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Titan

(NASA Trilogy #2)

Stephen Baxter,

Stéphanie Ravez (Traduction)

3.72 · Rating details · 1,553 ratings · 87 reviews

2004 : les analyses de la sonde Cassini-Huygens sur la composition de la surface de Titan, l'une des lunes satellites de Saturne, révèlent que toutes les conditions atmosphériques et chimiques permettant l'existence d'une vie organique y sont rassemblées.

Motivée par les spectaculaires découvertes qui pourraient en découler, une équipe de la NASA met au point le projet d'un ...more

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Mass Market Paperback, Millénaires, 700 pages

Published January 9th 2001 by J'ai Lu (first published 1997)

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Nov 10, 2017 Nick Borrelli rated it really liked it

I enjoyed this one a lot but I usually enjoy Baxter's books. Titan is the second book in the NASA trilogy (Voyage being book 1 and Moonseed being book 3). A great story about finding signs of life on Saturn's largest moon Titan. We are treated to a bunch of fascinating science, which is per usual as Baxter likes to show his technical and scientific knowledge quite regularly in his writing. The entire trip to Titan was well done and then what happens once the team lands is worth the read in and o ...more

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Jan 12, 2011 Lis Carey rated it did not like it

Shelves: f-sf

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This is the story of a manned trip to Titan in the early years of the 21st century, from the same writer that gave us the somewhat depressing, but grippingly realistic and compelling Voyage.

Where shall I start? With the bioengineered anthrax that only attacks Han Chinese? With the ammonia-based beings who manage to revive Our Heroes four billion years after their deaths, with their memories intact?

No.

I'll start with a U.S. Air Force pilot, acting on orders of an Air Force general, attempting to This is the story of a manned trip to Titan in the early years of the 21st century, from the same writer that gave us the somewhat depressing, but grippingly realistic and compelling Voyage.

Where shall I start? With the bioengineered anthrax that only attacks Han Chinese? With the ammonia-based beings who manage to revive Our Heroes four billion years after their deaths, with their memories intact?

No.

I'll start with a U.S. Air Force pilot, acting on orders of an Air Force general, attempting to shoot down Endeavor as it takes Our Heroes into orbit to board Discovery and begin the trip to Titan. Not only is nobody court-martialed for this; the effect is to sour the sheeplike public's brief enthusiasm for NASA. It produces no bad effects for the Air Force whatsoever, and only minimally impedes the career of the pilot involved.

There's an impressively lifeless caricature of a right-wing, militaristic, super-patriot politician, whose election we're supposed to believe was inevitable nearly four years out. (When, exactly, was the last time that the "obvious front-runner" immediately after one presidential election was even his party's nominee in the next election? When was the last time one of these "obvious front-runners" was elected in the following election?) He is not given any attractive features whatsoever, and all the characters, both for and against him, treat him like a force of nature. Everyone seems to be terrified of him; no one seems to consider simply voting against him. No other candidates are so much as mentioned. Not even the possibility of other candidates is mentioned.

One character, Jake Hadamard, makes casual reference to "the extension of the Communications Decency Act", which completely shut down the internet until, somewhat later in the book, it is reopened under extremely tight censorship. The shutdown and censored reopening of the net is significant for the background of the book, and it's treated explicitly as an extension of currently-existing law. Now, it might be unfair to expect Baxter to have incorporated the fact of the Supreme Court's June 1997 decision striking down the CDA [his afterword is dated January 1997], but the lower court decision against it was in 1996. Still cutting things unfairly close? Not fair to expect him to incorporate 1996 material in a book turned in no later than January 1997? Well, remember, we're talking about the Communications Decency Act of 1996. It only required minimal attention to what was going on in the country he was writing about to note that the CDA was in trouble almost immediately upon passage and unlikely to survive, and only a few lines needed to be rewritten to attribute the post-2000 shutdown of the internet to some post-1996 law.

The right-wing caricature referred to above, Xavier MacLachlan, gets elected on schedule in 2008. He's a super-patriot, as mentioned above. One of his earliest actions, one year after the launch of the Titan mission [which can't get back on its own; it has to wait for pick-up], is to shut down not only the retrieval mission plans, but also the unmanned resupply launches. This is a popular decision because, of course, Americans are now bored with the Titan mission. Can I have a show of hands on who thinks either the decision or the popular reception of it is plausible? Remember, we're talking about deliberately abandoning five American astronauts in deep space, while they're still transmitting both sound and pictures.

