campbell Memorial Award, the British Science Fiction Association Award, the Kurd Lasswitz Award (Germany) and the Seiun Award (Japan); his work has also received nominations for the Arthur C. Clarke, Hugo, Sidewise and Locus awards, among others.
His first published story, "'The Xeelee Flower," appeared in Interzone in 1987 (republished in Baxter's 1997 collection Vacuum Diagrams), which has since become the basis for an extensive series of tales set in the far future. The most recent additions to the Xeelee Sequence include "Breeding Ground" and "The Great Game" in the February and March 2003 issues, respectively, of Asimov's, as well as a limited-edition novella, Riding the Rock, from PS Publishing. Other recent work includes Phase Space, a story collection loosely related to Baxter's Manifold trilogy that ponders multiple scenarios concerning whether humankind shares the universe with other intelligent species. His latest novel, Evolution, is yet another example of Baxter's focus on the big question of humanity's significance within the universe.
We're speaking shortly after the crash of the Columbia, and the realization is once again dawning on everyone that space travel, appearances to the contrary, is anything but routine or safe. Your heroes frequently take a dim view of NASA as a bloated bureaucracy with ill-defined vision and a misguided mission that has allowed politics to override good science and maybe common sense. Can we assume that this is your view? If you could redesign NASA somehow—assuming you could get it properly funded—what do you think the space agency's priorities should be?
Baxter: I don't think it's the time to criticize NASA. The people I've met there have generally been worried about their jobs, but they do their work earnestly and well and even with vision. NASA has probably done its best with the mission it was handed, first by Nixon with the space shuttle, and then Clinton with the space station. The trouble is, both were overoptimistically specified, neither is much use without further goals, and you just keep flying until something fails.
If I were NASA fuhrer, I would go all out for Mars. Use the shuttle and station as platforms, maybe, but we know plenty of ways to do it even without them. Having setbacks is a lot easier to accept when you're on a mission to go somewhere—as the Apollo 1 fire was. And spaceflight ought to be about exploration, not just sailing around the harbor mouth. Mars has the Big Science Question—was there life?—and people could live off the land there. What more could you ask?
Following the shuttle disaster, there's been some discussion in the popular press—as well as within the science-fiction community itself—about the wisdom of shooting people off into space. The argument goes that space could more safely and expeditiously be explored by robotic probes, and that money saved from manned space flights could be better used to address problems here on Earth. What's your take on this debate?
Baxter: I'd send humans wherever possible—at least short-term, and short-scale, say as far as Mars. For the next few decades, the best human explorers will be better at spotting the unusual than the smartest robots, which are limited boxes of tricks. Send the robots places humans can't get to yet, such as the oceans of Europa, but send humans where you can. And there is also the sense-of-wonder thing—you see it when people anthropomorphize the little Pathfinder car, for instance; even then we want to identify with the explorer, so give them one.
Not everyone will come back. The Columbia crew knew the odds of failure, but got on that old bus anyhow. I think we have to accept risk just as the astronauts themselves do.
You applied to the astronaut program in 1991. Had you been accepted, what role did you envision for yourself? And what were your personal reasons for wanting to go into space?
Baxter:I applied to be guest cosmonaut on Mir. If I'd won, I'd have been up there a week doing simple science projects. I wanted to see if I could survive the training, to go through the experience which, after all, only a few hundred in the history of mankind have still shared, and then to write about it when I came down.
Your latest novel, Evolution, depicts the mother of the human species as a small mammal, who by happenstance survives the disastrous comet collision with Earth that wipes out the dominant dinosaurs, as well as her successive generations not only up to the present (us), but well into the future. Most hard SF depicts that far future as one in which humanity has spread its seed throughout the galaxy (indeed, your Xeelee Sequence of stories posits such a future); frequently the humans evolve into telepathic or bio-engineered beings, with the Golden Age stereotype of an enlarged brain case. Evolution is an antithetical SF work in which mankind never escapes the confines of its home planet and, consequently, never escapes its inevitable destruction as the larger universe evolves. Moreover, in contrast to the assumed superior intelligence of some far-flung evolving species, humanity actually "devolves." Which scenario do you think actually more likely?
Baxter: A main theme of Evolution is our brevity—what a short time we modern humans have been around compared to the depth of the past. I chose a short future for us as it makes that brevity still more poignant; it was part of the book design, really, but of course a real possibility for the future.
