World Engines

A post climate change high concept science fiction odyssey

By: Stephen Baxter

Narrated by: Penelope Rawlins, Christopher Ragland

In the year 2570, a sleeper will wake....

In the mid-21st century, the Kernel, a strange object on a 500-year-orbit, is detected coming from high above the plane of the solar system. Could it be an alien artefact?

In the middle of climate-change crises, there is no mood for space-exploration stunts - but Reid Malenfant, elderly, once a shuttle pilot and frustrated would-be asteroid miner, decides to go take a look anyway. Nothing more is heard of him. But his ex-wife, Emma Stoney, sets up a trust fund to search for him the next time the Kernel returns....

By 2570 Earth is transformed. A mere billion people are supported by advanced technology on a world that is almost indistinguishable from the natural, with recovered forests, oceans, ice caps. It is not an age for expansion; there are only small science bases beyond the Earth. But this is a world you would want to live in: a Star Trek without the stars.

After 500 years the Kernel returns, and a descendant of Stoney, who Malenfant will call Emma II, mounts a mission to see what became of Malenfant. She finds him still alive, cryo-preserved....

His culture-shock encounter with a conservative future is entertaining....

But the Kernel itself turns out to be attached to a kind of wormhole, through which Malenfant and Emma II, exploring further, plummet back in time, across five billion years....

©2019 Stephen Baxter (P)2019 Orion Publishing Group

Baxter is improving with characters

Good listen. All the fanciful world building that I love Baxter for but this time the characters were fun too. They won’t stay with you but they aren’t actively annoying. If you like the Three Body Problem series the only author who has such scope would be Baxter I think and with this series at least the characters are less wooden.

The first four fifths was ok

Most of it was Fine, but then it just fizzled out completely unsatisfying. Then to make it matters worse There was more than one narrator and they didn’t stick to the same characters. If you’re going to do two narrators, then each one should have their voices to do and the others don’t overlap. So it was a mess you couldn’t keep track of who the character was by their voice because one person would make that character‘s voice completely different than the other narrator would. I’ve read quite a few of Steven Baxter’s works and always enjoyed them, but not so much this time

Great listen.

Narration by Penelope Rawlins was brilliant.

The were a few chapters that Ragland narrated. It wasn't clear why the full book wasn't narrated by Rawlins only, or Ragland as his style was great too.

Promising concept but dismal execution

The strangest narration decisions I've seen. A very good female narrator for most of the book - that has a male main character. A male narrator would have made more sense. Unexplicable switching between female and male narrators. Just bizarre.

The story was very disappointing. I was very surprised that the story ended where it did. I was sure it would continue with what happened with the second Phobos trip. But bizarrely, no. All in all, very disatisfying.

Kinda wraps up Manifold...

(applies to "Creator" and "Destroyer")
This will likely be my last Baxter book. Xeelee Vengeance and Redemption were bad enough, I was hoping for a return to better days, but it was not to be. So many issues!

First let's start with the good stuff: It's "high concept", its multiverse, mysterious world destroying engineers, it's Malenfant from the Manifold. In fact, this wraps up the Manifold Trilogy (Time/Space/Origin), making it a …”Pentalogy”! (but see below) It offers some closure to those of us who scratched our heads over Manifold/ORIGIN and the Red Moon, which seemed to have actually been part of a larger storyline – sooooooo Yay?

What's not to like?

Unfortunately, quite a bit

Let's start with the narration. It’s a trainwreck. In the first book there’s two narrators, in the second there's four, but they trade off some parts, like one of the main characters, Malenfant. At least in World Engines Destroyer, there were just two of them. Also, they don't necessarily split the narration according to character. You can figure it out, but it's disconcerting when Malenfant's voice just changes for no reason, depending on who he's talking to. Also, Penelope Rawlins' Malenfant is abominable - cringy and hard to listen to. There’s also only so many hours you can listen to a sardonic robot as a main character (he's no "Bender"). Also, no one in the US pronounces it “mee-thane”. It’s “meth-ane”… or Gee-sers…it's Guy-sers!

Next, there's the characters -- there's way too many of them. Emma seems to have almost no point and no relationship until almost the very end. They seem to kill off some characters, like the Brits, or forget about them, like the Denisovans (Neanderthals?). Also, there's little linkage back to the Manifold books (which you might have read 25 years ago). Sure, they mention a fact or two from them, but these guys all come from a different universe, so...

Then, there's the exposition. Book 1 (Destroyer) spends 3/4 of the book describing post-climate change economics in a world where Armstrong dies on the moon and Nixon invents guaranteed basic income. Sure, at the very end we discover the Multiverse, try to move a planet (not very successfully), and jaunt off to find the engineers. In Book 2 (Creator) we spend the first half in a "Robinson Caruso on Mars" scenario as everyone tries to understand what is pretty much evident from the start - Persephonie is a zoo. Throw in some very evident “mysteries” (the mistreatment of the sub-humans) and a LOT of rocket engineering and you’re now about 3/4 ‘s of the way through.

Answers come in the last 45 minutes or so. Through exposition, of course….

--------------------------- Danger: Spoilers Ahead -------------------

OK, time to wrap up the prior Manifold Trilogy (sorry, Tetralogy… I guess Phase Space, a short story, is sometimes included(?) so now a Hexology!). Spoilers -- it’s the Downstreamers – (remember them from Manifold TIME -- 1999? 25 years ago?) basically, humans from the end of time, back when there was no multiverse. They’re bored. Reruns of “Happy Days” are just not doing it for them. They simply ran out of time and resources, so they sent a message back in time to a generation of children and had them build a device to create the vacuum catastrophe. In doing so, they created a series of universes, a multiverse, a MANIFOLD. At least some of the kids (including “Michael”) jumped into portals before the catastrophe and became immortal beings whose job is to tinker with the construction of various versions of the solar system, like a big billiards game. Oh yeah, and they spread Earth Life (because it’s basically the only game in town). Oh YEAH – remember the red moon from Manifold ORIGIN (from the Manifold Trilogy)? Finally explained, tied up – it was Michael cross breeding hominids across the universes! (And that's why there's duplicates of most of the characters in some of the multiverse worlds....huh?)

Eventually, the blue children will report to Downstreamer central….(wherever that’s supposed to be -- if the vacuum disaster wiped out the original timeline, then Where TF is “Michael” supposed to report to in the end? Nevermind... )

Why?

Who knows…I can hear Baxter screaming “Well just reread the damn books!!!” (the Manifold Series, which were already pretty incoherent 25 years ago...).

Malenfant and Emma decide to stay in “reality IV” and build a life together on a Mars that’s only a little more habitable than ours. Dierdre decides to join the AI/Blue Child “Michael” and travel downstream to the end. Col. Lighthill decides he needs to establish a Titanic to service the Multiverse (and seems not to see the irony in this… Ahhh.. the British Empire in Space!).

Like I said, this is my last Baxter.

If you LOVE Baxter and absolutely NEED to have "Manifold" wrapped up a bit more AND you can tolerate exquisitely bad narration, then have a go. Otherwise, look for better product.