Even though MacLachlan was so popular that his election was inevitable, almost immediately after he takes office parts of the US start seceding. There are some border skirmishes, but no real effort to prevent the secessions. MacLachlan and crew are far too busy, building up the US military in order to confront America's enemies, the Red Chinese, to waste time on secessionists...Uh-huh. Right.

It's not that MacLachlan is a bad guy. It's not that he's a right-wing bad guy. It's not that he's a stupid right-wing bad guy. If that were well done, I'd enjoy it. It's that he's stupid about everything, in wildly implausible ways. It's that he does the stupid or evil thing even when blindly following the hard-right ideology that he is supposed to be completely devoted to would lead him to do something at least different, and probably much smarter. Hard-right ideologues, having gained control of Washington, are not going to be happily indifferent to various pieces of the USA deciding to secede. That's a potential left-wing idiocy, not a right-wing one. MacLachlan's xenophobia is one of his plausible right-wing idiocies; this indifference to secession isn't. It's as if Baxter knows nothing about American politics except that the American political right is Bad Bad Bad. And yet this is not the impression I had after reading Voyage, where the politics seemed depressingly realistic. It's as if Baxter forgot everything that he knew then, and tried to fill the gap by reading the British tabloids' accounts of American politics and popular culture.

In 2012, the Chinese decide that the USA is no longer a major threat, and they attack Taiwan. The US responds (in fact, the secession-fragmented former USA makes a unified, fully integrated military response), there's a war, the Americans are sneakier than the Chinese and have better technology; the Americans win. I had the nagging feeling all through this that something was missing. I finally pinned it down. Japan. The Chinese invade a large offshore island that they claim is historically theres, and no one even mentions the possibility that the Japanese might perhaps express an opinion on the matter. Japan is completely irrelevant to this confrontation. Sure thing.

It seems almost petty to complain about the Chinese being dumb enough to pull the stunt with the asteroid, or to miscalculate and use one that's too big, or to not notice the danger of miscalculating the trajectory. I'm certain it's petty to complain about a portrait of Generation X that identifies as one of its more productive members a young man who produces "art" by gnawing dried shit with his teeth. It would be petty beyond belief to point out that we're told that this is his only skill immediately after he's produced an excellent dinner for eight. Only the small-minded would deign to notice that the noble ammonia-beings of Titan, who decide as their world is about to be destroyed by the still-expanding sun to seed the planets of other stars with both Earth life and Titan life--unlike ignoble humans, who just destroyed everything--almost certainly got the idea from the last two survivors of the Titan mission, who deliberately seeded a water-ice lake with all the organic material from Earth that they had.

I could go on much longer, but why bother? Ignore this one, and hope that Baxter gets back to writing far-future stories. ...more

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Nov 19, 2020 Phil rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

I have read many of Baxter's novels, and this by far was the worst one I have come across; in fact, it was a real struggle to finish it at all. Baxter always has big ideas and incorporates science in a very thoughtful way, but he tried to do way too much here. Published in 1997, Titan was set in a grim near future circa 2004, but in many ways, it reads now like an alternative history. The Cassini space probe had just reached Saturn and began mapping out the moons, even landing a probe on Titan. I have read many of Baxter's novels, and this by far was the worst one I have come across; in fact, it was a real struggle to finish it at all. Baxter always has big ideas and incorporates science in a very thoughtful way, but he tried to do way too much here. Published in 1997, Titan was set in a grim near future circa 2004, but in many ways, it reads now like an alternative history. The Cassini space probe had just reached Saturn and began mapping out the moons, even landing a probe on Titan. The results that came back suggested that there might be life on Titan, and Rosenburg, one of our leads, started dreaming of a way to send people there to investigate. Rosenburg works at JPL and has contacts at NASA. Unfortunately, a new president will be elected in 2008 and he is rabidly against the space program unless it has a military edge. Before he gets elected, Rosenburg, along with help from Paula, our other lead, put together a team to plan a manned mission to Titan, one to launch before the new president comes into power. Refurbishing old space rockets and habitats, they cobble together a ship that will take six years to reach Titan with a crew of five, Paula and Rosenburg included.

