n the linked predecessor to Hogan's latest, Cradle of Saturn (1999), we witnessed the destruction of the Earth through the eyes of Landen Keene, engineer and physicist specializing in spaceflight propulsion systems. Toward the middle of the 21st century, Keene and crew have perfected a new kind of cheap rocket that can run rings around stodgy government ships, offering a chance to open up the solar system to colonization. For at this stage, a century after sputnik, only a couple of piddling settlements on Mars constitute mankind's planetary diaspora. If, that is, one doesn't count Kronia. Kronia is a rebellious polity inhabiting the moons of Saturn. Settled by dissidents who boast their own non-money-based economic system and holistic, quasi-spiritual philosophy of science, Kronia is flourishing, but limited in what it can achieve by its size and circumstances. A Kronian delegation, which includes a beautiful woman named Sariena, who fascinates Keene, has reached Earth to bolster relations and to bargain. Luckily for Keene, the Kronians are in place when disaster strikes.
Some months previously, Jupiter gave birth—to a planet-sized ball of plasma and gas and solids subsequently named Athena. Athena is rampaging impossibly through the solar system, with Earth a likely target. The worst fears of humanity do indeed come to pass. The eventual glancing impact with Athena has horrific consequences, redrawing the map of Earth's continents and wiping billions from its face. Keene and some of his closest friends—including a co-worker named Vicky and her son Robin—manage to hitch a ride with the Kronians and survive.
Dawn opens approximately three years later. Keene and some 1,200 other rescued Terrans have been adopted by Kronia. But not everyone is fitting into the communal system. A faction of disgruntled Earthlings form the Pragmatist party, with an eye toward taking over Kronia. When their legal approach to power-sharing is stymied, they plan a secret mutiny that will strike Kronia's first expedition back to Earth. A parallel narrative meanwhile follows the brutish lives of the few survivors on Earth, mainly a tribe led by one Rakki. After an additional two years of work, Keene, Vicky and Sariena are headed to Earth in a pair of ships. Keene's lands first, and contact with Rakki and his tribe is made. Physical conditions on the homeworld have mellowed somewhat, and the Kronians seem well on their way to planting the seeds of recovery. But then the mutiny is launched, and Keene finds himself and his friends held hostage. Only a daring and dangerous trek across the ruins of Earth holds any hope of salvation.
Paradigms collide for fun and profit
The SF classic When Worlds Collide (1933), by Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer, appeared exactly 70 years ago. The following year saw the completion of the tale in After Worlds Collide. The eventual movie version of this saga of smashing orbs appeared in 1951. Now, James Hogan dusts off this venerable formula and produces a modern version of the Wylie-Balmer epic. He manages to recapitulate most of the thrills of the groundbreaking books, with advanced scientific buttressing, but his main focus is on the contrarian, revisionist philosophies of science and history that underpin his tale.
The destruction of Earth occupies only the last quarter of Cradle, and there are really no panoramic set pieces of cities collapsing, etc. We stick firmly with Keene and crew, and so our viewpoint on the global destruction is necessarily limited. In Dawn, the portrait of the abused, recovering Earth is drawn in good detail, but once again the venue is limited to a small circle around the Kronian touchdown spot. In contrast, books such as Greg Bear's The Forge of God (1987) deal more vividly with matters of destruction, while other novels, like Jack Williamson's Terraforming Earth (2001), pay closer attention to the post-apocalyptic realities.
Hogan's main thematic concern is showing how orthodoxy of belief has stifled real scientific advances. In this respect, he emulates editor John W. Campbell, a famous iconoclast. Hogan takes one of the most infamous of para-science books, Immanuel Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision (1950) and accepts it as gospel, then proceeds to show how Earth's history can be revised in light of Velikovsky's theories. Additionally, Hogan rewrites Darwinism with a kind of evolution-by-infection proposal. Finally, he guts capitalism, offering up the alternative Kronian system much in the manner of Cory Doctorow's "Bitchun Society." All of this is heady stuff, producing a future where not only the surface realities have changed but a true paradigm shift is underway.
Yet Hogan maintains a good balance between intellectualism and action. There's always plenty going on between speeches. His characters are all believable and engaging, although Landen Keene is so goal-driven that his abortive romances with Sariena and Vicki amount to nothing. A little more balance might have rendered him more human. I was a little disbelieving in the explanation of why the survivors on Earth managed to forget everything about civilization in just five years, but see the necessity for their amnesia as a plot device. All in all, then, Hogan offers a fine tribute to the Wylie-Balmer landmark.
