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Die tausend Erden
Im Jahr 2145 bricht John Hacknett mit seinem Raumschiff Perseus zum Andromedanebel auf. Seine Mission: Er soll die Sternkonstellation genauer in Augenschein nehmen, die in ferner Zukunft mit unserer Milchstraße kollidieren wird, und dann zur Erde zurückkehren, um der Menschheit Bericht zu erstatten. Hacknett reist nicht nur durch den Raum, sondern auch durch die Zeit, denn für die Erde werden fünf Millionen Jahre bis zu seiner Rückkehr vergehen.
Wird es dann noch eine Menschheit geben, der er Bericht erstatten kann?
Das Jahr 30 in der fernen Zukunft. Melas Erde steht kurz vor dem Untergang, die Erosion frisst immer mehr Land auf, zwingt Menschen und Tiere zur Flucht. Obwohl Mela immer wusste, dass ihre Erde eines Tages untergehen würde, kämpft sie doch gemeinsam mit ihrer Familie ums Überleben – und um die Zukunft der Tausend Erden …
Wird es dann noch eine Menschheit geben, der er Bericht erstatten kann?
Das Jahr 30 in der fernen Zukunft. Melas Erde steht kurz vor dem Untergang, die Erosion frisst immer mehr Land auf, zwingt Menschen und Tiere zur Flucht. Obwohl Mela immer wusste, dass ihre Erde eines Tages untergehen würde, kämpft sie doch gemeinsam mit ihrer Familie ums Überleben – und um die Zukunft der Tausend Erden …
640 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2022
255 people are currently reading
1292 people want to read
About the author
Stephen Baxter
403 books2,595 followersStephen Baxter is a trained engineer with degrees from Cambridge (mathematics) and Southampton Universities (doctorate in aeroengineering research). Baxter is the winner of the British Science Fiction Award and the Locus Award, as well as being a nominee for an Arthur C. Clarke Award, most recently for Manifold: Time. His novel Voyage won the Sidewise Award for Best Alternate History Novel of the Year; he also won the John W. Campbell Award and the Philip K. Dick Award for his novel The Time Ships. He is currently working on his next novel, a collaboration with Sir Arthur C. Clarke. Mr. Baxter lives in Prestwood, England.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 126 reviews
August 9, 2022
Stephen Baxter has to be one of the most prolific SF authors working today. Hardly had I bought Galaxias when I heard about The Thousand Earths coming out later this year. And then the friendly folks at Orion happily sent me an arc from NetGalley UK on the same day I requested it.
Baxter is a bit of an oddity in SF. More well-known in the UK than the US, he harks back to a different tradition of the genre where Big Ideas were everything. I’ve always thought of Baxter as the natural successor to the great Arthur C. Clarke. Apart from collaborating with Clarke himself, Baxter and fellow Brit Alastair Reynolds wrote one of my favourite hard SF novels of all time, The Medusa Chronicles (2016), based on Clarke’s own 1971 novella ‘A Meeting with Medusa’.
Well, I’m glad to say Baxter is firing on all cylinders with The Thousand Earths, probably his most cohesive and tightly plotted book in a long time. And it is a standalone story! (Though Baxter has been known to pull sequels out of some very improbable hats.)
Unfortunately, all the inherent weaknesses of the Big Ideas tradition are on full display here as well, namely stock characterisation and melodrama as a central plot device. Baxter is also cheerfully oblivious to gender politics, it seems, so has no qualms to describe John Hackett’s vigorous sex romps with a far future human female after he has travelled millions of light years to Andromeda and back. Oh, and it is only in a Baxter novel where such a mind-boggling feat is merely an aside to the main action.
The main focus here is the eventual collision between the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies. Although predicted to occur 4.5 billion years in the future, Baxter likens it to the current climate change crisis in that urgent action is better sooner rather than later, when we finally run out of options and there are no more roads left to be taken.
Apart from his beloved deep time and future history, Baxter tackles the Fermi Paradox again with renewed vigour and startling results. Think Stapledon and Herschel – that is all I am going to say about the plot, as it is best to go into the book cold. The two-strand narrative begins with John Hackett embarking on his epic voyage, before switching to Mela and her family on a distant iteration of earth (one of a thousand) that is succumbing to some incomprehensible apocalypse. (The savvy SF reader is likely to work out what is going on pretty quickly, but Baxter does have some nifty surprises up his authorial sleeve.)
I loved the evocative Mela sections, which represent some of the best writing in Baxter’s long career to date. The family dynamics are effectively portrayed, while the world-building behind this frontier-like earth is incredibly detailed, yet never gets in the way of the story. Yes, the brother is a bit of a stock villain, while John Hackett himself is yet another iteration of the Reid Malenfant trope. And the ending does hinge on one deus ex machina too many (literally, as it were).
But these are quibbles, as one reads Baxter for his sense of wonder and boundless enthusiasm for the possibilities and potential posed by science and technology, and not for his literary affectations. As per usual, Baxter includes a deft Afterword that references all of his speculation in the book. No matter how left field an idea, someone somewhere has thought seriously about it.
While writing this, I saw that the latest jaw-dropping photograph from the James Webb Telescope is of two galaxies colliding. Baxter must be so proud.
Baxter is a bit of an oddity in SF. More well-known in the UK than the US, he harks back to a different tradition of the genre where Big Ideas were everything. I’ve always thought of Baxter as the natural successor to the great Arthur C. Clarke. Apart from collaborating with Clarke himself, Baxter and fellow Brit Alastair Reynolds wrote one of my favourite hard SF novels of all time, The Medusa Chronicles (2016), based on Clarke’s own 1971 novella ‘A Meeting with Medusa’.
Well, I’m glad to say Baxter is firing on all cylinders with The Thousand Earths, probably his most cohesive and tightly plotted book in a long time. And it is a standalone story! (Though Baxter has been known to pull sequels out of some very improbable hats.)
Unfortunately, all the inherent weaknesses of the Big Ideas tradition are on full display here as well, namely stock characterisation and melodrama as a central plot device. Baxter is also cheerfully oblivious to gender politics, it seems, so has no qualms to describe John Hackett’s vigorous sex romps with a far future human female after he has travelled millions of light years to Andromeda and back. Oh, and it is only in a Baxter novel where such a mind-boggling feat is merely an aside to the main action.
The main focus here is the eventual collision between the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies. Although predicted to occur 4.5 billion years in the future, Baxter likens it to the current climate change crisis in that urgent action is better sooner rather than later, when we finally run out of options and there are no more roads left to be taken.
Apart from his beloved deep time and future history, Baxter tackles the Fermi Paradox again with renewed vigour and startling results. Think Stapledon and Herschel – that is all I am going to say about the plot, as it is best to go into the book cold. The two-strand narrative begins with John Hackett embarking on his epic voyage, before switching to Mela and her family on a distant iteration of earth (one of a thousand) that is succumbing to some incomprehensible apocalypse. (The savvy SF reader is likely to work out what is going on pretty quickly, but Baxter does have some nifty surprises up his authorial sleeve.)
I loved the evocative Mela sections, which represent some of the best writing in Baxter’s long career to date. The family dynamics are effectively portrayed, while the world-building behind this frontier-like earth is incredibly detailed, yet never gets in the way of the story. Yes, the brother is a bit of a stock villain, while John Hackett himself is yet another iteration of the Reid Malenfant trope. And the ending does hinge on one deus ex machina too many (literally, as it were).
But these are quibbles, as one reads Baxter for his sense of wonder and boundless enthusiasm for the possibilities and potential posed by science and technology, and not for his literary affectations. As per usual, Baxter includes a deft Afterword that references all of his speculation in the book. No matter how left field an idea, someone somewhere has thought seriously about it.
While writing this, I saw that the latest jaw-dropping photograph from the James Webb Telescope is of two galaxies colliding. Baxter must be so proud.
October 6, 2022
This is a massive book, both in scope and just as a 586 page physical doorstop. Stephen Baxter repeatedly switches between two apparently unconnected storylines - one featuring John Hackett, an adventurer who has a desire to make immense journeys in time and space, and the other a family on one of the titular thousand Earths as they live through the last 30 years of the existence of their world. It's only towards the end of the book that the connection between the two threads is revealed.
Each of the storylines has enough original ideas in it to be a novel in its own right. The John Hackett thread starts with a round trip to the Andromeda galaxy, which, due to relativistic time dilation effects, means he returns to Earth after 5 million years are elapsed. Apart from a rather neat SF idea for the way such a ship could work, the main content of this storyline is about the way that humanity might change if it survives long into the future. Hackett goes on to make more trips, travelling vastly further into the future, encountering some surprising ideas of future societies.