Not content with just imagining such a feat like a mission to Titan Baxter also gives us a gloomy dystopia of America, with the president basically abolishing science, forcing teachers to replace it with biblical stories of creation in schools, and so forth. The problem here is that Baxter envisions way to much change in such a short period of time. I mean, he wrote the book in the mid 1990s, and the vast changes he portrays in America just a decade later are totally off the wall. People with 'softscreen tattoos', or tattoos that make one invisible; people moving to Central America to return to their hunter/gathering roots; climate change so rapid that the Ozone layer is gone by 2008, fully immersive virtual reality, etc., etc., etc. Along with this back drop, the doomed mission to Titan continues, even as NASA is basically shut down and no resupply mission is even on the books. The USA is involved with a hot war with China which will shortly render the world uninhabitable to humanity...

If Baxter would have simply tried to entertain us with a implausible but possible voyage to Titan utilizing old Space Shuttle tech grafted to Saturn rockets, I could have gone along. Trying to give us a near dystopia of the collapse of civilization was just too much. I am not sure what his goal here was, but it definitely did not work for me. I ended up skimming much of the last 200 pages just to see where it would go, and was rewarded with an ending that was, frankly, silly. I would definitely not recommend this to anyone, especially someone interested in Baxter's works, as it would surely turn them away from ever reading a Baxter novel again. 1.5 stars.
...more

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Nov 07, 2011 Devon rated it did not like it

Shelves: sci-fiction, space-stl

Flying to Saturn on chemical rockets...technically possible if you can find a crew willing to sit in a cramped cabin for 6 years or so, and Baxter does a good job of explaining just how it would get done. But even Baxter can't make it believable that we would actually go do it.

The single-election-cycle takeover of American society by a Taliban-esque religious right is lame. It's one-dimensional, lazy, ignorant and unbelievable. He gets important details of American government factually wrong, an ...more

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Sep 07, 2007 Peter Pier rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: anybody interested in the future of life

Shelves: sf

It´s... strange.
You´ll have to read first. But it has something to learn from- and it teaches. About the endurance of life. Simply read.

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Mar 03, 2015 Anthoney rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi

Baxter, I feel is a visionary, in the way that he builds his stories not in years or even centuries but the stories extends in eras and eons, astronomical timelines, at least the ones I have read including Evolution & Xeelee stories. While of course the writing is dry and made all the more drier by the hard science and technical details, it is those very scientific reference and details make such implausible plots seem possible, and concepts awe inspiring unlike some other grand space operas tha ...more

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Jan 22, 2009 Jim rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sf-f

I desperately want to give this book five stars: it has detailed accounts of how a manned trip to Saturn might take place in the present day, and how life on Titan might actually work day to day. All of this is done in a very readable format. However, there are some huge problems countering these.

1) The plan is to go to Titan and essentially set up a human colony there. So they send five people in a small rocket on a trip of several years. Obviously such a small space would send everyone on boar ...more

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Nov 26, 2012 Paul McFadyen rated it really liked it

Serious. Very serious. As plausible a book I've read about near-future space exploration, with a decent stab at second-guessing our species' behaviour on THIS planet over the next few years.

Whilst it's ultimately positive about mankind's ability to adapt to and occupy different environments (trying not to throw in any obvious spoilers here), it definitely takes some pretty blooming bleak routes to get there - this is not a book I'd recommend to anyone suffering any kind of existential crisis.

If ...more

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Jul 10, 2012 Luke rated it really liked it

Great critique of the modern space program, as well as the modern attitude (politcal and intellectual) towards the hard sciences and engineering. So great that it really opens your eyes on certain things that Baxter argues are happening in this world right now.

Great concept, great story. Definitely a much broader epic than I was initially expecting when I picked this book up. However, the ending was a little strange and the book in its entirety seemed to drag at times. Great read though, defini ...more

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Feb 12, 2017 Larry rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This is quite a book. Not only quite big at 580 pages but a big concept. In some ways it's like his earlier book 'Voyage', profiling a prospective trip to Mars with all its politics and logistical wrangling. Titan is similar. 2 thirds of the book are about dealings with NASA and the USAF, and then a mission profile to Titan is begun. Eventually we get there. And when Baxter takes us somewhere we really know about it! Good stuff. ...more

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Jul 22, 2013 Baal Of rated it liked it · review of another edition

Hard science-fiction with an emphasis on highly detailed descriptions of launch capability, rockets, shuttles, procedures, life support systems, and a myriad of other things necessary to survive a prolong space flight. Many pages dedicated to dealing with shit and piss in space. Baxter might be a little bit obsessed. The good - a fairly plausible (with a few major exceptions) series of events leading to the sending of 5 astronauts on a 6 year trip to Titan - the launch occurs around 250 pages in ...more

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Jun 05, 2009 Neil Fein rated it really liked it

This dystopian space tale was out of date shortly after it was published, but it's still a good story with an important message - space travel is bigger than short-term interests, and politics will always nuke expensive programs. The Apollo moon landings were a freak, needed to put the commies in their place, so to speak.