How long will we last? We've been here 40,000 years so far. The Neanderthals, our closest cousins, lasted 250,000 years. Most mammalian species last 5 million years or so. Over 50 million years, whole families, like the primates, come and go. Of course, you could argue we are so smart we have busted out of the box and changed the rules. But for the foreseeable future, we're still creatures bound into the ecology, as all our predecessors were. Best guess: I think we'll survive our teething troubles, I think some kind of human descendant will be around as far ahead as we can see, and we'll stay smart. But by, say, 250,000 years from now, our descendants will be unrecognizable—"we" will be in the museums.
Of course, human space exploration is often justified as the first step in the Manifest Destiny of the species to colonize other worlds (though some argue, given our history in colonizing the Earth itself, this may not be a good thing). A Ray Bradbury story, "The Man," depicted an astronaut who followed God's visitations among various planets, but was always one step behind. A wonderful metaphor. Ray himself is on record early in the space program—back during the 1960s when everyone was wondering how exactly this would pay off for people on the ground beyond the benefits of stick-free pans and awful imitation orange juice—that the ultimate reason for exploring space is to find God. Does this make sense to you in either a literal or figurative sense?
Baxter: Only figuratively. Arthur C. Clarke says it's presumptuous of us small and limited creatures to imagine we can know the ultimate truth of the universe now; we haven't even seen most of it. I think as we explore and grow we will zoom in on the Big Questions: Why does anything exist at all? Does the universe have to be the way it is? Are we alone? What does it mean to be conscious? Those are the questions that used to have 'God' in the answer boxes. But we'll be looking forward and outward, not back, and looking for new answers.
We're also speaking during a time in which the rumblings of war are growing louder. Your recent novella, Riding the Rock, transposes the brutality—both in terms of actual carnage as well as the mindset of those who direct it—of World War I trench warfare to the far future of a humanity pitted against an alien foe. Indeed, your Xeelee stories depict a race intentionally "dehumanized" in order to adapt to the harsh conditions of interstellar existence. Do you think there is something innate in human evolutionary patterns that makes oppression and warfare inevitable?
Baxter: Perhaps. The chimps run wars. On the other hand, bonobo chimps don't, and there isn't much sign the Neanderthals did. I have a feeling it is a hangover from the past that we have to resolve things this way; male dominance hierarchies is only one way for primates to live, but it's the one we got stuck with very early. I do think that as long as we run wars, as long as we're prepared to spend other people's precious, unique lives in that way, we'll get smarter about doing it, just as my story tries to show. It's also a tribute to my grandfather, who was an infantryman in France during World War I.
But Rock is also about our Orwellian ability to talk ourselves into war. Some of the speeches I gave my far-future generals were based almost word for word from what our own politicians are telling us right now.
A substantial portion of your work examines a situation or a question from multiple perspectives by portraying multiple universes in which different outcomes occur to more or less the same cast of characters. The most recent is the Manifold series, which ponders the Fermi paradox—if there are other life forms in the galaxy, why is there no evidence of it—with three very different answers. And the makeup of some of your alternate scenarios sometimes depend on the supposition of multiple universes intersecting, if not colliding, as the basis for their reality. Some cosmologists theorize the existence of alternate universes to explain the existence of our own universe. Is this some sort of high-concept abstraction that is rendered into lay terms as an "alternate universe," or are we really talking about a realm where another Stephen Baxter might have become famous as an astronaut instead of a science-fiction writer?
Baxter: There are lots of theories that posit the existence of other universes. If there's an infinite number, then somewhere there's a place where anything you envisage can be happening, such as me interviewing you. I think one good argument for the truth of this is Lee Smolin's notion of "the evolution of the cosmos" (in a book of that name). Universes bud through black holes, and so they have "daughters," and so can evolve. That's how we happen to end up in a universe as finely tuned to support life as ours—good old natural selection made it that way. I'm attracted to the idea that there is far more out there than we guess, even beyond the walls of the universe.
Speaking of alternate universes, your novel The Time Ships won the Philip K. Dick award. Your fictional vision of multiple realities is obviously more grounded in scientific principles than Dick's hallucinations. But are you a fan of his work or in any way trying to tread similar territory in a perhaps more scientific way?