The other storyline has a very different timescale. Mela and her family live on one of a set of a thousand space habitats that seem to be science fiction equivalents of the Discworld, though supported by technology, rather than magic and turtles. However, there is something wrong with their habitat, which has been gradually disappearing as the perimeter of the land shrinks more and more. The people know that their world will have entirely disappeared in 30 years - with a gradually growing displacement of refugees.
I have to admire Baxter for the sheer scale of these stories. And mostly I enjoyed them - but I did find a couple of things slightly irritating. One is the way the storyline kept switching. Once I got engrossed in one, I wanted to continue it, not flip-flop between the two. I'd rather have had longer segments and fewer switches. Of the two storylines, I initially much preferred the John Hackett one, as the Mela story starts very slowly and is a touch dull until we get down to the last few years.
My other doubt was not only that humanity could continue as long as Baxter suggests, but also that it would do so with only trivial genetic changes and with a continuity of history over many millions of years. There is one technological MacGuffin to provide some aspects of that continuity, but even so, given the huge changes that have happened in the 200,000 years since Homo sapiens originated, it somehow seems unlikely that humans will be pretty much the same in the far distant future.
Despite these niggles, though, my general response is still to be sincerely impressed with a novel that does make the reader think about the future of the human race and its implications.
Each of the storylines has enough original ideas in it to be a novel in its own right. The John Hackett thread starts with a round trip to the Andromeda galaxy, which, due to relativistic time dilation effects, means he returns to Earth after 5 million years are elapsed. Apart from a rather neat SF idea for the way such a ship could work, the main content of this storyline is about the way that humanity might change if it survives long into the future. Hackett goes on to make more trips, travelling vastly further into the future, encountering some surprising ideas of future societies.
The other storyline has a very different timescale. Mela and her family live on one of a set of a thousand space habitats that seem to be science fiction equivalents of the Discworld, though supported by technology, rather than magic and turtles. However, there is something wrong with their habitat, which has been gradually disappearing as the perimeter of the land shrinks more and more. The people know that their world will have entirely disappeared in 30 years - with a gradually growing displacement of refugees.
I have to admire Baxter for the sheer scale of these stories. And mostly I enjoyed them - but I did find a couple of things slightly irritating. One is the way the storyline kept switching. Once I got engrossed in one, I wanted to continue it, not flip-flop between the two. I'd rather have had longer segments and fewer switches. Of the two storylines, I initially much preferred the John Hackett one, as the Mela story starts very slowly and is a touch dull until we get down to the last few years.
My other doubt was not only that humanity could continue as long as Baxter suggests, but also that it would do so with only trivial genetic changes and with a continuity of history over many millions of years. There is one technological MacGuffin to provide some aspects of that continuity, but even so, given the huge changes that have happened in the 200,000 years since Homo sapiens originated, it somehow seems unlikely that humans will be pretty much the same in the far distant future.
Despite these niggles, though, my general response is still to be sincerely impressed with a novel that does make the reader think about the future of the human race and its implications.
July 15, 2024
That was quite a feat: one hundred trillion years of human history in a little more than 500 pages, but in the end what sticks with you, between humongous time skips, are Mela's 30 years of fighting and survival against all odds. Bureaucraticly frigid at times, deeply moving at others, always well worth reading.
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Una vera impresa: centomila miliardi di anni di storia umana in poco più di 500 pagine, ma alla fine ciò che resta impresso, tra giganteschi salti temporali, sono i 30 anni di lotta e sopravvivenza contro ogni previsione di Mela. Burocraticamente freddo a volte, profondamente commovente altre volte, sempre interessante da leggere.
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Una vera impresa: centomila miliardi di anni di storia umana in poco più di 500 pagine, ma alla fine ciò che resta impresso, tra giganteschi salti temporali, sono i 30 anni di lotta e sopravvivenza contro ogni previsione di Mela. Burocraticamente freddo a volte, profondamente commovente altre volte, sempre interessante da leggere.
September 18, 2024
Dieser Neueste „Baxter“ ist für mich ein starker Anwärter auf das „Buch des Jahres“!
Zum ersten hat mich das Buch in seiner Struktur beeindruckt; Es gibt zwei Erzählungen. Als Erstes haben wir John Hackett und seine unendliche Reise, die über Billionen !!! von Jahren dauert. Wir besuchen mit ihm die Erde in verschiedenen Zeiten in der Zukunft und sehen jedes Mal, wie sich die Zivilisation in Millionen und Milliarden von Jahren verändert hat. Gleichzeitig haben wir die Geschichte von Mela, einem jungen Mädchen, das auf einer flachen Welt lebt, die langsam erodiert und vor der endgültigen Vernichtung steht. Eine jede davon ist eine großartige Geschichte für sich, aber es gibt keine sofortige Verbindung zwischen den beiden. In der Tat dauert es bis zum Ende des, über 700 Seiten starken, Werkes, bis es zu einer Begegnung von John Hacket und Mela kommt.
Zum zweiten haben die beiden Geschichten großartige thematische Parallelen.
Die John Hackett -Abschnitte erinnern mich an H.G. Wells und ganz besonders an Olaf Stapledon (der im Buch von John Hacket sogar einmal namentlich erwähnt wird), was angesichts der Einflüsse von Baxter nicht überraschend ist. Hackett verbringt seine Zeit damit, zwischen Erde und weit entfernten Orten zu reisen, und entdeckt jedes Mal bei seiner Rückkehr eine ganz andere Erde. In den meisten SF-Werken spielen die Handlungen Jahrzehnte oder Jahrhunderte in der Zukunft, aber bei Baxter sind es meistens Jahr-Millionen, -Milliarden und sogar -Billionen von Jahren. Jede neue Erdbevölkerung wird in einer beeindruckend kurzen Zeit zum lebendigen Leben gebracht. Am Ende von Hacketts Reise, als die Sterne längst ausgebrannt sind, sind Menschen als solche kaum noch erkennbar.
Das ist gut mit Melas Hälfte des Buches kontrakariert. Das Leben auf einer schrumpfenden Erde ist keine Utopie, und wenn das Land schrumpft, nimmt die Anzahl der Flüchtlinge zu, da alle in Richtung der Mitte der flachen Erde strömen. In diesen Kapiteln sehen wir das Schlimmste, was sich die Menschheit vorstellen kann.
Es ist ein seltenes apokalyptisches Szenario (aus Leseperspektive), und die Behandlung der Flüchtlinge ist kalt plausibel. In diesen Kapiteln gibt es nicht viel Freude, aber es ist ein Kontrapunkt zu den utopischen Idealen, die Hackett in seinen vielen Rückflügen erlebte. Stephen Baxter schreibt die Art von Science Fiction, die ich schon immer lesen wollte, und ich kann nicht glauben, dass ich so lange gebraucht habe, um ihn auf die Spitze meiner Lesefavoriten zu setzen, obwohl ich ihn schon immer geliebt habe, aber es gab immer ein paar Granden, an denen er in meinen Augen nicht vorbeikam. (Vernor Vinge, Dan Simmons, Peter F. Hamilton z.B.). Dies ist Fiktion, in der die Wissenschaft wichtig ist, wo Ideen als Champion regieren und wo Ihr Geist am Ende des Buches eröffnet wird. Ich kann es nicht genug empfehlen.!!!
Alle Autoren haben Themen, auf die sie immer wieder zurückkehren. Isaac Asimov konnte seinen Robotern niemals entkommen. Frank Herbert konnte nicht anders, als Mystik in alles aufzunehmen, was er berührte. Nach vielen Büchern fange ich an, die Themen zu verstehen, die Stephen Baxter zu verfolgen scheint. Tiefe Zeit ist ein Konzept, mit dem ich immer noch nicht genug haben kann. Grundsätzlich ist es die Idee, dass das Universum sehr groß und sehr alt ist und dass Menschen im großen Theater des Lebens weitgehend unbedeutend sind.
„ Proxima “und „Ultima“ haben mich noch etwas weniger von der Idee überzeugt, dass kosmische Bakterien miteinander verflochten sind. Aber „ Galaxias “ war eine überzeugendere Idee eines lebenden Planeten. Und mit den „ tausend Erden “ stehen wir vor der Idee, dass das Universum eher für Sterne als für Menschen gemacht ist, und wir sind nur Parasiten, die ins Leben gerufen wurden. Dies ist genau die Art von existenzieller Angst, die ich schätzen kann. Es ist ein kaltes Universum da draußen, also sei gut zueinander. Vielleicht sind wir alles, was wir haben.
Als Fazit kann ich, für mich, konstatieren, dass dies das Beste, in Stephen Baxters nicht eben kurzer Liste von Büchern, ist und mich besonders in seiner Vielfalt und emphatischen Sprache geflasht hat.
