Category: Stephen Baxter

The Invasion of Venus by Stephen Baxter

Posted on by Paul Fraser 2 Comments on The Invasion of Venus by Stephen Baxter

The Invasion of Venus by Stephen Baxter (Engineering Infinity, edited by Jonathan Strahan, 2010) starts with the narrator, a British civil servant, visiting an old female college friend (and lover). They discuss an alien object called the Incoming which has entered the solar system and appears to be headed for Earth. Later in the conversation he reveals that the current scientific analysis shows that it actually headed for Venus.
The next section sees a later visit to see her at the Goonhilly telescopes, where she and others are attempting to contact the aliens, a controversial undertaking:

Our British Shouters are a mild bunch, but in rowdier parts of the world there has been trouble.” The loose international coalition of groups called the Shouters was paradoxically named, because they campaigned for silence; they argued that “shouting in the jungle” by sending signals to the Incoming or the Venusians was taking an irresponsible risk. Of course they could do nothing about the low-level chatter that had been targeted at the Incoming since it had first been sighted, nearly a year ago already. Edith waved a hand at Arthur. “If I were a Shouter, I’d be here today. This will be by far the most powerful message sent from the British Isles.”
I’d seen and heard roughs of Edith’s message. In with a Carl Sagan–style prime number lexicon, there was digitised music from Bach to Zulu chants, and art from cave paintings to Warhol, and images of mankind featuring a lot of smiling children, and astronauts on the Moon. There was even a copy of the old Pioneer spaceprobe plaque from the seventies, with the smiling naked couple. At least, I thought cynically, all that fluffy stuff would provide a counterpoint to the images of war, murder, famine, plague and other sufferings that the Incoming had no doubt sampled by now, if they’d chosen to.

At the end of this section there is another revelation, which is that there are signs of life on Venus: a hole in the atmosphere has opened up where the Incoming is expected to arrive.
The climax of the story jumps forward in time once more, and (spoiler) they talk about how the Incoming attacked the Venusians, but were in turn destroyed by a gravity wave created by the latter’s destruction of Neptune. They also note that Mankind have been ignored throughout the war.
This is a good, if open-ended, piece, even if it is little more than an interesting notion combined with some philosophical musings about humanity. The story is told, appropriately enough, from offstage—which mirrors humanity’s place in the scheme of the story.
*** (Good), 4,850 words.

Gossamer by Stephen Baxter

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Gossamer by Stephen Baxter (Science Fiction Age, November 1995) has a good opening hook that sees a two woman spaceship prematurely come out of a wormhole near Pluto and crash-land on the planet. During their approach, Lvov, the scientist of the two, has a brief (and story telegraphing) vision of a web between Pluto and one of its moons, Charon.
Both of the women survive the crash although the ship is wrecked, and Cobh the pilot tells Lvov that it’ll be twenty days or so before they are rescued, and that it won’t be via the wormhole (there is some handwavium here about the wormhole anomaly that spat them out of hyperspace).
The central section of the story then sees Lvov exploring the surface of Pluto and, as she flies along, we get some personal backstory. There is also further discussion between the pair (Cobh is off doing something else) about the unstable wormhole. Then Lvov finds what looks like eggs in a burrow:

Everywhere she found the inert bodies of snowflakes, or evidence of their presence: eggs, lidded burrows. She found no other life forms—or, more likely, she told herself, she wasn’t equipped to recognize any others.
She was drawn back to Christy, the sub-Charon point, where the topography was at its most complex and interesting, and where the greatest density of flakes was to be found. It was as if, she thought, the flakes had gathered here, yearning for the huge, inaccessible moon above them. But what could the flakes possible want of Charon? What did it mean for them?  p. 129 (Year’s Best SF, edited by David Hartwell)

When the pair realise that they may have discovered alien life there is a discussion about what they should do—if they signal Earth then the rescue will be called off as any rocket exhaust will damage the environment. Lvov (spoiler) feels strongly that if they have to die to preserve the Plutonian ecosystem then so be it and, when she realises that Cobh has figured out another way to get them home, she sends a message to Earth about her discovery.
The final part of the story has the pair going to the wormhole on Cobh’s salvaged and modified GUTdrive, the (presumably not ecosystem destroying) heat of which activates the Pluto-Charon ecosystem: the burrows open, the eggs hatch, and an interplanetary web forms between Pluto and its moon. Then the drive activates, and causes a distorted space wave which flicks the pair to Earth (or something like that).
This is a well enough put together story (apart from the telegraphing, which is repeated again later on), and it has a good sense-of-wonder finale—the problem is, though, that the piece as a whole does not convince. Part of the reason is the exotic ecosystem, which is interesting but rather far-fetched, and the other thing is Cobh’s rather unlikely invention of a new type of space drive amid the wreckage of their ship (this rather smacks of Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers, and cobbling together a star-drive out of a six-pack of used beer cans). There is also the minor problem (in practical if not narrative terms) of being trapped in your suit for twenty odd days, with no discussion of how you are going to eat or go to the toilet.
Normally, you can get away with one fantastic thing in a story; two or three is pushing it. Too far-fetched.
** (Average.) 6,100 words.