In the early 21st century, the dying days of the space program are in sight. The possibility of life is discovered on Titan, one of Saturns moons. A new NASA director gets the ...more

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Jul 03, 2018 Charlie rated it really liked it

I felt a special affinity for this book. It was written in 1997 (the year of Cassini's launch) and Cassini's mission has a large part to play. Having worked on the Cassini mission at JPL, I could tell the author had been to JPL doing extensive research. His description of the facility and mission were spot-on. It was fun to read of his characters walking through the very building and floor where I was working at the time of the characters' visit. His descriptions of the results of the Cassini mi ...more

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Sep 09, 2020 D.G. Post rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The word that comes to mind is “impressive”. Not so much because of the characters, or even the plot; viewed solely on the merits of those, I’d have to give fewer stars, as the characters were not memorable (I genuinely don’t remember much about them) and the story slowed to a crawl a times. But the tension! The detail! The sense of what it must feel like to actually be in space! This is probably the closest I’ve come to being able to imagine what astronauts go through. Baxter really must have d ...more

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Jan 04, 2018 George Ruddell rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I read this book over a long period. I covered the first 350 pages, set it aside and then cane back to it. It was well worth finishing. Some interesting twists at the end.

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May 02, 2012 Brent Werness rated it liked it

Shelves: hard-sci-fi, fiction, sci-fi

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I expected this book to be much more like "Voyage" (the first book in Baxter's NASA series) however it was quite different. The first book was, in my opinion, a very accurate rendition of an alternate history where NASA goes to Mars rather than build the space shuttle, this book was more of a caricature of a possible future for NASA viewed from 1997. I still enjoyed it, but I found a lot of it just too far fetched to really work well as a story.

First, I want to start out with a comment that no o I expected this book to be much more like "Voyage" (the first book in Baxter's NASA series) however it was quite different. The first book was, in my opinion, a very accurate rendition of an alternate history where NASA goes to Mars rather than build the space shuttle, this book was more of a caricature of a possible future for NASA viewed from 1997. I still enjoyed it, but I found a lot of it just too far fetched to really work well as a story.

First, I want to start out with a comment that no one else seems to have made about this book. It starts with a shuttle disaster involving Columbia in 2004 (whereas in the real world the Columbia disaster took place in 2003) that results in the grounding of the shuttle fleet. This part actually happened!

Now, on to critiques. The main problem I have with this story is that them bringing all the old equipment out of retirement doesn't actually make any sense. Refurbishing the Saturn V that sat outside in the elements in from of KSC for decades? Modified Apollo capsules for entry into Titan's atmosphere? Then to top it all off, when the military wants to shoot down their launch (for reasons I never fully understood) they do so by refurbishing the X-15 and equipping it with a mothballed anti-satellite missile and then having the entire thing piloted by a retired test pilot from the original flights in the 1960s? None of it made any sense. It was supposed to read as a statement about the backwards motion we've made in aerospace tech (only the X-15 was fast enough to catch up to the shuttle during launch!) but it just came off as silly and unbelievable.

My second issue was with the politics. While I again find it slightly eerie how well he predicted the rise of anti-intellectualism in the US, the degree was again far out of proportion. In his version science in the US is essentially destroyed by when a new (Texan) president rises to power and institutes laws requiring, for example, that all schools teach Aristotelean physics and that the planets circle the earth on crystal spheres. Again it came off as just silly.

As I said in the introduction, I took this book as a caricature (as I believe was intended) of the future as seen from 1997, and as a caricature it is in many ways eerily accurate. However, for me the mix of very hard sci-fi (with all the info dumps on life support systems, low-energy trajectories, and Titan weather patterns that come with that territory) with this near-cartoon politics and mission planning just didn't work all that well. It was a little like if Wile E. Coyote strapped his ACME rocket to his back to catch the roadrunner and then proceeded to give you a 20 minute lecture on the delta-V requirements required to reach the roadrunner who had positioned himself at the Earth-Moon L2 point. It just doesn't work for me.

