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A review by beaconatnight
Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds
5.0
This is quite possibly the best space opera that I have read. To my mind, science-fiction is the most successful if it brings together mind-bending scientific or philosophical ideas and an intriguing plot. More importantly, the ideas need to be invoked in a way that actually advances the plot (rather than weighing it down). In this respect, Pushing Ice succeeds tremendously.
After a brief prelude set in the distant future, the main body starts in the early days of space travel through the solar system. Companies from Earth send out ships to mine the ice that comets are made of. One of these ships is the Rockhopper, commanded by Bella Lind (who far into the future is praised as an ancient hero). Then something strange happens. It is discovered that a Saturn Moon, Janus, is not moving in its normal orbit. In fact, it isn't long before it starts to move out of the solar system, appearing to be some sort of disguised alien artifact. The Rockhopper is the only ship close enough to outrun Janus (before it moves out of reach), so in the hope of scientific and technical progress the mining ship's crew is ordered to pursue the moon. Eventually, this will lead to the founding of a microscopic human society (a colony, really) on Janus, positioning them right in the middle of intergalactic conflict and diplomacy.
I totally loved all those twists and turns that the story is taking. Just when you feel like the plot is settling in a rut, you are in for a surprise. Is it about the travel to an unknown galaxy? About survival in an uninhabitable environment? About first contact? About conflict and political strife? It's all that at once, and all this develops naturally from the seed which is already planted with what at first sight seems like a rather silly premise of a chase in space.
Unlike so many of his fellow hard science-fiction writers, Alastair Reynolds really has a good sense for the intricacies of interpersonal relationships and character development. In the course of the journey, there are very tough decisions to be made, decisions that affect the lives of the entire crew. As you would expect, this is very hard on some characters' relationships, especially when institutionalized authority needs to be wielded in order to settle some of those practical disputes. Power relations are constantly shifting throughout the book, so that relations need to be renegotiated. I'm not saying that the characters are very complex per se (in fact, the baddy in the first part of the story wouldn't feel out of place as the villain in a Disney movie), but they develop over decades and for the most part I really felt their struggle. It also makes the political conflicts and mutinies much more personal, as all conflicts are extrapolation of the central characters' motivations and misunderstandings.
The initial mystery of what Janus and its goal destination, the Spica Structure, really is and why humankind is brought there, remains intriguing throughout the story. While themes of first contact take center stage at some point, the alien species play their cards close to the chest. So, even though humanity comes so far, the resolution of many secrets of the universe within its grasp, the story ingeniously gives away just enough information to make you ask more refined questions - while ultimately staying in the dark. I liked this approach more than the too-vast-to-be-comprehended turn that many other works in hard sf take (2001 or Contact are good examples for that).
The way the story plays with space and especially time is truly mind-bending. I would be lying if I claimed that I really understood all that is going on. From the get-go, the reader knows that humanity will find a way to communicate discovered future technology back to Earth, and it's one of the big plot points to explain how this came about. In the beginning, as an appendage of Janus the Rockhopper traveled through space at a much higher speed than human technology would have allowed back then, in this way traversing time faster than the people back on Earth (in a sense traveling into the future). There is also the factor of communication through time and a lot of space, which forces you to reconsider the different positions that communication partners may hold to each other. And then the aliens enter the stage, introducing their future technology, that may be the future human's technology (the one that in the meantime was developed back on Earth) - well, things certainly do get complicated! Truly fascinating stuff.
Rating: 5/5
After a brief prelude set in the distant future, the main body starts in the early days of space travel through the solar system. Companies from Earth send out ships to mine the ice that comets are made of. One of these ships is the Rockhopper, commanded by Bella Lind (who far into the future is praised as an ancient hero). Then something strange happens. It is discovered that a Saturn Moon, Janus, is not moving in its normal orbit. In fact, it isn't long before it starts to move out of the solar system, appearing to be some sort of disguised alien artifact. The Rockhopper is the only ship close enough to outrun Janus (before it moves out of reach), so in the hope of scientific and technical progress the mining ship's crew is ordered to pursue the moon. Eventually, this will lead to the founding of a microscopic human society (a colony, really) on Janus, positioning them right in the middle of intergalactic conflict and diplomacy.
I totally loved all those twists and turns that the story is taking. Just when you feel like the plot is settling in a rut, you are in for a surprise. Is it about the travel to an unknown galaxy? About survival in an uninhabitable environment? About first contact? About conflict and political strife? It's all that at once, and all this develops naturally from the seed which is already planted with what at first sight seems like a rather silly premise of a chase in space.
Unlike so many of his fellow hard science-fiction writers, Alastair Reynolds really has a good sense for the intricacies of interpersonal relationships and character development. In the course of the journey, there are very tough decisions to be made, decisions that affect the lives of the entire crew. As you would expect, this is very hard on some characters' relationships, especially when institutionalized authority needs to be wielded in order to settle some of those practical disputes. Power relations are constantly shifting throughout the book, so that relations need to be renegotiated. I'm not saying that the characters are very complex per se (in fact, the baddy in the first part of the story wouldn't feel out of place as the villain in a Disney movie), but they develop over decades and for the most part I really felt their struggle. It also makes the political conflicts and mutinies much more personal, as all conflicts are extrapolation of the central characters' motivations and misunderstandings.
The initial mystery of what Janus and its goal destination, the Spica Structure, really is and why humankind is brought there, remains intriguing throughout the story. While themes of first contact take center stage at some point, the alien species play their cards close to the chest. So, even though humanity comes so far, the resolution of many secrets of the universe within its grasp, the story ingeniously gives away just enough information to make you ask more refined questions - while ultimately staying in the dark. I liked this approach more than the too-vast-to-be-comprehended turn that many other works in hard sf take (2001 or Contact are good examples for that).
The way the story plays with space and especially time is truly mind-bending. I would be lying if I claimed that I really understood all that is going on. From the get-go, the reader knows that humanity will find a way to communicate discovered future technology back to Earth, and it's one of the big plot points to explain how this came about. In the beginning, as an appendage of Janus the Rockhopper traveled through space at a much higher speed than human technology would have allowed back then, in this way traversing time faster than the people back on Earth (in a sense traveling into the future). There is also the factor of communication through time and a lot of space, which forces you to reconsider the different positions that communication partners may hold to each other. And then the aliens enter the stage, introducing their future technology, that may be the future human's technology (the one that in the meantime was developed back on Earth) - well, things certainly do get complicated! Truly fascinating stuff.
Rating: 5/5