(2020) Stephen Baxter, Gollancz, £20, hrdbk, 549pp, ISBN 978-1-473-22322-6
This is the second in a duology that began with World Engines: Destroyer, and seriously if you have not read that then you should before proceeding with this. So check out, using the afore link, that first: this book, combined with the first, really is one story.
Assuming you are still reading this, then you are likely to have read World Engines: Destroyer and are continuing to read this review to check out whether or not you want to continue with the second half of this duology.
Creator begins a little after Destroyer ends. Malenfant, Deidra and some colleagues have crashed a lander onto a super-Earth – a larger than Earth, Earthlike planet – in an alternate space-time continuum in an analogue of the Solar System. Only this Solar System never saw Earth having a moon and instead Mars was this super-Earth.
Apparently, on their way down from the mother ship, they were 'attacked' by the blue, circular, airborne, hoop portals.
It soon emerges that on this super-Earth there are varieties of archaic humans as well as the survivors of a previous Russian expedition from yet another timeline.
Meanwhile, as Malenfant, Deidra and other castaways, seek to find a way of this world, our lone Brit in the orbiting Mothership departs to explore this alternate Solar System…
This book is dived into two parts. The first consists of a mix of a journey on the super-Earth that informs us much about that world's nature and the hoops. The second is a broader exploration of the analogue planetary system before a journey to beyond.
Once more Baxter packs in plenty of sense-of-wonder and clearly he has done much background reading. Some of this last is included in an author's afterword. Such afterwords, that reveal the real-science source material inspiring the author's SF concepts, I always welcome in a hard SF novel, or a novel written by someone scientifically literate.
However, while there are concepts galore based – as much as the science fiction will allow – on real science and some real-science speculation, and while there is a story, the novel's characters are thin creations and the plot does not bear serious contemplation given that our protagonists are dealing with huge forces and events yet are only equipped with tech and craft only a little better than that we can currently, in theory, contemplate in our early 21st century. Consequently, especially later in the book, I did often wonder whether the characters would do what they did (especially with what little they had).
With this sort of novel it is best not to come too close lest the crudity of the brushstrokes become all too clear. Instead, the reader is arguably better served to take a step back and look overall at the SFnal concepts and themes being presented. In my review of World Engines: Destroyer, I did wonder whether Stephen Baxter is beginning to tie in the various themes and motifs he has covered across his writing career's oeuvre. On one sense this seems to be the case. Certainly, and (as was evident in World Engines: Destroyer, so this is not a spoiler) he is again exploring a more powerful force curating life and humanity. However, if this is a part-integration of Baxter's works' previous themes then we can only conclude that we are not talking about a multiverse (which this duology seems to be exploring) but that overall, across his many novels there must be a pan-multiverse itself composed of many multiverses. I wonder if eventually that this will be where he takes us? If he does, that would be one mash up I would not want to miss.
In short, World Engines: Creator is something you come to for the concepts and the ride, as the story and characterisations are somewhat weak. But if you can forgive these last, as well as perhaps Baxter's tendency the past one-and-a-half decades to pile on the word count (I prefer his earlier work and urge you to check out earlier Malenfant books – Time (1999), Space (2000), Origin (2001) and Phase Space (2001)), then he still takes you on an interesting journey.
Jonathan Cowie
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