Sunstorm By Arthur C. Clark and Stephen
Baxter is the conclusion of the duology that began in Time’s Eye. The
duology is a first contact story. In Time's Eye, our characters
have been put through a ‘discontinuity’ where different pieces of earth have
been scrambled into different times. For example, the helicopter gunship crew
we have been following, find themselves trapped in time with people from other
time periods. The only clue to what is
behind it are metallic spheres that hover over the ground. Our characters have
taken to calling them “eyes,” and they do seem to watch events as they unfold.
As far as we
know, only one person gets back to her own time period. That is Bisesa from
the helicopter gunship. Before she is taken to her own time, she is allowed to
glimpse a far future Earth. A dead future Earth. As she returns to her own time
at the end of the first book and the start of the second, Sunstorm, she knows something
bad is about to happen to Earth.
We soon
learn that there is to be a major solar event. It will be an event so massive
that it will wipe out all life on Earth. Sterilize the planet. So, this becomes
a story about the humans trying to find a way to survive the event. They have
four years to undertake a monumental project. The main characters know that
even if this project is successful, many people are going to die. Of course, if
it is unsuccessful, everyone is going to die. We see the fatalism. We
see the denial. We see religious extremism. For the most part, what we do not
see is surrender. We see reevaluated priorities. In the first book, Bisesa realized that she had spent too much time absent from her daughter’s life.
She decides time with her daughter must be the fundamental priority now.
This unfolds
as humankind is on the verge of being a spacefaring species. We have a colony
on the Moon and the start of a presence on Mars. But it is not as if humans can
simply escape. The solar event will affect The Moon and Mars as well, and even
if it did not, the human presence in space is not enough of a beachhead to
survive as a species.
A number of
years ago I read a novel that was another collaboration between Arthur C.
Clarke and a different writer. That one was not so smooth. There was nothing
wrong with the idea of the story, but the difference in styles was jarring. It
did not feel like an Arthur C. Clark novel. It felt more like a TV movie of the week. This collaboration between
Clarke and Baxter works much better. The big ideas are there, and they are well
executed.
This is a
first contact story where we never actually meet the aliens. We only see the
“eyes” which are mechanical devices meant only to see or record the events
which they have set in motion. We learn very little about them, except that
they are not our friends. A not so gentle reminder that first contact could be
a perilous thing.
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