Besonders die Figur der Mela hat mich in der Beschreibung ihrer Empathie, ihrer Klugheit und ihrem Altruismus tief berührt, etwas, das man bei einem Hard Science Autor, der er auch in besonderem Maße ist, nicht erwartet…
Zum ersten hat mich das Buch in seiner Struktur beeindruckt; Es gibt zwei Erzählungen. Als Erstes haben wir John Hackett und seine unendliche Reise, die über Billionen !!! von Jahren dauert. Wir besuchen mit ihm die Erde in verschiedenen Zeiten in der Zukunft und sehen jedes Mal, wie sich die Zivilisation in Millionen und Milliarden von Jahren verändert hat. Gleichzeitig haben wir die Geschichte von Mela, einem jungen Mädchen, das auf einer flachen Welt lebt, die langsam erodiert und vor der endgültigen Vernichtung steht. Eine jede davon ist eine großartige Geschichte für sich, aber es gibt keine sofortige Verbindung zwischen den beiden. In der Tat dauert es bis zum Ende des, über 700 Seiten starken, Werkes, bis es zu einer Begegnung von John Hacket und Mela kommt.
Zum zweiten haben die beiden Geschichten großartige thematische Parallelen.
Die John Hackett -Abschnitte erinnern mich an H.G. Wells und ganz besonders an Olaf Stapledon (der im Buch von John Hacket sogar einmal namentlich erwähnt wird), was angesichts der Einflüsse von Baxter nicht überraschend ist. Hackett verbringt seine Zeit damit, zwischen Erde und weit entfernten Orten zu reisen, und entdeckt jedes Mal bei seiner Rückkehr eine ganz andere Erde. In den meisten SF-Werken spielen die Handlungen Jahrzehnte oder Jahrhunderte in der Zukunft, aber bei Baxter sind es meistens Jahr-Millionen, -Milliarden und sogar -Billionen von Jahren. Jede neue Erdbevölkerung wird in einer beeindruckend kurzen Zeit zum lebendigen Leben gebracht. Am Ende von Hacketts Reise, als die Sterne längst ausgebrannt sind, sind Menschen als solche kaum noch erkennbar.
Das ist gut mit Melas Hälfte des Buches kontrakariert. Das Leben auf einer schrumpfenden Erde ist keine Utopie, und wenn das Land schrumpft, nimmt die Anzahl der Flüchtlinge zu, da alle in Richtung der Mitte der flachen Erde strömen. In diesen Kapiteln sehen wir das Schlimmste, was sich die Menschheit vorstellen kann.
Es ist ein seltenes apokalyptisches Szenario (aus Leseperspektive), und die Behandlung der Flüchtlinge ist kalt plausibel. In diesen Kapiteln gibt es nicht viel Freude, aber es ist ein Kontrapunkt zu den utopischen Idealen, die Hackett in seinen vielen Rückflügen erlebte. Stephen Baxter schreibt die Art von Science Fiction, die ich schon immer lesen wollte, und ich kann nicht glauben, dass ich so lange gebraucht habe, um ihn auf die Spitze meiner Lesefavoriten zu setzen, obwohl ich ihn schon immer geliebt habe, aber es gab immer ein paar Granden, an denen er in meinen Augen nicht vorbeikam. (Vernor Vinge, Dan Simmons, Peter F. Hamilton z.B.). Dies ist Fiktion, in der die Wissenschaft wichtig ist, wo Ideen als Champion regieren und wo Ihr Geist am Ende des Buches eröffnet wird. Ich kann es nicht genug empfehlen.!!!
Alle Autoren haben Themen, auf die sie immer wieder zurückkehren. Isaac Asimov konnte seinen Robotern niemals entkommen. Frank Herbert konnte nicht anders, als Mystik in alles aufzunehmen, was er berührte. Nach vielen Büchern fange ich an, die Themen zu verstehen, die Stephen Baxter zu verfolgen scheint. Tiefe Zeit ist ein Konzept, mit dem ich immer noch nicht genug haben kann. Grundsätzlich ist es die Idee, dass das Universum sehr groß und sehr alt ist und dass Menschen im großen Theater des Lebens weitgehend unbedeutend sind.
„ Proxima “und „Ultima“ haben mich noch etwas weniger von der Idee überzeugt, dass kosmische Bakterien miteinander verflochten sind. Aber „ Galaxias “ war eine überzeugendere Idee eines lebenden Planeten. Und mit den „ tausend Erden “ stehen wir vor der Idee, dass das Universum eher für Sterne als für Menschen gemacht ist, und wir sind nur Parasiten, die ins Leben gerufen wurden. Dies ist genau die Art von existenzieller Angst, die ich schätzen kann. Es ist ein kaltes Universum da draußen, also sei gut zueinander. Vielleicht sind wir alles, was wir haben.
Als Fazit kann ich, für mich, konstatieren, dass dies das Beste, in Stephen Baxters nicht eben kurzer Liste von Büchern, ist und mich besonders in seiner Vielfalt und emphatischen Sprache geflasht hat.
Besonders die Figur der Mela hat mich in der Beschreibung ihrer Empathie, ihrer Klugheit und ihrem Altruismus tief berührt, etwas, das man bei einem Hard Science Autor, der er auch in besonderem Maße ist, nicht erwartet…
November 10, 2022
Apart from some ambitious ideas and a premise with some potential, this wasn't very good. If you had told me this was a debut novel by a self-published author, I could easily have believed that. From the sleep-inducing storytelling to the poorly thought-out world, this had none of the imagination or creativity I expected from a far-future story like this.
There were two storylines, one of which was shockingly bad while the other was simply dull. I'm not going to waste much time on the former because it wasn't so much a story as a series of silly plot points designed to get the reader to a very specific point. The latter had some promise with a decent cast of characters, but unfortunately, they were far too often neglected for the sake of exploring some aspect of the world in the most boring way possible. Everyone was one-note with barely any development which made it incredibly hard to care about any of the contrived events.
This was also far longer than it needed to be and even if the one storyline saved this from the dnf pile, this was still firmly in the 1-star bracket. The ideas weren't anywhere near clever enough to justify the effort and any self-respecting sci-fi reader would have come across most of them already, probably executed way better.
There were two storylines, one of which was shockingly bad while the other was simply dull. I'm not going to waste much time on the former because it wasn't so much a story as a series of silly plot points designed to get the reader to a very specific point. The latter had some promise with a decent cast of characters, but unfortunately, they were far too often neglected for the sake of exploring some aspect of the world in the most boring way possible. Everyone was one-note with barely any development which made it incredibly hard to care about any of the contrived events.
This was also far longer than it needed to be and even if the one storyline saved this from the dnf pile, this was still firmly in the 1-star bracket. The ideas weren't anywhere near clever enough to justify the effort and any self-respecting sci-fi reader would have come across most of them already, probably executed way better.
December 16, 2022
This is a hard(ish) SF about future Earth(s), as hinted in the title. The author, Stephen Baxter, had several nominations for major SFF Awards (Hugo, BSFA, Locus, A.C. Clarke) but not in the last few years despite the fact that he continues to publish every year. His only Hugo-nominated novel was in 1996 and his latest short story in 2008, his latest Locus – in 2017. Partially it can be due to his residence (England) and partially to the fact that his SF is in Arthur C. Clarke’s vein – big ideas while characters even if well-written are secondary.
This book tells two stories of two quite different persons in radically different circumstances. The first is about John Hackett in the year 2145AD, who lobbied the creation of a dark energy fueled ram-scope ship Perseus that should travel to Andromeda galaxy and back to our Milky Way, the two galaxies that are expected to collide in five billion years. Formally, the journey there and back should take just 5 mn years at near-light speed (hard SF!) but due to time dilation and hibernation still allowing to survive at the end of the route. In reality, he is driven by his guilt regarding the accidental death of his sister and his desire to keep the memory of her survive epochs...
The second story is about Mela and her twin sister Ish, who like to count Earths as seen in the night sky. At the beginning, they are just twelve years old and their brute of an older brother just informed them that they count years in reverse order because their Earth is dying. And there are just 30 years to go. The Earth doesn’t just go boom, the land is gradually sliced away by the Tide, slowly lowering the Perimeter. This Earth is both low in tech (horse-drawn carts instead of cars), and has some extremely advanced stuff like smart plants e.g. transparent smartwood or ‘ready meal’ smartcrops. Also due to the Tide there are more and more immys (immigrants), who try to get away from the Tide…
This is only the start and both stories are quite long and non-linear, full of wonders. There is a very interesting (and not previously seen by me) answer to Fermi’s paradox (where are aliens?) about 1/3 of the book, which for me was its highest point. Beyond that it went just too grand – both in terms of space and time, which strangely enough weakened my overall experience. It spans like classic Star Maker in the development of humanity and like Tau Zero in space and time.
