Fortress Sol
Stephen Baxter
Having read it
★★★★★
Brilliant.
An insightful set of future possibilities – acknowledged by the author as he was inspired by some existing ideas – and crafted into a piece of science fiction, driven by a good narrative, with good characters that paints a very realistic picture (and a somewhat topical, if not prescient, even prophetic, one because of its writing feeling infused by contemporary attitudes and politics) of how a misunderstanding, an error, can become a foundation for a civilisation and leaders living (and building from) a lie to justify themselves and a form of progress, an approach, a way of being that is actually corralling and controlling its people.
It has a classic Baxter ending that posits the lives of the lumes and elegantly makes clear (this reader thinks) between the lines that all life, whatever its form, is just playing its part in a quite random and uncertain universe that can be understood by humanity up to a point (at the moment!) but has been (and is) ultimately just a reaction, a by-product of so many chemical and biological possibilities and combinations of uncontrollable factors while framed by and guided through the fundamentals of physics . . . which, in itself, is, quite frankly, amazing . . . life42 . . . what’s that all about, eh?
A good passage
Elinor was curious. ‘Why are you doing all this, Angela? What’s in it for you?’
Plokhy sighed. ‘I hate it when people ask that. Call it a character flaw if you like. I just don’t fit. And – it’s what I discussed before, with the youngsters. The political system we live under, while it keeps vast numbers of humans alive, is built on lies, and control. Huge lies. And I don’t accept that. Call it a gut reaction. I guess I’ve felt like that since I was young, ever since I understood what a lie was – and that I was being lied to, by just about everybody around me.’
Elinor snorted. ‘Have you ever studied history? Ancient history, I mean, pre-Neptune? Just about every political system humans ever devised was about control by a central few, generally with the use of monstrous lies. Look up religions – it took generations of geniuses like Kepler to start cutting through all that hierarchy of controlling untruth. The maturing of political science, and the development of a truly rational, truly fair form of democracy, didn’t happen until it was born on the Moon – a lethal environment, where people had to cooperate and coexist just to stay alive day to day. But after the Neptune disaster, once they had brought in all this panoply of the Mask and the Frame, all that control – why, it’s as if that ancient authoritarian method of government has come right back. In fact in this modern age it’s finally reached its peak. All those long-dead warlords and emperors and popes would be proud.’
Rab seemed shocked by this little speech, Muree thought.
He said now, ‘That sounds pretty cynical, Mother.’
‘Cynical? That’s from the boy whose hand was cut off to spare him a short life of dangerous drudgery on Mercury? Two choices, both existentially awful? Because that was the law? That from the boy, the man, who right now is on the run because he didn’t want to be in on the birth of another huge lie? That’s because of the law. And—’
‘Well, OK. But I don’t see why it’s impossible to imagine a better system. For now, we’re on the run—’
‘Not me,’ called Plokhy. ‘You’re on the run. I’m just the pilot. Speaking of which, we’re ready to go. Strap in. Literally, I mean. In five minutes we take off at twice Earth’s gravity. Be seated or face the consequences.’
A second good passage
‘Rumour,’ Plokhy said. ‘And not spread by me either, please take note. People watch, you know. People listen. People interpret. You have connected mankind, Commander Revil, creating a mass mind of billions of brains. You have your Frame, commander, shuttling our bodies to and fro across the System in your neat arcs and straight lines. But there is another Frame, another network, even you can’t close down. A network of words, of ideas, of bits of evidence, of pattern-matching.
‘And now, today – well, here we are. People want to know the truth, Commander Revil. The truth at last. The arrival of the Lightbird was one crack in the façade, wasn’t it? The colony ships were supposed to be just that – lost relics of a heroic gesture of the past, the age of the Neptune invasion. The starfarers weren’t supposed to come back with a different version of history, were they? But you adapted, even so. You did your best to fit that new piece into the thousand-year mosaic of lies you’ve been constructing. But it just hasn’t worked, has it? People are coming down here because they want to know the truth, Commander Revil.’
A furious mutter from Revil. ‘I shouldn’t have waited,’ she said, as if speaking to herself. ‘I should have come down here and put a stop to this sooner . . .’