However, when all is said and done, I still had fun reading it even though it was a bit of a concept fail for me. If you are thinking about reading this, read "Voyage" first.

...more

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Aug 14, 2010 Rusty rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: prose, science-fiction

I don’t believe in prophets. I’ve mentioned this before, after something close to 500 written reviews, I’m pretty sure I’ve covered this elsewhere, but it bears repeating: You won’t convince anyone your faith is correct by mentioning a fulfilled prophecy.

Case in point, the Book of Mormon mentions a man named Joseph Smith will arise in the last days to spread the good news of American Jesus, or something like that. The Baha’i have books of fulfilled prophecies that point to their faith being cor I don’t believe in prophets. I’ve mentioned this before, after something close to 500 written reviews, I’m pretty sure I’ve covered this elsewhere, but it bears repeating: You won’t convince anyone your faith is correct by mentioning a fulfilled prophecy.

Case in point, the Book of Mormon mentions a man named Joseph Smith will arise in the last days to spread the good news of American Jesus, or something like that. The Baha’i have books of fulfilled prophecies that point to their faith being correct. And don’t get me started on Evangelical Christianity. In some circles people just show up for a weekly prophetic utterance and then move on to whatever else they were doing in their lives.

There are sects and sub-sects, faiths and cults and seers the world over, going back as long as we’ve had the written word, that have been able to prophecy about what is to come. They are almost always wrong, and when they are right about something, it’s couched in so much wrong that it’s utterly useless.

Prophets are hucksters, and there no exceptions.

Stephen Baxter is a prophet.

I read this book for the first time in the late 90’s, probably within a year or two it coming out in paperback. This book outlined the events of the first 20 years on the 21st century better than anyone I think ever has laid out a near future in a work of fiction. Ever.

The story began sometime in the ballpark of 2003 or 2004. The opening chapters are about the destruction of the Columbia spacecraft during re-entry into earth’s atmosphere, and follows the rise of the religious right in America and the election of a U.S. President that immediately tries to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border to keep out non-white’s.

If I hadn’t read this 25ish years ago, I would have surely believed it had been written as an alt-history book very recently.

So, there’s that. Scary how much Baxter got right. Made me feel weird reading it again.

And beyond all the eerily accurate outlook on the near future of the time, I found the actual story being told very entertaining. Loved this book, not one I’d have ever thought of as one of Baxter’s classics, but something I think of as a real success.

Oh, it’s about NASA doing a one-shot stunt manned mission to Saturn’s moon, Titan, as the brass realizes that the world doesn’t give a shit about space exploration and they are soon to be shut down for good.

This book is dark as hell and has about as pessimistic view of humanity as imaginable. He’s probably right about that. ...more

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May 05, 2014 M. Lawrence rated it liked it

I'll go ahead and admit it right now: I skipped through most of the beginning of this book, finding the political intrigue on Earth tedious and boring. I wanted to get into the Titan stuff as fast as possible.

I'll give Baxter this: he's done his research, and I was continually impressed with his descriptions of a possible voyage to Titan and what landing and exploring this alien world might be like. Ultimately, I found myself feeling oppressed and a bit depressed by the futility of life on Tita ...more

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Dec 18, 2014 Andy Mac rated it it was ok

Reading this on the Kindle, I'm not sure how long it was, but it felt like it took a long time to get through. Part of that, though, was that some of this was pretty slow reading. There's a detailed, and pessimistic description of NASA going forward in here as well as very detailed space journeys. I like that, it's detail I like to see, but it also does make it harder (slower) to read.

Overall, the book definitely seemed pretty pessimistic, and that's ok, but then the ending jumped us into somet ...more

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Aug 18, 2020 Jeff J. rated it it was amazing

Despite being advertised as the second book of a trilogy this is actually a stand-alone novel, the only commonality is that both books are alternate histories of the US space program. The crash landing of a space shuttle ends the program, at the same time a probe finds signs of life on Titan, a moon of Saturn. Excess hardware from the Apollo and space shuttle programs is used to send a manned mission to Titan. There were some seemingly unrelated storylines that I found puzzling, but it all came ...more

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Aug 06, 2008 Colin rated it did not like it

Shelves: other-sf, nasa

A little too much pontification for my taste. The author basically uses this book as a vehicle for an extended anti-conservative, anti-Christian, anti-military rant.

