Monday, May 26, 2014

stephen baxter - titan



“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…

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