Proxima and Ultima: AI, hard sci-fi and multiverse – All good. Romans – not so much

Fresh from his multiverse world-building with Terry Pratchett in The Long Earth series, Stephen Baxter turns to his own multiverse in the two-book set Proxima and Ultima – a very different hard sci-fi tale. Proxima starts in the far-flung future, when Earthlings have started making their way out into the immediate galactic …

[Destroy All Monsters]

Romanes eunt domus!

...but this _is_ Stephen Baxter.

Reminds me of "Anti Ice", modicum serious.

[Irongut]

Sounded interesting till the bits about Romans and Incas, then it loses the plot.

[Chris G]

I agree, it sounds as though after writing the first one he knd of ran out of steam and went all Stargate on it.

[Epobirs]

The Romans were already explorers. That is why there was a Roman Empire. They'd go out exploring, like what they saw, declare it theirs, and send in some Legions to explain it with extreme prejudice to those already living there.

[DaiKiwi]

But Romans were never explorers in the sense that the European kingdoms of the 16th-18th centuries were. Roman traders used existing trade routes rather than trailblazing.

[Dr Paul Taylor]

Also, the Romans (at least the ones who spoke Latin rather than Greek) were never scientists either. Pliny the Elder might have got a job on New Scientist but that's as far as they got - they never did any original science or mathematics for themselves.

[fandom]

And yet, their engineering was amazing

[Michael Wojcik]

And yet, their engineering was amazing

Amazing it worked at all, perhaps. Roman engineering was brute-force application of a handful of principles the Roman engineers didn't entirely understand. There's a bit in A History of Pi about the Roman misconception that liquid flow would be proportional to the radius of a conduit (rather than cross-section, and thus to the square of the radius), leading to massively oversized aqueducts.

It's impressive that so much of it has lasted so long, but that's a testament to effort, not quality. Elegant it ain't. Proper engineering is a matter of doing things for reasons you can explain (correctly).

[Bleu]

but it is quite clear that they advanced science as well as technology.

They didn't put it on a pedestal, and as easy to see in Suetonius' account of a job-eliminating device being rejected, you cannot say 'that is only engineering '

Sorry, sweetheart, there was a social factor, retain jobs that the people doing them generally liked. More than a touch above modern western thought

There is also a knowledge factor, the proposal came from someone with a very good knowledge of mechanics, sorry if you like to differ on that, you may also look at their elevator systems, knowledge of structural forces. much more.

[Bleu]

Citing New Scientist as any kind of standard

for science is a laugh.

[Joe 35]

you can’t plausibly be a space-faring nation with an insular viewpoint

======

Mericans ?

outdated societal structures like slavery .... but also happen to have spaceships

======

China ? India?

[Destroy All Monsters]

PRIORITY OVERRIDE UPDATE: Nobody on this ball is "space-faring" or has "spaceships".

[Michael Wojcik]

It'd be more correct to say that it's extremely unlikely that a society so technologically advanced would still be using a hugely inefficient economic system like one founded on widespread slavery. Slavery makes abysmal use of resources, doesn't provide good incentives for innovation, and does poorly at circulating capital. This is a pretty well established economic truism; see eg Williams' classic Capitalism and Slavery and similar work by CLR James (who may have given Williams the basic thesis) and others.

And central control is limited by reasonable communication turnaround time - another reason why a Roman-style empire wouldn't be sustainable across space travel (barring magical hyper-FTL technology, which means you have causality violations and Romans are the least of your worries).

[Mark #255]

Romans in spaaaaace

If you want a space-faring Romans sci-fi novel (though the Roman-ness is implicit in the text), the Hugo-winning Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie is it.

[Bleu]

I haven't read this, but

have read the review and enough of Baxter's short stories and novels to add the following lines that could have been in a hypothetical review.

'Baxter is overly fond of recycling deus ex machina and tropes. In this case, we have wormholes (or more precisely, whatever agency placed them on the moon) and the planet around Proxima Centauri. Both appear in, at least, The Light of Other Days.

