World Engines

A post climate change high concept science fiction odyssey

By: Stephen Baxter

Narrated by: Penelope Rawlins, Christopher Ragland, Damian Lynch, Stephanie Racine

Trapped on an alternate Earth, the combined crews of a crashed Russian spaceship, a British expeditionary force and a group of strays from the future must work together to survive, escape and discover what led them to this point. All are from parallel universes where small changes in history led to different realities, and the tensions between the groups are rising.

But some changes were not small. The solar system has been altered, changed, shaped in the various realities, and the World Engineers - unspeakably powerful, completely unknown - are still active. Why have they populated this planet with humanity's ancestors and dinosaurs? What is on the moon of Saturn that gives off such an odd light? And even if they can be found, can they be stopped - and should they be?

Malenfant, Deidra and the rest of their party must find a way off the planet, back into space, and into the many dimensions seeking the answer....

©2020 Stephen Baxter (P)2020 Orion Publishing Group

Closure (Kinda) for the Manifold Series..

(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.

Kind of a bore

I liked the Long Earth series, but this had a lot of detail that poorly related to the theme of the book. The plot was really hard to follow.