Fiction Reviews
Raft
(1991/2018) Stephen Baxter, Gollancz, £10.99, pbk, x + 246pp, ISBN 978-1-473-22405-6
Following a number of published shorter stories, this is the author’s first novel (published 1991). It is good solid SF and all the better for it; not a hint of fantasy ‘to help the story along’. It was written back in the days when there was science in science fiction and I found it refreshing to read a story which is set in a very different world yet everything about it makes sense, a strange world in which I could believe. The Introduction by Alastair Reynolds also praises the science aspect whilst telling us a little about the setting, the author, and where this story would lead him.
The story immediately introduces us to Rees, the main character. He is a young miner and he lives in a cabin in the Belt, a series of linked cabins which measures about eight hundred yards across and orbits a cooled-down star kernel some fifty yards wide. As a miner, his job is to dig iron from the kernel whilst suffering the crushing gravity of five gees on its surface. As with any story that opens straight into a strange world, it took me a little while to get the hang of the scene and a little rereading of the opening pages was required as I got to grips with life in the Nebula, where gravity is a major force and an object’s gravity well is all important (even the gravity wells of individual people).
As the story progresses we learn the history of these people of the Nebula. They are human, the descendents of the crew of a spaceship which accidentally passed through a Boulder’s Ring, a sort of wormhole, into the pocket universe that is the Nebula. The ship survived the experiences but was badly damaged and unable to escape back to the normal universe. All the crew could do was salvage what they could and create a new way of life, one that would work in this strange new place.
It is not a good life as a miner; indeed, it appears that not many people in the Nebula have particularly good, let alone fair, lives. The survivors of the disaster did the best they could but their descendents are struggling to survive in a universe which was never meant for them. Almost everyone struggles; one does so simply to survive - and merely surviving is what most people are doing. A fair and equitable society is just not possible.
Unlike most people, though, young Rees is curious and observant; he has noticed that something is going wrong with the Nebula, that even survival is getting harder. When he gets the chance he stows away on a tree as it flies from the Belt back to the Raft, scavenged by the original crew from the remains of their ship. The trees are native to the Nebula and, as there are no planets, they evolved simply to float about in space, and breathable air is everywhere in the Nebula.
The Raft is circular and some half a mile wide, built out of scraps of spaceship and iron from the mines, but Rees is discovered before the tree gets there. Normally the authorities on the Raft would simply send Rees back to the mines but Hollerbach, the Raft’s chief scientist, is impressed with Rees’ curiosity and understanding and decides he should stay and be trained as a scientist. And Rees is right, the Nebula is dying and the scientists have no idea what to do about it (other than wait for their inevitable end).
All is not well on the Raft, though; the deprivations of life there, especially with a dying universe, are increasing the social tensions that have always existed; their life has never been fair and some people think that revolution is the answer. All this will make life very different for everyone and it will set Rees on an unexpected path - and Rees is brave, intelligent, curious, and scientific, and he is determined that they will all survive somehow.
Once I had got the hang of the Nebula and how their society had to work, the story was most enjoyable, quite gripping in places. You do have to read carefully and think a little, not merely skim the pages, but it was a very satisfying story in a very different world. Proper science fiction, the stuff I grew up with!
Peter Tyers
See also Jonathan's review.
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