This book tells two stories of two quite different persons in radically different circumstances. The first is about John Hackett in the year 2145AD, who lobbied the creation of a dark energy fueled ram-scope ship Perseus that should travel to Andromeda galaxy and back to our Milky Way, the two galaxies that are expected to collide in five billion years. Formally, the journey there and back should take just 5 mn years at near-light speed (hard SF!) but due to time dilation and hibernation still allowing to survive at the end of the route. In reality, he is driven by his guilt regarding the accidental death of his sister and his desire to keep the memory of her survive epochs...
The second story is about Mela and her twin sister Ish, who like to count Earths as seen in the night sky. At the beginning, they are just twelve years old and their brute of an older brother just informed them that they count years in reverse order because their Earth is dying. And there are just 30 years to go. The Earth doesn’t just go boom, the land is gradually sliced away by the Tide, slowly lowering the Perimeter. This Earth is both low in tech (horse-drawn carts instead of cars), and has some extremely advanced stuff like smart plants e.g. transparent smartwood or ‘ready meal’ smartcrops. Also due to the Tide there are more and more immys (immigrants), who try to get away from the Tide…
This is only the start and both stories are quite long and non-linear, full of wonders. There is a very interesting (and not previously seen by me) answer to Fermi’s paradox (where are aliens?) about 1/3 of the book, which for me was its highest point. Beyond that it went just too grand – both in terms of space and time, which strangely enough weakened my overall experience. It spans like classic Star Maker in the development of humanity and like Tau Zero in space and time.
September 24, 2022
Never let it be said that Stephen Baxter does stories on a minor scale. His last novel Galaxias dealt with the dimming of the Sun. This time the scope is epic, both in space and time.
The Thousand Earths has initially two story strands. We have one whereby in 2145 John Hackett is one of a crew of a spaceship who are going to travel to Andromeda, a round trip of five million lightyears, but which will take 5 million years relatively.
Much of the first part of the book though seems to be smaller in scale, revolving around the lives of two sisters, Ish & Mela. Told by focussing on Mela, it seems like a fairly typical space colonisation tale, which becomes much vaster when it is revealed that the girls and their parents are on an Earth-like planet surrounded by a thousand (well – 999, I guess) others.
This gives us a human aspect to the story, more so when we are told that their Earth is slowly disappearing into a void known as The Tide from which there is no return. There is a permanent flow of immigrants away from The Periphery where the land meets The Tide, but their landscape is shrinking, and the planet is expected to disappear altogether in 30 years.
Returning to Hackett, his story is similar to that of Reid Malenfant, last read of in World Engines: Creator, in that Hackett has returned to an Earth which is not his. Like Malenfant, he is a man out of time, adrift in a future that is increasingly difficult for him to comprehend - and in this case a future where his striving for change is seen as a threat to the human’s Eloi-like existence. Hackett, with fellow travellers Rava Pogee, another astronaut from the past (but Hackett’s future) and Icsoba, one of the people of this Earth five thousand years ahead of Hackett, decide to travel again, this time five billion years into the future.
As the plot develops, Hackett travels further in time and becomes a travelling observer, whose purpose seems to be to carry memories from the past into the far future so that they are remembered. Others join him in his journey. It is this human trait of a need to discover, a restlessness that can only be reduced by continuing that journey, that propels Hackett billions of years through the novel.
I’ve mentioned before how much I love these big ideas that Stephen adds to his novels. In The Thousand Earths Stephen looks at the idea of the Fermi paradox – the conflict between the lack of clear, obvious evidence for extra-terrestrial life and various high estimates for their existence - and midway through this novel throws out an amazing answer that if you haven’t come across before (he has looked at this idea before in the Manifold Trilogy of Time, Space and Origin) may make you applaud at its ingenuity.
What impresses me most in this novel especially is that Stephen manages to do that tricky thing of combining what can be seen as big but unemotional science (see The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin, for example) with characters who have heart.
This human quality is shown through an interesting dichotomy between two religious factions on Mela’s planet, which become more important as the world’s end becomes imminent. It doesn’t help that Mela’s father Tenn is a Perseid, a religion with “a human warmth” determined to do their best for “the Immies”, whilst her estranged mother Salja is a Starrist, believing in “cosmic austerity” and involved in trading property before it disappears into The Tide. (How did those two ever get together?)
In covering deep space and time, Stephen manages to capture the epic grandeur and progression of the universe until its near-death, bogglingly Stapledonian in its scale, whilst simultaneously describing the smaller scale responses of the characters on one planet. Although there are a thousand Earth-like planets our focus is on one. There, the girls, and Mela especially, are a sign of optimism against adversity, whilst the comparatively emotionless Hackett is the scientific everyman, the capable and efficient pilot and scientist whose interest to explore often defines the genre’s idea of an SF protagonist. Hackett feels like a much more pleasant version of Reid Malenfant.
One of SF’s main tasks, often surreptitiously, is to get readers to examine current issues through a science-fictional lens. It will therefore be no great surprise that Baxter manages to explore, with a little remote distance, the issue of refugees and asylum seekers that is one of our own world’s major crises today. As the issues become more acute on Mela’s Earth, I found that it was not too much of a leap to compare this with those crossing the Mediterranean or the English Channel today.
In a more universal manner, Hackett’s need to continue his journey of exploration and not rest seems to call to a basic human urge, that of the need to explore, to discover – and to survive. The science behind the story is quite boggling, but as we travel billions of years it all connects nicely.
There are a couple of coincidences towards the end to tie things up, but they were not really deal-breakers, if a little convenient. I did question why Mela’s people, knowing the end was in sight, didn’t spend time developing spacecraft to escape their planet, although you can argue that they didn’t have the time or the resources. It may be down to human inertia, and the ignoring of the inevitable until it is too late.
Nevertheless, this is perhaps the most enjoyable novel of Stephen’s I have read in recent years. Once I started this one, it was difficult to put down. The Thousand Earths has big ideas presented in a human manner, one where the needs of individuals are examined under a galaxy-crossing, time-travelling backdrop. It is a winning riposte to those who have claimed before that Stephen writes big stories but cold characters, as here we have both characters to engage with and astonishing progression in time and space. Fans of Stephen’s books should love it.
The Thousand Earths has initially two story strands. We have one whereby in 2145 John Hackett is one of a crew of a spaceship who are going to travel to Andromeda, a round trip of five million lightyears, but which will take 5 million years relatively.
Much of the first part of the book though seems to be smaller in scale, revolving around the lives of two sisters, Ish & Mela. Told by focussing on Mela, it seems like a fairly typical space colonisation tale, which becomes much vaster when it is revealed that the girls and their parents are on an Earth-like planet surrounded by a thousand (well – 999, I guess) others.
This gives us a human aspect to the story, more so when we are told that their Earth is slowly disappearing into a void known as The Tide from which there is no return. There is a permanent flow of immigrants away from The Periphery where the land meets The Tide, but their landscape is shrinking, and the planet is expected to disappear altogether in 30 years.
Returning to Hackett, his story is similar to that of Reid Malenfant, last read of in World Engines: Creator, in that Hackett has returned to an Earth which is not his. Like Malenfant, he is a man out of time, adrift in a future that is increasingly difficult for him to comprehend - and in this case a future where his striving for change is seen as a threat to the human’s Eloi-like existence. Hackett, with fellow travellers Rava Pogee, another astronaut from the past (but Hackett’s future) and Icsoba, one of the people of this Earth five thousand years ahead of Hackett, decide to travel again, this time five billion years into the future.
As the plot develops, Hackett travels further in time and becomes a travelling observer, whose purpose seems to be to carry memories from the past into the far future so that they are remembered. Others join him in his journey. It is this human trait of a need to discover, a restlessness that can only be reduced by continuing that journey, that propels Hackett billions of years through the novel.
I’ve mentioned before how much I love these big ideas that Stephen adds to his novels. In The Thousand Earths Stephen looks at the idea of the Fermi paradox – the conflict between the lack of clear, obvious evidence for extra-terrestrial life and various high estimates for their existence - and midway through this novel throws out an amazing answer that if you haven’t come across before (he has looked at this idea before in the Manifold Trilogy of Time, Space and Origin) may make you applaud at its ingenuity.
What impresses me most in this novel especially is that Stephen manages to do that tricky thing of combining what can be seen as big but unemotional science (see The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin, for example) with characters who have heart.
This human quality is shown through an interesting dichotomy between two religious factions on Mela’s planet, which become more important as the world’s end becomes imminent. It doesn’t help that Mela’s father Tenn is a Perseid, a religion with “a human warmth” determined to do their best for “the Immies”, whilst her estranged mother Salja is a Starrist, believing in “cosmic austerity” and involved in trading property before it disappears into The Tide. (How did those two ever get together?)
