“titan”
is the second book in stephen baxter’s nasa trilogy. despite being called a
trilogy, each novel is a stand-alone alternate history narrative.
the book is
quite different from the previous one; while “voyage” is a highly technical
account of an entirely plausible manned mars mission executed in the 1980s, “titan”
proposes an open-ended (meaning one-way) mission to the eponymous moon in the
wake of the columbia disaster, using space shuttles and refurbished apollo
hardware.
i had
enjoyed the first chapter a lot, as it presents a different columbia disaster,
while giving ample technical details about the orbiter’s orbital maneuvering system,
auxiliary power units and hydraulic system. but most of the book lacks both the
interesting technical details and credible social events of the first novel.
the
socio-political background of the setting stretches the suspension of disbelief
and borders on caricature. the entire novel is an extremely heavy-handed
critique of the luddite and anti-intellectual streak that characterizes the
political right in the us. while a conservative president who regards nasa as a
pointless waste of money and cuts funding is entirely believable, even teaching
creationism in public schools and overturning roe v. wade is conceivable,
banning telescopes and teaching aristotelian astronomy is just absurd (how
would such legislation even come to pass? through executive orders? how would
it be enforced?)
the
end of the novel takes place in the far future, when our sun is at the end of its life. i had
greatly enjoyed this kind of grand, long timescale space opera in baxter’s
other work (“vacuum diagrams” is still one of my favorite short story
collections) it felt very intrusive and unnecessary in a setting that for the
most part was grounded in reality.
i cannot
recommend this novel to either fans of the first book or readers looking for “xeelee
sequence”-like space opera. son, i am disappoint…
