Doctor Who The Wheel of Ice by Stephen Baxter audiobook

Following close on the heels of JP Colgan’s novel, we have The Wheel of Ice, but sci-fi hard-hitter Stephen Baxter.
This, I am delighted to say, features possibly my favourite TARDIS line-up: The Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe. And what’s more, this being a second Doctor story, it is read by the wonderful David Troughton, who, as I have said here before, does an uncanny impersonation of his father. Things are let down somewhat by him having to supply not one but two Scottish accents during the course of the story. It’s not that it’s hard to tell the difference between them, more that they are not… great! However, this is really just a minor criticism. 
The story itself is everything you would expect from a writer like Baxter. It contains some breathtakingly huge sci-fi concepts. The central idea is simultaneously incredibly ambitious and mind expanding in scope and concept and, well, same old same old. 
What I mean by this is this: I made a comment in the review of Dark Horizons about the central idea of the story being one that has been used, in my opinion, too many times in Who and in sci-fi in general. This book really does just take that same idea and dresses it in different clothes.
This is not to say, of course, that it is a bad book. Baxter is an amazingly good writer. As well as being able to communicate complex ideas and give the reader a true sense of the scale of the things he is describing, he also tells a rattling good adventure yarn. His characterisations of the main characters are spot on. I think there was a minor continuity error in there somewhere, but to tell the truth I didn’t write it down at the time and have forgotten now, so I suspect it wasn’t that important (well, I know it’s not important at all, but you know what I mean!).
So, in summary. This is Big Concept sci-fi of the like we don’t normally see in a Who story. I wasn’t convinced it would work if I was being honest, but it most certainly does. 
This is well worth your trouble.


The Wheel in Space is released by AudioGo.

Engineering Infinity Review

I have to confess that when I hear the term ‘Hard Sci-fi’ I usually give a bit of a shudder.

I'm not, as a rule, a fan of this subgenre. To me, the name Hard Sci-fi conjures up pages of long dry discussion on the physics and science of FTL and time travel. These are things that I am interested in, I’m just not interested in reading about them in a novel- I like hyperspace and flashing purple laser beams in space!
This is not to say I don’t read any. I am a big fan of Clarke, for example, and his ability to communicate astonishingly complex science in a few simple words is wondrous in itself.
But reading this collect has got me re-evaluating what I think of as Hard Sci-fi. There are tales in here that I wouldn’t have classed as such- but on reflection, of course they are. If you take hard Sci-fi to be any story that has real science as a base to it, then you’re opening the market up to almost anything short of Star Wars and most of Doctor Who.

So, on to the collection.
Editor Jonathan Strahan has assembled quite a formidable roster of writers for this Solaris book- most eye catching among them being Stephen Baxter and Charles Stross. Actually, Stross is another writer we can add to the list of Hard Sci-fi authors I have enjoyed reading previously.

As with all collections, this is a mixed bag. There were some stories I didn’t enjoy as much as others, and even one I’ll hold my hands up to admitting I didn’t understand at all.

I suppose you’ll be wanting a blow by blow account of the various stories? Well, I’m not going to. I’ll mention a few though.

The opening tale, Malak by Peter Watts is an interesting, if downbeat, opener, telling the story of an automated flying weapon in war in the Middle East. Thought provoking stuff, as good sci-fi should be.
Some are brilliantly character driven, in a way that some readers (yes- I mean me) don’t usually associate with Hard Sci-fi. Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Charles Stross and John C Wright provide tales that are pretty heartbreaking in their own way.
The Server and the Dragon by Hannu Rajaniemi is a nice modern, well not modern, future fairy tale.

Actually, looking through the book again to write this, I can honestly say that almost every tale hit the mark for me, apart from the aforementioned one I didn’t understand. And that is, of course, not to say it was badly written. It clearly wasn’t.

Ahhh... I was about to launch into another paragraph mentioning story after story again! I shall limit myself to two more, and two more only.
The Invasion of Venus by Stephen Baxter. I like stories that remind us of our place in the universe, and this is one such tale. We had a similarly themed alien invasion of Earth tale in a recent issue of FutureQuake (I hasten to add that the stories are in no way similar- they just explore the same themes).
And finally, possibly my favourite tale in the book, The Birds and the Bees and the Gasoline Trees by John Barnes (not the ex-footballer, I’m guessing). I loved this for two reasons. Firstly, it got me with a marvellous semi-twist. I saw where things were going with this narrative and he outfoxed me by not only changing the tack of the tale and having one of the characters address it.
The other is the sheer scope of the idea driving the story. Seriously, it is massive and thought provoking and, of course, this being a Hard Sci-fi book, all too plausible. I say ‘all too’ as if it’s a bad thing, but the bigger part of me would think it really really cool if something like the events depicted in this story actually happened. Again, as with the Baxter story, this one really puts us in our place as a species.

All in all, an excellent collection of stories, and one that will have me seeking out more work from the authors featured here. One thing though- an inordinate amount of them seem to live in Edinburgh...