In covering deep space and time, Stephen manages to capture the epic grandeur and progression of the universe until its near-death, bogglingly Stapledonian in its scale, whilst simultaneously describing the smaller scale responses of the characters on one planet. Although there are a thousand Earth-like planets our focus is on one. There, the girls, and Mela especially, are a sign of optimism against adversity, whilst the comparatively emotionless Hackett is the scientific everyman, the capable and efficient pilot and scientist whose interest to explore often defines the genre’s idea of an SF protagonist. Hackett feels like a much more pleasant version of Reid Malenfant.
One of SF’s main tasks, often surreptitiously, is to get readers to examine current issues through a science-fictional lens. It will therefore be no great surprise that Baxter manages to explore, with a little remote distance, the issue of refugees and asylum seekers that is one of our own world’s major crises today. As the issues become more acute on Mela’s Earth, I found that it was not too much of a leap to compare this with those crossing the Mediterranean or the English Channel today.
In a more universal manner, Hackett’s need to continue his journey of exploration and not rest seems to call to a basic human urge, that of the need to explore, to discover – and to survive. The science behind the story is quite boggling, but as we travel billions of years it all connects nicely.
There are a couple of coincidences towards the end to tie things up, but they were not really deal-breakers, if a little convenient. I did question why Mela’s people, knowing the end was in sight, didn’t spend time developing spacecraft to escape their planet, although you can argue that they didn’t have the time or the resources. It may be down to human inertia, and the ignoring of the inevitable until it is too late.
Nevertheless, this is perhaps the most enjoyable novel of Stephen’s I have read in recent years. Once I started this one, it was difficult to put down. The Thousand Earths has big ideas presented in a human manner, one where the needs of individuals are examined under a galaxy-crossing, time-travelling backdrop. It is a winning riposte to those who have claimed before that Stephen writes big stories but cold characters, as here we have both characters to engage with and astonishing progression in time and space. Fans of Stephen’s books should love it.
October 21, 2022
It's been a while since I have read any Stephen Baxter, I sort of fell out with the Xeelee novels and never fell back in. And there is something resolutely old school about what's going on here, which in some ways is refreshing, but ends up being a little anti-climactic. It's a little bit too pleased with its own big ideas which end up being somewhat trivial to the plot, while I think completely flubbing the personal stakes of what is going on. Which in itself is kind of old school.
We have two concurrent storylines going on here. John Hackett sets off on a dark-energy powered ramscoop ship (see Baxter's technical notes, not important) to visit the Andromeda galaxy because its going to crash into our galaxy. In 50 billion years or so. But OK, he's grieving and his personality is firmly one-dimensional middle-aged hard sci-fi lead. This means as the book progresses he pops back at billion-year intervals to check in on humanity. In the other strand, we are in what seems to be a broadly pre-industrial utopia with Mela, whose word is slowly being consumed from its rim forcing mass immigration from displaced people and existential issues about people knowing how long they will live.
Both stories are interesting and complement each other in as much as one has wild futurology, whilst the other is complex world-building. I'm never really convinced by far future humans though, Baxter might as well be Busted with his version of "not much has changed but we live underwater" being we're short and ultra-social" / "live on Mars and hang about in VR". Mela's story is fascinating, but its clear Baxter is trying to take a depoliticised take on forced migration, and in my opinion, he gets the physical right whilst ignoring the metaphysical (this is a society of people who all know they are going to die in twenty years or so). The fun in the book is trying to work out how both stories intersect, fun which is diminished considerably by the reveal (it is what you think, though the why and the how feel pretty dumb). And the biggest wow idea, that Mela is living with the Thousand Earth all hanging and visible in her night sky, is never plumbed as an idea for travel, or what it would mean psychologically to have other similar worlds to yours hanging in your night sky, with people living on it. There's a lot going on here, but beyond the journey, the revelations are rather quotidian.
We have two concurrent storylines going on here. John Hackett sets off on a dark-energy powered ramscoop ship (see Baxter's technical notes, not important) to visit the Andromeda galaxy because its going to crash into our galaxy. In 50 billion years or so. But OK, he's grieving and his personality is firmly one-dimensional middle-aged hard sci-fi lead. This means as the book progresses he pops back at billion-year intervals to check in on humanity. In the other strand, we are in what seems to be a broadly pre-industrial utopia with Mela, whose word is slowly being consumed from its rim forcing mass immigration from displaced people and existential issues about people knowing how long they will live.
Both stories are interesting and complement each other in as much as one has wild futurology, whilst the other is complex world-building. I'm never really convinced by far future humans though, Baxter might as well be Busted with his version of "not much has changed but we live underwater" being we're short and ultra-social" / "live on Mars and hang about in VR". Mela's story is fascinating, but its clear Baxter is trying to take a depoliticised take on forced migration, and in my opinion, he gets the physical right whilst ignoring the metaphysical (this is a society of people who all know they are going to die in twenty years or so). The fun in the book is trying to work out how both stories intersect, fun which is diminished considerably by the reveal (it is what you think, though the why and the how feel pretty dumb). And the biggest wow idea, that Mela is living with the Thousand Earth all hanging and visible in her night sky, is never plumbed as an idea for travel, or what it would mean psychologically to have other similar worlds to yours hanging in your night sky, with people living on it. There's a lot going on here, but beyond the journey, the revelations are rather quotidian.
January 5, 2025
The intense relief that washed over me as I realised I was reading the last page. Finishing this was a struggle and if I'm rating on enjoyment, not on ingenuity, it would be 1 star.
This novel has taught me a valuable lesson, which is always have the "time left in book" Kindle view turned on. I hit a point where I thought, surely this is near the end? And then felt my heart sink when I discovered I was only 40% into it. Too far to DNF and well into "see it through" territory. The pace was painfully slow and meandering, it quite literally sent me to sleep several nights running.
The premise of someone witnessing humanity over trillions of years, as well as an interesting theory on consciousness of the universe (which I won't go into detail on because *spoilers*) was intriguing. The structure was also interesting; someone starting their story counting down to the end of the world, juxtaposed with someone else's story counting up. I was initially intrigued as to how their paths would cross, but this quickly turned to apathy.
Where it fell down for me was on several key points. Firstly, the length. It reads like a self-pub where the author doesn't yet have the ability to be brutal with cutting out fluff. There was zero need for it to be this long and meandering, both storylines could easily have been cut in half.
The characters were criminally one dimensional, and considering we spend a hundred trillion years with John Hackett, we know nothing about him other than his sister died (or niece? Can't even remember as it was such a non-event), and now he wants to travel through eons to keep her memory alive. I didn't care about any of the characters and had zero investment in their outcomes.In the end it all felt pointless- what did John Hackett even achieve with his cosmic eons? Jack shit, apart from accidentally contributing to a tyrannical empire taking over an entire world. Nice one John.
The descriptive and dialogue writing style was somewhat simplistic, particularly in Mela's storyline. The dialogue was oddly banal, with every character speaking the same way, no individual tone or personality. There were a few big "this is a REVEAL" plot twist moments, but they were delivered in such a flat way that nothing ever felt climactic or gasp-worthy.
Also, evolution had left the chat. You're telling me that in a hundred trillion years, humans didn't evolve past getting a bit shorter??? Questionable.
This novel has taught me a valuable lesson, which is always have the "time left in book" Kindle view turned on. I hit a point where I thought, surely this is near the end? And then felt my heart sink when I discovered I was only 40% into it. Too far to DNF and well into "see it through" territory. The pace was painfully slow and meandering, it quite literally sent me to sleep several nights running.
The premise of someone witnessing humanity over trillions of years, as well as an interesting theory on consciousness of the universe (which I won't go into detail on because *spoilers*) was intriguing. The structure was also interesting; someone starting their story counting down to the end of the world, juxtaposed with someone else's story counting up. I was initially intrigued as to how their paths would cross, but this quickly turned to apathy.
Where it fell down for me was on several key points. Firstly, the length. It reads like a self-pub where the author doesn't yet have the ability to be brutal with cutting out fluff. There was zero need for it to be this long and meandering, both storylines could easily have been cut in half.
The characters were criminally one dimensional, and considering we spend a hundred trillion years with John Hackett, we know nothing about him other than his sister died (or niece? Can't even remember as it was such a non-event), and now he wants to travel through eons to keep her memory alive. I didn't care about any of the characters and had zero investment in their outcomes.In the end it all felt pointless- what did John Hackett even achieve with his cosmic eons? Jack shit, apart from accidentally contributing to a tyrannical empire taking over an entire world. Nice one John.
The descriptive and dialogue writing style was somewhat simplistic, particularly in Mela's storyline. The dialogue was oddly banal, with every character speaking the same way, no individual tone or personality. There were a few big "this is a REVEAL" plot twist moments, but they were delivered in such a flat way that nothing ever felt climactic or gasp-worthy.
