This gives us a human aspect to the story, more so when we are told that their Earth is slowly disappearing into a void known as The Tide from which there is no return. There is a permanent flow of immigrants away from The Periphery where the land meets The Tide, but their landscape is shrinking, and the planet is expected to disappear altogether in 30 years. Well, I’m glad to say Baxter is firing on all cylinders with The Thousand Earths, probably his most cohesive and tightly plotted book in a long time. And it is a standalone story! (Though Baxter has been known to pull sequels out of some very improbable hats.) The other storyline has a very different timescale. Mela and her family live on one of a set of a thousand space habitats that seem to be science fiction equivalents of the Discworld, though supported by technology, rather than magic and turtles. However, there is something wrong with their habitat, which has been gradually disappearing as the perimeter of the land shrinks more and more. The people know that their world will have entirely disappeared in 30 years - with a gradually growing displacement of refugees.

This is a hard(ish) SF about future Earth(s), as hinted in the title. The author, Stephen Baxter, had several nominations for major SFF Awards (Hugo, BSFA, Locus, A.C. Clarke) but not in the last few years despite the fact that he continues to publish every year. His only Hugo-nominated novel was in 1996 and his latest short story in 2008, his latest Locus – in 2017. Partially it can be due to his residence (England) and partially to the fact that his SF is in Arthur C. Clarke’s vein – big ideas while characters even if well-written are secondary. Much of the first part of the book though seems to be smaller in scale, revolving around the lives of two sisters, Ish & Mela. Told by focussing on Mela, it seems like a fairly typical space colonisation tale, which becomes much vaster when it is revealed that the girls and their parents are on an Earth-like planet surrounded by a thousand (well – 999, I guess) others. The story takes readers on a mind-bending journey through a multitude of parallel Earths, each with its own unique history, civilizations, and possibilities. Baxter's exploration of the concept of the multiverse and the interconnectedness of these Earths is awe-inspiring, offering a tantalizing glimpse into the infinite variations and potential futures that exist. She and her people have always known that this long-predicted end to their home, one of the Thousand Earths, is coming - but that makes their fight to survive, to protect each other, no less desperate . . . and no less doomed. Stephen Baxter continues to steadily publish one novel each year (I wonder when it's time for a new short story collection? I tend to enjoy his short stories very much. But I digress). The last few years his novels were okay, but not exceptional, and sometimes I find it hard to remember what happened in them.

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This novel has taught me a valuable lesson, which is always have the "time left in book" Kindle view turned on. I hit a point where I thought, surely this is near the end? And then felt my heart sink when I discovered I was only 40% into it. Too far to DNF and well into "see it through" territory. The pace was painfully slow and meandering, it quite literally sent me to sleep several nights running. Never let it be said that Stephen Baxter does stories on a minor scale. His last novel Galaxias dealt with the dimming of the Sun. This time the scope is epic, both in space and time. So John zooms from one spectacular disaster to another, over vast periods, while in a smart move, the years and days and square kilometres count down for a trapped young woman he hasn't even met. Maybe he will. If he does, we know it'll be right at the end of the world. The main focus here is the eventual collision between the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies. Although predicted to occur 4.5 billion years in the future, Baxter likens it to the current climate change crisis in that urgent action is better sooner rather than later, when we finally run out of options and there are no more roads left to be taken. This human quality is shown through an interesting dichotomy between two religious factions on Mela’s planet, which become more important as the world’s end becomes imminent. It doesn’t help that Mela’s father Tenn is a Perseid, a religion with “a human warmth” determined to do their best for “the Immies”, whilst her estranged mother Salja is a Starrist, believing in “cosmic austerity” and involved in trading property before it disappears into The Tide. (How did those two ever get together?)

Stephen Baxter is probably my favorite writer of hard science fiction so I was excited to see that he was releasing his new book in September 2022, and I grabbed it on Audible the minute it was available. Baxter is a master at writing about human struggles in a dystopian future, with plots supported by speculative and known science, on an epic scale and in incredible settings. If you are looking for deeply developed characters you might be disappointed. Big mind-boggling near and far-future concepts and human trials and tribulations take the forefront like in so many of his other stories. The Thousand Earths" by Stephen Baxter is a remarkable work of science fiction that spans vast cosmic landscapes, intricate timelines, and parallel worlds. Baxter's unparalleled imagination and meticulous attention to scientific detail create a rich and immersive narra Plenty of moral ambiguity - is it right to farm people, just so there is a vast number of humanity spread over a long period? Will human nature always revert? Is it right to dismantle planets and asteroids for materials which, once used, are gone? (We're doing that with coal. There will never be more coal, because when the trees fell originally, nothing had evolved to rot them. And helium. It escapes the atmosphere.) What sets this book apart is its thought-provoking exploration of scientific and philosophical concepts. Baxter seamlessly weaves together themes of identity, choice, and the consequences of our actions, encouraging readers to contemplate the impact of our decisions in a vast and interconnected universe.

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It’s not unusual for the timescape of a Stephen Baxter novel to span hundreds, thousands, or even millions of years but The Thousand Earths stretches his ambition even further, speculating what might happen to Earth – and the people that live on it – over billions and more. One of SF’s main tasks, often surreptitiously, is to get readers to examine current issues through a science-fictional lens. It will therefore be no great surprise that Baxter manages to explore, with a little remote distance, the issue of refugees and asylum seekers that is one of our own world’s major crises today. As the issues become more acute on Mela’s Earth, I found that it was not too much of a leap to compare this with those crossing the Mediterranean or the English Channel today. The last remaining mammoths being hunted down and their safe ground shrinking. The Ice Age about to flood Doggerland as it departs and releases water. The Doggerland resilient people being overrun by Bronze Age Hittites. The return of the Ice Age, and civilisation shrinking. There are a couple of coincidences towards the end to tie things up, but they were not really deal-breakers, if a little convenient. I did question why Mela’s people, knowing the end was in sight, didn’t spend time developing spacecraft to escape their planet, although you can argue that they didn’t have the time or the resources. It may be down to human inertia, and the ignoring of the inevitable until it is too late. Stephen Baxter has to be one of the most prolific SF authors working today. Hardly had I bought Galaxias when I heard about The Thousand Earths coming out later this year. And then the friendly folks at Orion happily sent me an arc from NetGalley UK on the same day I requested it.