Wormholes are all over his work, but these are not just your garden-variety wormholes. Their structures, scales and properties have nothing to do with the wormholes of speculative physics.

They also have made-up effects unrelated to the theory, in this case creating magical portals to ALTERNATIVE UNIVERSES, another prop that Baxter has flogged like a dead horse. The phantasmagorical wormholes so fortuitously at hand to the inteprid monkeys of the present worn also ...'

Alright, but I'd bet, on Baxter's form, they do or enable more bullshit.

'Hard SF is a spectrum, ranging from mundane SF, where all technical devices exist or are based on known theories and may plausibly be implemented in current circumstances, to the two types of hard-SF-proper: those relying on proven principles, but implementing the devices may be forever beyond our reach, and those that rely on phenomena and properties from speculative physics. These may well not exist in reality.

Baxter's short work very occasionally falls into the latter category.

The vast bulk, however, is not any form of science fiction.

Like this work, it is best described as fantasy plus thick dollops of feverish technobabble.'

Tbc.

[Bleu]

Re: I haven't read this, but

Corrections:

'... the hard SF side of mundane science fiction ...'

and

'... technobabble to create the illusion of hard-SF elements.'

... to be ctd.

[Bleu]

Only other point

'Aztecs, Incas, Romans dominant in steampunk, in the present, in the future (including space) have been done many times.

The only unique contribution Baxter makes to this trope is in creating the most moronic, unconvincing, and arbitrary scenarios to date for how they got there and what they are like.'

Sure, might be a nice easy read on a long plane or train trip, at a guest house with nothing else about, but having long ago seen through Baxter the hack, I'd try to find something else.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if he's copied some of his own descriptions of the Proxima planet from the earlier book, or books for all I know, he does love to recycle things.

[Adam T]

Read it, bored of Baxter.

I wouldn't say I'm particularly a Baxter fan, but I've read most of his books to date... Usually as fillers while waiting for something by someone else.

He goes on too much trying to explain the same things over and over, in case we missed it the first or second time around. And while his ideas have never been especially epic or original they're at least not off-putting. Unlike Ultima, which is conceptually indigestible and reads as if it was written by someone else; someone with no experience or instinct for science fiction.

[Bleu]

Re: Read it, bored of Baxter.

I am surprised that anyone could plough through most of his books, congratulations to you for staying the distance!

Stopping well short of reading all he writes, his novels are, well, I won't labour the point.

Short stories, though, I buy old magazines, he did write a few that were really good, writing was clunky, ideas were great, a long time ago, even a couple that were episodes that became parts of his crap novels.

Baxter the hack, he has descended to the level of the Kevin Anderson and Brian Herbert partnership.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've not read this yet, but it does remind me of other books I've read where it starts out great but then loses the plot in subsequent books.

It seems that the author has a great idea but the publisher says it's too much for one book so can you make it two? So the author dutifully stretches it out but then runs out of steam half way through the second and ends up ruining it.

[Bleu]

I very much doubt that the publisher is responsible,

except by publishing crap.

One of the ways SF has become crap now, is the competition to write the next Star Wars, when the only things Star Wars stole from literary SF were from Dune..

[James Hughes 1]

Re: I very much doubt that the publisher is responsible,

Calm down Bleu.

We get it, you don't like his books. No need to go on about it, you'll end up being more like Baxter than you think.

All writing is theft, in one way or another.

Or something.

[Bleu]

Re: I very much doubt that the publisher is responsible,

If you bothered to to read what I said, it was that I liked some of Baxter's short stories.

Nothing hysterical. The main conceipt of The Light of Other Days was stolen from the concept of a Damon Knight short story, I read the former and thought it was silly just about seven? years ago, bought a collection of older american writings three or four years ago, included the original of that, the copying was clearly paint by numbers.

Don't try to be patronising to me, it is not right and not polite.

[Destroy All Monsters]

Analysis of the comment section makes me suspect BAXTER is nearby.