Also, evolution had left the chat. You're telling me that in a hundred trillion years, humans didn't evolve past getting a bit shorter??? Questionable.
Want to read
October 1, 2023Private notes: Mostly good reviews here; nominee for Locus award, best SF novel (longlist). But massive: 586 pp!
So maybe? Not at libraries, 9/30/23. $1 Kindle available 9/30/23
So maybe? Not at libraries, 9/30/23. $1 Kindle available 9/30/23
August 16, 2022
The thousand Earths by Stephen Baxter is a book of big ideas.
The story follows John Hackett, our intrepid adventurer, who travels far and wide and Mela, our unlikely protagonist, who has to fight for her survival from the end of the world. The story progresses in a twin narrative - from John's end we see the progression of humanity while Mela's story is a story of survival.
I wished I could have enjoyed the book but I had three big problems with the book.
One, the problem with the big ideas is that if they are not setup and then progressed properly then the entire premise becomes ludicrous. That's what happens with John Hackett's story. The premise for his "missions" was so ridiculous that everything else never made sense. On the other hand, Mela's story was much more ground to earth. Stephen Baxter had two good ideas - How would humanity progress in the far future and how would humanity react when the world around them is crumbling and coming to an end. Each one had a potential to churn out a great story. Unfortunately, the mashup of two ruined the story.
My sense is that Stephen Baxter first wrote Mela's story that was believable, evocative and had good characterization. Then came the end where Stephen had to explain the apocalypse so he wrote John Hackett's story with the end in mind. That's the key problem with multiple narrative books where the author has to bring together the multiple characters. Seems like even Stephen Baxter couldn't avoid the pitfall and that was my second problem with the book - not able to bring together the twin narratives.
My third problem with the book was characterization. While I enjoyed the bits in Mela's story, the characters in John's arc were very shallow and stock characters.
I think I would have enjoyed the book more if it was limited to Mela's arc with probably the reasons behind apocalypse explained in discovery form. That would have reduced the length of the book and made it much more readable and a beautiful story.
Thanks Orion publishing group and Netgalley for providing an advanced reader copy.
The story follows John Hackett, our intrepid adventurer, who travels far and wide and Mela, our unlikely protagonist, who has to fight for her survival from the end of the world. The story progresses in a twin narrative - from John's end we see the progression of humanity while Mela's story is a story of survival.
I wished I could have enjoyed the book but I had three big problems with the book.
One, the problem with the big ideas is that if they are not setup and then progressed properly then the entire premise becomes ludicrous. That's what happens with John Hackett's story. The premise for his "missions" was so ridiculous that everything else never made sense. On the other hand, Mela's story was much more ground to earth. Stephen Baxter had two good ideas - How would humanity progress in the far future and how would humanity react when the world around them is crumbling and coming to an end. Each one had a potential to churn out a great story. Unfortunately, the mashup of two ruined the story.
My sense is that Stephen Baxter first wrote Mela's story that was believable, evocative and had good characterization. Then came the end where Stephen had to explain the apocalypse so he wrote John Hackett's story with the end in mind. That's the key problem with multiple narrative books where the author has to bring together the multiple characters. Seems like even Stephen Baxter couldn't avoid the pitfall and that was my second problem with the book - not able to bring together the twin narratives.
My third problem with the book was characterization. While I enjoyed the bits in Mela's story, the characters in John's arc were very shallow and stock characters.
I think I would have enjoyed the book more if it was limited to Mela's arc with probably the reasons behind apocalypse explained in discovery form. That would have reduced the length of the book and made it much more readable and a beautiful story.
Thanks Orion publishing group and Netgalley for providing an advanced reader copy.
May 10, 2023
So this starts with the possibility of war in the solar system over resources. And the first extra solar expedition is a 5 million year trip to another galaxy. Because... that makes sense, right? Yep.
Then we're sometime in the far future on a manufactured planet that is dying and we're getting a tour through one family's eyes.
That got me to 100 pages and that was quite enough. I usually like Stephen Baxter's books. But I'm not going any further than the 100 pages. Life is too short.
Then we're sometime in the far future on a manufactured planet that is dying and we're getting a tour through one family's eyes.
That got me to 100 pages and that was quite enough. I usually like Stephen Baxter's books. But I'm not going any further than the 100 pages. Life is too short.
October 11, 2022
I received a free copy via Netgalley in exchange for a honest review.
This is two stories combined which only come together very near the end.
I must admit I am not really a time traveller but this certainly improves the further you read.
The second part of the story really pulls the whole thing together and makes sense of the time travelling.
A long read but worth it in the end.
This is two stories combined which only come together very near the end.
I must admit I am not really a time traveller but this certainly improves the further you read.
The second part of the story really pulls the whole thing together and makes sense of the time travelling.
A long read but worth it in the end.
November 19, 2023
This will probably be my last Baxter novel. Like all his books, it's chock full of interesting ideas, but the structure and pacing are completely off. Half the book has little to no connection to the actual plot, and the other half somehow manages to be superficial. Full marks for ideas and intent, but the execution just isn't there.
November 30, 2023
What attracted me to this book was the title. Although I must admit (and I’m a bit ashamed here) that I never read any books by Stephen Baxter, I had a feeling that a book with a title such as this would be right up my sleeve. And I was not mistaken. Although it’s a lengthy book and there is a lot happening, it kept my attention throughout.
I’m still a big fan of the books of Clarke and the likes (I won’t bore you with giving a long list of names) and I’m very happy there are still SF writers who write in this tradition. Needless to say that I will read more of Stephen Baxter in the future. I stopped reading SF some twenty years ago when most ‘SF’ had nothing to do with SF anymore but maybe I should have paid more attention to what was going on in this genre.
There is a lot going on in both the stories of John Hackett and Mela, but it didn’t take long for me to see where the story was going. Not in detail of course, but the stories just had to get together to make it as good as it is. Without Mela’s story everything that happened with John would be ‘just’ a good story, not an incredible one.
I’m still a big fan of the books of Clarke and the likes (I won’t bore you with giving a long list of names) and I’m very happy there are still SF writers who write in this tradition. Needless to say that I will read more of Stephen Baxter in the future. I stopped reading SF some twenty years ago when most ‘SF’ had nothing to do with SF anymore but maybe I should have paid more attention to what was going on in this genre.
There is a lot going on in both the stories of John Hackett and Mela, but it didn’t take long for me to see where the story was going. Not in detail of course, but the stories just had to get together to make it as good as it is. Without Mela’s story everything that happened with John would be ‘just’ a good story, not an incredible one.
November 2, 2024
Die Geschichte macht Spaß, Baxter ist ein guter Erzähler. Sobald es in die Zahlen geht wir er schwafelig, da hat das Buch auch seine Schwächen.
February 5, 2023
Enjoyable and approachable speculative fiction. Really appreciated the forward momentum with the smaller personal quests, conflicts and interactions contrasting the huge world ending ideas of science.
It's a very easy thing to get caught up with being clever for clevers sake in a book about how the universe is going to go, but the author does a great job of entertaining rather than boring his audience.
Stopped from a 5 star rating, mainly because it delved deeper in some areas at the expense of others. The ending to all space epics are in contrast more middling than the build up.
Then again, a truly comprehensive and coherent story detailing how the next100 trillion years are going to go for humanity is a fool's task, and I loved this author's attempt.
4.03 Light Years out of 5 Broken Earths
It's a very easy thing to get caught up with being clever for clevers sake in a book about how the universe is going to go, but the author does a great job of entertaining rather than boring his audience.
Stopped from a 5 star rating, mainly because it delved deeper in some areas at the expense of others. The ending to all space epics are in contrast more middling than the build up.
Then again, a truly comprehensive and coherent story detailing how the next100 trillion years are going to go for humanity is a fool's task, and I loved this author's attempt.
4.03 Light Years out of 5 Broken Earths
February 13, 2023
I have mixed feelings about this one, not least because Stephen Baxter is one of my favourite novelists. One of the strands of story, that of Mela in the extreme distant future, is very successful but that of Hackett, the traveller through space and time, is far less so. There is a Message in all of this and I'm not sure it's well resolved. If we could have had Mela's story alone then this would have been a better novel.
September 27, 2023
Such a well-written book, as are all of Stephen Baxter’s novels and stories… almost had a folk tale or mythos or parable feel to it. Not all of Baxter’s novels have happy endings, but this one did. And as always, I appreciated his endnotes giving background sources for what he was testing to do in the story, and the basis for the science extrapolation that Baxter does best. And with each work that Baxter uses to give novel answers to the Fermi paradox, he amazes me more and more!
