tephen Baxter's The Hunters of Pangaea is the 41st book in NESFA Press' Boskone series, celebrating the author's guest-of-honor status at the 2004 edition of that convention. This volume collects 18 stories—spanning prehistoric speculation, murder mysteries, interplanetary voyages, alternate histories, literary pastiches and more—along with five essays on science and science fiction. Also included is a suitably laudatory introduction by the father-daughter team of John and Kathryn Cramer.
The 2002 AnLab Award-winning title story speculates on the existence of a short-lived species of tool-making dinosaurs unknown to humanity. Prehistoric animals also feature prominently in "Behold Now Behemoth" and "The Dinosaur Hunter." "The Modern Cyrano" and the Sherlock
Holmes/H.G. Wells team-up "The Adventure of the Inertial Adjuster" are both murder mysteries that double as alternate histories of British space travel. "Prospero One" and "First to the Moon!"—two collaborations with RAF officer Simon Bradshaw—also plunge into uchronias of the British space program, while detective fiction pops up in several guises, including Shakespearean pastiche in "A Midsummer Eclipse" and light fantasy in a trio of stories featuring an elf detective named Pero.
The spirit of Wells looms over many other stories, most explicitly "Clods" (about Wells' tenure as a soccer coach) and "The Ant-Men of Tibet" (a sequel to Wells' The First Men in the Moon). Space travel also shows up as a major element in "Raft" (an early blueprint for the novel of the same name), "The Burster" and "The Mandate of Heaven." "Family History" is a horror story about Britain's dark past. In "Imaginary Time" an assassin considers the implications of his calling.
The five essays cover subjects such as the space race, soccer in science fiction, the moon, Mars and the science of Wells' The Time Machine.
Manifold pleasures and manifold perils
Stephen Baxter is often hailed as the brightest contemporary star in British hard SF, yet the author's obsessions are manifold, feeding an oeuvre whose scope ventures beyond the traditional terrain of hard SF.
"The Hunters of Pangaea" (the collection's most daring and vivid selection) and the claustrophobically gripping "Behold Now Behemoth" both testify poignantly to the author's profound interest in prehistory (see also his Mammoth trilogy) and evolution, the central topic of his recent novels Evolution and Coalescent. Coalescent also shows off how imaginatively Baxter can explore the hidden histories of Great Britain, and he deploys these skills to deliciously creepy effect in the excellent "Family History."
As witnessed in his multiple award-winning novel The Time Ships, Baxter finds in H.G. Wells a source of great inspiration. However, while Baxter makes the most of his Wellsian obsession in the delightfully pulpy "The Ant-Men of Tibet" and the wryly entertaining "The Adventure of the Inertial Adjuster," the soccer story "Clods" is no more than a lackluster dramatization of an event from the great man's life, of interest perhaps only to the most devout Wells fans.
When Baxter operates within traditional hard-SF mode—which is when he indulges in his passion for space travel—such as in "Raft," "Prospero One," "The Burster," "The Mandate of Heaven" and "First to the Moon," the confident and skilfull hand so evident in many other stories vanishes. The characters tend to ramble on in chunks of unconvincingly delivered expository dialogue, often telling each other things they already know. This is such a basic and clumsy mistake (one found too often in SF) that it's hard to reconcile with Baxter's obvious talent.
However, it is when Baxter strays the farthest from hard SF that his talent fails the most. The trio of light fantasies featuring the elf Pero descend dismally into fan fiction, drowning in clichés and cutesiness.
The five infectiously erudite essays, as well as the afterword, display Baxter's good humor and insightful intelligence most charmingly, leaving us with the impression that Baxter is a writer who will continue to stretch the limits of his curiosity and his craft.