Baxter: I was a big fan of PKD as a kid—still am. In the early '70s, I combed bookstores trying to collect his novels—mostly out of print, as he wasn't yet dead and so fashionable. I'm attracted by the way he continually asks questions about how we can know what is real. Also, I like his characters, which is something you don't hear about often: His heroes are ordinary people doggedly trying to cope, and be kind, in extraordinary situations.
Someone you are more closely aligned with (and for whose namesake award you won a nomination for Manifold: Time) is Arthur C. Clarke, with whom you collaborated in The Light of Other Days to depict new technology that effectively eliminates the notion of privacy, but which also leads to a kind of immortality. How did the collaboration come about? And, just in terms of logistics, how exactly do two authors write a single novel? Are there parts one author writes and the other edits? Or does one do the high concept and an outline that the other fleshes out? And how do you resolve artistic disputes?
Baxter: We currently have two more books planned: tentatively called Time's Eye and Nova, out from Del Rey in 2004 and 2005, respectively. They are the start of a series we're calling A Time Odyssey, kind of at right angles to the original Odyssey, a story of another alien intervention in human affairs—but now devastatingly destructive. We work by e-mail and phone. We began with outlines from Arthur, which we worked up into a decent proposal, then got down to planning the chapters. We resolve disputes by arguing until one of us gets a better idea.
Someone as prolific as you would not seem to have a lot of spare time on his hands. Do you have time for any pleasure reading, and, if so, what books may have piqued your interest of late?
Baxter: I don't read as much fiction as I once did. I think you use the same mental muscles reading fiction as writing it, that is, conjuring up a new world from the words. So I pleasure-read a lot of non-fiction. Recent reads: The Lunar Men by Jenny Uglow about Erasmus Darwin's circle, and Apollo: The Lost and Forgotten Missions by David Shayler.
Evolution is a standalone novel. But I understand that there may be future novels in store that depict a different evolutionary timeline for humankind. Can you preview for us anything about what kind of territory this projected work might cover?
Baxter: The series will be centered on the galactic war featured in Riding the Rock. The series will be called Destiny's Children, set in a single timeline, near, mid- and far-future, with the middle book speculating that our evolutionary future may be the child soldier.
You are usually identified as a hard-SF writer, meaning that some scientific principle is rooted in the plotline. Will Stephen Baxter ever write a fat fantasy novel full of magic and questing dwarves?
Baxter:No. It's all derivative from Tolkien.
Speaking of the hard-SF tradition, it's a time-worn criticism of authors plowing this subgenre, and you personally as one of its leading practitioners, that characterization often takes a back seat to the ideas. How do you respond to this? Do you worry much about developing your characters as "real" people, as opposed to instruments to forward the plot or serve as a mouthpiece for a scientific argument?
Baxter: Saving Private Ryan was a movie about D-day and its aftermath. The characters are important, and so is the quest they have, because that's what holds the viewer's attention, but all of that is designed to show the D-day themes. Hard SF is about the nature of the universe; you need characters to tell the story, but the ideas come first, just as in Ryan. I don't know why people get hung up about this aspect of hard SF; it's the same in other genres, such as historical fiction, say. And besides, I'm proud of some of my characters, notably Malenfant of the Manifold series, who has a lot of fans!
Which came first for you as a kid, the interest in science, or in science fiction? And, as a trained scientist, what made you choose the life of the literary imagination over the life of hard research?
Baxter: SF, first the TV shows, then the books when I was about 12. SF was my introduction to science anyhow. I was attracted to astronomy, engineering, etc. I made my later career choices based on what I found was actually out there, of course. I quickly found that the "real" work of the scientist, the detail, wasn't for me; I always liked the bigger picture. I worked in teaching for a while, then in industry, while building up my writing career. SF was the first love and has ended up being the last.
You average at least one big novel a year, countless short stories and occasional non-fiction. What's next in the publication queue, and what can readers expect it to be about?
Baxter: Next non-fiction: Revolutions in the Earth, biography of James Hutton, 18th-century Scottish geologist who deduced that the Earth is older than the religious tradition. Out in June from Gollancz (UK). Next fiction: Coalescent, first book of the Destiny's Children series, hive minds in ancient Rome ... out in 2004 from Del Rey.
Is having to answer these sort of questions the worst part about being a science-fiction writer?
Baxter:The worst part is not having clones in alternate universes who could develop all the neat ideas I seem to have but never have time to get to. ...
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