October 6, 2024
Faszinierende Story, wobei mir der John Hackett Teil besser gefallen hat. Ich bin allerdings nicht ganz bei ihm, wenn es darum geht, ob es sonst wo noch leben gibt. Zumindest in ihrer Grundform sollte nicht ausgeschlossen werden.
November 9, 2022
Stephen Baxter is probably my favorite writer of hard science fiction so I was excited to see that he was releasing his new book in September 2022, and I grabbed it on Audible the minute it was available. Baxter is a master at writing about human struggles in a dystopian future, with plots supported by speculative and known science, on an epic scale and in incredible settings. If you are looking for deeply developed characters you might be disappointed. Big mind-boggling near and far-future concepts and human trials and tribulations take the forefront like in so many of his other stories.
In this novel, we have two separate plots each centered around a main character which eventually come together (not a spoiler as the chapter sections named after each of the characters eventually include both of their names). On one hand we have a fellow named John Hackett who in 2145 AD travels with his crew on a forty year mission from Earth to the Andromeda Galaxy (which will eventually collide with our galaxy (really)) and back in an advanced ramscoop ship the Perseus to study its nature and look for intelligent life. Since they will be traveling at extremely fast speeds the crew knows that the earth will have aged millions of years during the mission due to time dilation. After an accident takes the lives of Hackett’s crewmates he becomes a sole explorer and returns to the far future Earth on his own. He decides to back out and his next journey begins.
In the second storyline we have a young person named Mela who lives with millions of other humans on a far-future engineered planetoid modeled after Earth. From her vantage point she can see thousands of such “earths” in the night sky, each with their own mini sun. Unfortunately for Mela and the rest of the inhabitants living on this planetoid, it is gradually disintegrating and the scientists determine that the entire world will succumb to this process in 30 years or so. Despite living in the far-future on a seemingly advanced and highly engineered planet, Mela’s society has devolved in to a sort of medieval hierarchy, ruled by the powerful and violent. Mela and her family are aware of their ultimate fate, and Mela goes through life knowing that her lifespan is limited. Her storyline basically covers her life from a child to the end of the 30 year period.
The mysteries in this novel therefore are: what is going on with Mela’s world and her solar system, and what will become of her and its inhabitants; and, what will John Hackett find in his travels, which end up spanning billions of years with repeated stops at future Earths. And finally, how do Hackett and Mela’s timelines eventually converge?
This is a chunky book- about 17.5 hours of audio. I was hooked from minute one. It was narrated by British actors Caitlin Shannon (Mela’s story) and David Monteith (Hackett’s story). They were both excellent narrators but the one quibble I have is that David’s voice sounded too young for the Hackett story (Rudnicki! Rudnicki! Rudnicki!). But nothing in production could damper my enjoyment of this epic tale. This is one of my favorites of his novels.
In this novel, we have two separate plots each centered around a main character which eventually come together (not a spoiler as the chapter sections named after each of the characters eventually include both of their names). On one hand we have a fellow named John Hackett who in 2145 AD travels with his crew on a forty year mission from Earth to the Andromeda Galaxy (which will eventually collide with our galaxy (really)) and back in an advanced ramscoop ship the Perseus to study its nature and look for intelligent life. Since they will be traveling at extremely fast speeds the crew knows that the earth will have aged millions of years during the mission due to time dilation. After an accident takes the lives of Hackett’s crewmates he becomes a sole explorer and returns to the far future Earth on his own. He decides to back out and his next journey begins.
In the second storyline we have a young person named Mela who lives with millions of other humans on a far-future engineered planetoid modeled after Earth. From her vantage point she can see thousands of such “earths” in the night sky, each with their own mini sun. Unfortunately for Mela and the rest of the inhabitants living on this planetoid, it is gradually disintegrating and the scientists determine that the entire world will succumb to this process in 30 years or so. Despite living in the far-future on a seemingly advanced and highly engineered planet, Mela’s society has devolved in to a sort of medieval hierarchy, ruled by the powerful and violent. Mela and her family are aware of their ultimate fate, and Mela goes through life knowing that her lifespan is limited. Her storyline basically covers her life from a child to the end of the 30 year period.
The mysteries in this novel therefore are: what is going on with Mela’s world and her solar system, and what will become of her and its inhabitants; and, what will John Hackett find in his travels, which end up spanning billions of years with repeated stops at future Earths. And finally, how do Hackett and Mela’s timelines eventually converge?
This is a chunky book- about 17.5 hours of audio. I was hooked from minute one. It was narrated by British actors Caitlin Shannon (Mela’s story) and David Monteith (Hackett’s story). They were both excellent narrators but the one quibble I have is that David’s voice sounded too young for the Hackett story (Rudnicki! Rudnicki! Rudnicki!). But nothing in production could damper my enjoyment of this epic tale. This is one of my favorites of his novels.
January 19, 2023
John Hackett, en 2145, se lance dans une expédition à travers l’espace, et, à cause de la dilatation du temps, le temps, justement. En parallèle, le monde de Mela, attaqué par l’érosion (Tide), arrive à sa fin, et elle doit survivre à la Frontière, qui s’approche inéluctablement.
Deuxième livre de Baxter sorti en 2022, et deuxième rattrapage, c’est un livre que j’ai eu du mal à appréhender. Il met pas mal de temps à faire sens, et le lien entre John et Mela met beaucoup de temps à se mettre en place. Mais comme toujours, l’intérêt premier des livres de Baxter réside dans son approche scientifique et sa discussion sur l’espèce humaine. Étonnement plein d’espoir, et décrivant les éons et les changements de l’univers, j’ai au final beaucoup apprécié The Thousand Earths, et vous le recommande !
Deuxième livre de Baxter sorti en 2022, et deuxième rattrapage, c’est un livre que j’ai eu du mal à appréhender. Il met pas mal de temps à faire sens, et le lien entre John et Mela met beaucoup de temps à se mettre en place. Mais comme toujours, l’intérêt premier des livres de Baxter réside dans son approche scientifique et sa discussion sur l’espèce humaine. Étonnement plein d’espoir, et décrivant les éons et les changements de l’univers, j’ai au final beaucoup apprécié The Thousand Earths, et vous le recommande !
September 21, 2023
Really irritatingly flawed novel here. I have had some amazing times reading Stephen Baxter in the past. I loved his early Xeelee stuff and The Time Ships was great fun.
The Thousand Earths though is just bloody all over the place. The story actually set on one of the Thousand Earths is fine. On its own with full commitment to the characters and some basic narrative drive it could have been very interesting and engaging, but it's chopped up by time leaps and one-note characters making boring decisions.
The real issue was with John Hackett's story. What the hell. His motivations throughout the story are just... fucking crap. They're fucking crap. His niece dies so he... travels to the end of time? Via vastly far-off places which are never explored or even described narratively. He went to the Andromeda galaxy and... just doesn't really mention it.
Plus he's a wanker. Did I mention he's an actual tosser throughout? He tells shit jokes to himself constantly and acts like a massive boomer whenever he meets anyone from another culture. He's just the shittest.
ALONG WITH THAT, Baxter just loses the plot with how long times actually are. So travelling five million years is pretty crazy, but fine, he just about pulls that off. Then he travels five BILLION years... So as long as the sun has existed at this point. Nearly twice as long as life has existed. But yeah recognisable humans are there and he's just in time to see a world changing discovery take place. Then he travels a TRILLION years. A THOUSAND BILLION YEARS. Nearly a hundred times as long as the universe has existed. And he's just in time for another world-changing event. ARE YOU KIDDING ME.
Then he travels ONE HUNDRED TRILLION YEARS. And humanity is still recognisable.
Dude, I wouldn't be able to fit in in the tenth century, but you're telling me this guy can have obnoxious conversation with people born ONE HUNDRED BILLION TIMES that far into the future? Oh and he's their messiah because despite in reality people not knowing much of use about Jesus two thousand years ago, he's important enough for his myth to survive trillions of years.
Oh and remember his dead niece, the reason he travelled alone through history beyond the end of the stellarific universe? Yeah he sure as shit doesn't.
Why did I still give this three stars? Because some bits were good. It wasn't a total washout.
Honestly, if it wasn't by an author who was behind a few of my favourite books this would be a two or a one star.
What the hell, Baxter? Get meaner editors and friends.
Edit: You know what, I've changed my score. That book really was bollocks.
The Thousand Earths though is just bloody all over the place. The story actually set on one of the Thousand Earths is fine. On its own with full commitment to the characters and some basic narrative drive it could have been very interesting and engaging, but it's chopped up by time leaps and one-note characters making boring decisions.
The real issue was with John Hackett's story. What the hell. His motivations throughout the story are just... fucking crap. They're fucking crap. His niece dies so he... travels to the end of time? Via vastly far-off places which are never explored or even described narratively. He went to the Andromeda galaxy and... just doesn't really mention it.