If you are rabidly anti-conservative, anti-Christian, anti-military, and you enjoy reading such rants, maybe you will enjoy this. Otherwise, you probably won't. ...more

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Mar 14, 2017 James rated it it was ok

1.5 Stars
There was too much stupidity and not enough story. Way to many important details left out, and too much BS left in. The USA doesn't change anything as fast as in this book. Why does he hate the USAF anyway? Just craziness and laziness. He needs an editor with a firm red pencil. ...more

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Aug 12, 2008 Pamr rated it it was ok

It is a great book until the last chapter - whatever you do do not read the last chapter you will be extremely disappointed and that is why it gets two stars for a book worth 3 to 4 until then!

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Sep 22, 2019 MaryAnn Johanson rated it really liked it

The ambition of this book doesn't become clear till near the end... and it is going to haunt me for a very long time... ...more

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Oct 14, 2019 Øystein Brekke rated it liked it · review of another edition

At the time I read it, the generally dystopian tone annoyed me, and seemed unrealistic. It certainly doesn't feel unrealistic anymore. ...more

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Jun 05, 2021 Jürgen Defurne rated it it was amazing

I am glad I finished, and I am glad I finished it. Because Steven Baxter provides tough reading. He likes detail, and this is what it makes tough.

However, it is necessary, because he provides science-fiction in the realm of "Tau-Zero" and "Orion Shall Rise" (yes, both by Poul Anderson). SF which is doesn't stray (far) from logic and reality.

I read it in small pieces. Especially the first part, where all the preparations are done, is a bit slow, but it builds a realistic image. Once the adventure ...more

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Oct 18, 2019 Michael Harry rated it did not like it

Shelves: sci-fi

Miserable pessimistic read. The earth and politics stuff is especially stupid and the most unrealistic part about a book featuring people going to Titan in a shuttle. All the characters are bad people, there's nobody to root for. The villains (if you can call them that) are so cartoonish and badly drawn. The author has a nasty view of young millennials and it shows too much.

The blurb promised me a Rendevous with Rama or Space Odyssey like adventure. I got a tedious study in loss, misery and cyni ...more

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Dec 30, 2020 Andy Young rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

After reading and enjoying Voyage, I was somewhat disappointed at first to realise this second instalment of the NASA trilogy did not follow on in the same story universe as Voyage. But that light disappointment soon evaporated as this story unfolded. The topics covered on this book are eerily prophetic in some ways, and incredibly embedded in hardcore science fiction in others. Imagine H.G. Wells and Arthur C. Clarke writing a novel together, and you might come close to the spectacular in-depth ...more

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Aug 24, 2018 Kay rated it liked it · review of another edition

Similar to the first in the trilogy, not Stephen Baxter at his best. A bit hard going at time and very much techy sci-fi. Oddly enough I recall reading Moon Seed many years ago and thoroughly enjoying it. Getting back to this novel, I thought it was a great ending, Baxter at his most imaginative.

Ray Smillie

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May 24, 2019 Dwayne Coleman rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: aviation-and-space, science-fiction, speculative-fiction

Perhaps overly bitter and cynical about the value of human spaceflight and the attitude of the American public. Not giving anything away, but the ending also seemed formulaic to me. Apparently, this book is part of a trilogy, and I've read the first two. I don't know if I'll read the the third book since the first two were mediocre at best. ...more

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About Stephen Baxter

Stephen Baxter

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Stephen 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 ...more

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“Jiang was not Han Chinese. She was a Turkic Uighur, a Muslim minority which emanated from the westernmost province of Xinjiang. Jiang’s family came from the desert capital Urumqi; her family had moved to Beijing when she was a child when Jiang’s father, a mid-ranking Party cadre, was posted to the Minorities Institute in the capital in the 1970s. Since her father was both an official and a Uighur, the family had been treated with a special deference reserved for select representatives of minority groups who served as symbols for the Party’s efforts to build ‘socialist solidarity’ between central China and the non-Han regions. In Beijing, Jiang had attended a special ‘experimental’ school reserved for the children of the Party élite.” — 1 likes

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