Plus he's a wanker. Did I mention he's an actual tosser throughout? He tells shit jokes to himself constantly and acts like a massive boomer whenever he meets anyone from another culture. He's just the shittest.
ALONG WITH THAT, Baxter just loses the plot with how long times actually are. So travelling five million years is pretty crazy, but fine, he just about pulls that off. Then he travels five BILLION years... So as long as the sun has existed at this point. Nearly twice as long as life has existed. But yeah recognisable humans are there and he's just in time to see a world changing discovery take place. Then he travels a TRILLION years. A THOUSAND BILLION YEARS. Nearly a hundred times as long as the universe has existed. And he's just in time for another world-changing event. ARE YOU KIDDING ME.
Then he travels ONE HUNDRED TRILLION YEARS. And humanity is still recognisable.
Dude, I wouldn't be able to fit in in the tenth century, but you're telling me this guy can have obnoxious conversation with people born ONE HUNDRED BILLION TIMES that far into the future? Oh and he's their messiah because despite in reality people not knowing much of use about Jesus two thousand years ago, he's important enough for his myth to survive trillions of years.
Oh and remember his dead niece, the reason he travelled alone through history beyond the end of the stellarific universe? Yeah he sure as shit doesn't.
Why did I still give this three stars? Because some bits were good. It wasn't a total washout.
Honestly, if it wasn't by an author who was behind a few of my favourite books this would be a two or a one star.
What the hell, Baxter? Get meaner editors and friends.
Edit: You know what, I've changed my score. That book really was bollocks.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 11, 2023
All of Baxter's books which I have read, apart from his short stories, are about the end of the world. And about giant engineering, geo-engineering or terraforming projects. But mostly they tell of the end of the world.
The last remaining mammoths being hunted down and their safe ground shrinking. The Ice Age about to flood Doggerland as it departs and releases water. The Doggerland resilient people being overrun by Bronze Age Hittites. The return of the Ice Age, and civilisation shrinking.
This book is no exception. A cheerfully British, but not idealised, astronaut heads off on a mission with a small crew, but soon finds he is the only one left. That was glossed over, got out of the way, because we just need one viewpoint as John keeps making use of the Tau Zero effect to skip further forwards in time, until he returns to Earth and finds a civilisation which can help him outlast even greater segments of time. They also learn that poking powerful balls of plasma with sticks is not a good idea.
Interspersed is the tale of a young woman Mela, whose Iron Age world platform is literally crumbling away at a steady rate, like cliffs falling into the sea each year. Up in her sky are hundreds of other earth-type synthetic worlds, but she can't get there. The unbelievable point is that nobody ever asks if they could go anywhere. Remember Land and Overland? I think someone would be developing space travel but they don't get any further than barges being towed.
So John zooms from one spectacular disaster to another, over vast periods, while in a smart move, the years and days and square kilometres count down for a trapped young woman he hasn't even met. Maybe he will. If he does, we know it'll be right at the end of the world.
Plenty of moral ambiguity - is it right to farm people, just so there is a vast number of humanity spread over a long period? Will human nature always revert? Is it right to dismantle planets and asteroids for materials which, once used, are gone? (We're doing that with coal. There will never be more coal, because when the trees fell originally, nothing had evolved to rot them. And helium. It escapes the atmosphere.)
Someone asked me if the book was worth persevering and I said yes, it is, and there's a rush as events telescope. Don't expect a thriller or a romance, it's straight SF and a seat at the world's end.
I believe it's Baxter's best book.
I borrowed this book from Raheny Library. This is an unbiased review.
The last remaining mammoths being hunted down and their safe ground shrinking. The Ice Age about to flood Doggerland as it departs and releases water. The Doggerland resilient people being overrun by Bronze Age Hittites. The return of the Ice Age, and civilisation shrinking.
This book is no exception. A cheerfully British, but not idealised, astronaut heads off on a mission with a small crew, but soon finds he is the only one left. That was glossed over, got out of the way, because we just need one viewpoint as John keeps making use of the Tau Zero effect to skip further forwards in time, until he returns to Earth and finds a civilisation which can help him outlast even greater segments of time. They also learn that poking powerful balls of plasma with sticks is not a good idea.
Interspersed is the tale of a young woman Mela, whose Iron Age world platform is literally crumbling away at a steady rate, like cliffs falling into the sea each year. Up in her sky are hundreds of other earth-type synthetic worlds, but she can't get there. The unbelievable point is that nobody ever asks if they could go anywhere. Remember Land and Overland? I think someone would be developing space travel but they don't get any further than barges being towed.
So John zooms from one spectacular disaster to another, over vast periods, while in a smart move, the years and days and square kilometres count down for a trapped young woman he hasn't even met. Maybe he will. If he does, we know it'll be right at the end of the world.
Plenty of moral ambiguity - is it right to farm people, just so there is a vast number of humanity spread over a long period? Will human nature always revert? Is it right to dismantle planets and asteroids for materials which, once used, are gone? (We're doing that with coal. There will never be more coal, because when the trees fell originally, nothing had evolved to rot them. And helium. It escapes the atmosphere.)
Someone asked me if the book was worth persevering and I said yes, it is, and there's a rush as events telescope. Don't expect a thriller or a romance, it's straight SF and a seat at the world's end.
I believe it's Baxter's best book.
I borrowed this book from Raheny Library. This is an unbiased review.
March 12, 2023
First DNF Baxter.
sad that the same old slightly misogynistic characters of his youth continue today.
Read Kim Stanley Robinson if you want to see someone who has transcended the limitations of their earlier world views and continues to mature and grow.
Disappointing. Wish I could be more positive but the money could be better spent on a new author.
sad that the same old slightly misogynistic characters of his youth continue today.
Read Kim Stanley Robinson if you want to see someone who has transcended the limitations of their earlier world views and continues to mature and grow.
Disappointing. Wish I could be more positive but the money could be better spent on a new author.
September 28, 2022
What a ride and what excellent book. A book that kept me guessing, trying to understand how the two subplots were going to be joined and where we were running.
It's very satisfying, entertaining, and I loved the storytelling and world building
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine
It's very satisfying, entertaining, and I loved the storytelling and world building
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine
February 7, 2024
I love a good sci-fi exploration story. This one is about exploring deep time rather than space, wildly and fascinatingly speculating about how humanity might try to sustain and prolong its existence over Millions, Billions and more years.
The story is well woven together by two separate stories growing together over time.
Although the character development is stronger in one of these two storylines, perhaps necessarily so, both are explorations of existential questions and the wish to survive, last and stand witness until the very end.
Fantastic book from Baxter, as usual - well worth a read for anyone who likes thinking beyond the usual cliches and just... way way beyond it all.
The story is well woven together by two separate stories growing together over time.
Although the character development is stronger in one of these two storylines, perhaps necessarily so, both are explorations of existential questions and the wish to survive, last and stand witness until the very end.
Fantastic book from Baxter, as usual - well worth a read for anyone who likes thinking beyond the usual cliches and just... way way beyond it all.
March 15, 2023
Really enjoyed this. Top of the🌳 hard science fiction ( speculative ) - Highly recommended.
May 17, 2024
Mela’s story 5*
Hacketts story 3*
Together 4*
Hacketts story 3*
Together 4*
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 28, 2025
Tolle Idee bei Baxter, wie immer. Eindimensionale Charaktere, oberflächliche Dialoge, wie immer bei Baxter.
In diesem Buch nimmt er es mit der Wissenschaft nicht zu genau oder sie ist im egal (Evolution?).
Das Buch ist zudem viel zu lang und es zieht sich sehr, stellenweise. Als Hörbuch bei der Hausarbeit hatte ich Spaß, als langsamer Leser hätte ich es wohl nicht zu Ende gebracht.
Great ideas, as always with Baxter. One-dimensional characters, superficial dialog, as always with Baxter.
In this book, he doesn't take science too seriously or doesn't care about it (evolution?).
The book is also far too long and drags on in places. I enjoyed it as an audio book while doing housework, but as a slow reader I probably wouldn't have finished it.
In diesem Buch nimmt er es mit der Wissenschaft nicht zu genau oder sie ist im egal (Evolution?).
Das Buch ist zudem viel zu lang und es zieht sich sehr, stellenweise. Als Hörbuch bei der Hausarbeit hatte ich Spaß, als langsamer Leser hätte ich es wohl nicht zu Ende gebracht.
Great ideas, as always with Baxter. One-dimensional characters, superficial dialog, as always with Baxter.
In this book, he doesn't take science too seriously or doesn't care about it (evolution?).
The book is also far too long and drags on in places. I enjoyed it as an audio book while doing housework, but as a slow reader I probably wouldn't have finished it.
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