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Exultant
Exultant is not a direct sequel to Coalescent, in that it doesn't pick up the story of George Poole and continue it. The concept of coalescence plays little part in this new novel -- so anyone expecting more of the same may be disappointed, but not for long. Once you start reading Exultant, it quickly becomes clear that the Destiny's Children novels are part of the Xeelee sequence (something that was not obvious in the first novel). The Xeelee sequence is a future history, mapped out by Baxter, in which humanity spreads out from Earth; is crushed and enslaved; frees itself; and in a much harder and violent form begins to assimilate and destroy other alien cultures, all the while being unaware of the larger and more important cosmic battle being fought all around it.
At the opening of Exultant, humanity is close to the end of its third wave of assimilation. It has spread across the galaxy crushing everything in its way -- even the mysterious and powerful Xeelee have retreated into the core of the galaxy. The whole of human society is held together unchanged across millions of light-years and billions of worlds by the Druz doctrines -- ruthless rules intended to keep humanity conquering and to punish any deviations from the human norm. The result is a human society turned into a colossal war machine, dedicated to one aim: the destruction of its last enemy, the Xeelee. But the war machine has been stalled for thousands of years. The Xeelee have no intention of leaving the galactic core, and their advanced technology (nightfighters constructed out of flaws in space-time itself) and ability to manipulate time means that every human assault is repelled easily. Trillions of human lives are wasted by hurling themselves at Xeelee defenses ... and it goes on and on. A war machine with billions of worlds full of generations of soldiers barely in their teens born in tanks and dying in thousand-year-long projects aimed at smashing the Xeelee, and knowing nothing but training, the doctrines and death. Whether in a coalescent hive or a not, it seems most human lives are spent in an empty drone-like struggle governed by simple rules -- indeed this message pervades the novel. In Coalescent the rules governing the eusocial society were:
Sisters matter more than daughters.
Ignorance is strength.
Listen to your sisters.
In Exultant the rules are the Druz doctrines, with a key part being 'A brief life burns brightly.'
In the middle of this multi-millennial slaughter, a young pilot, Pirius, and his crew decide to disobey doctrine and instead of throwing their lives away in a pointless heroic gesture they try a bold strategy. As a result they capture a Xeelee nightfighter, which is the first significant development in the war for hundreds of generations. Naturally, the rigid doctrinal bureaucracy chooses to prosecute him rather than promote him -- but with a twist. Thanks to his faster than light travel, Pirius has arrived back a few years before he left. Time is a malleable thing in this war and meeting oneself isn't unusual.
He arrives back to find himself still in training, and both Piriuses must be punished: one for breaking doctrine and the other to make sure he doesn't in future. His saviour is a strange Earth commissioner (part of the powerful bureaucracy controlling the war effort) who is desperate for a way to unlock the stalemate with the Xeelee and bring to an end the waste of life. He needs someone willing to step outside the rules -- even if it is only a little at first. So begins the split story of Pirius Red and Pirius Blue. One sent to a punishment camp to train as Xeelee cannon fodder, and the other taken back to Earth to see a solar system radically changed by alien occupation, thousands of years of industrial activity and a society at the core of the war effort that is not as doctrinally pure as he'd been brought up to believe.
No-one will ever accuse Stephen Baxter of thinking small. His Xeelee sequence novels are set in a universe teeming with life since the first fraction of a second after the Big Bang -- and indeed before that -- and a war that has raged between dark matter life-forms and baryonic life such as the Xeelee (with humans as a self-destructive nuisance ignorant of the larger conflict), for most of that time.
Exultant is a story of individual human courage and brilliance, and collective human stupidity and self-destruction. Those who dislike Baxter's work (and there are some!) because it is pessimistic about humanity as a whole will find nothing to change their minds here. On the other hand, anyone looking for hard science-fiction of breathtaking scope and bursting with invention and ideas will love it. Personally, I'm looking forward to seeing where he goes with the next part. One advantage of following Baxter's work is that you rarely have long to wait between novels.
You can purchase Exultant from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
His Manifold series (Manifold Space, Time & Origin) are simply too good. I've not read the Destiny's Children series, but if it's anything like his other works, I can be sure it would be damn cool.
And anyone else notice that Wikipedia is awfully slow or down these days? I wonder why.
Hah, I must admit I was chuckling as I read through this, part of me wondering how this ended up on the front page of Slashdot - but hey, it was better than another dupe.
Some choice snippets really looked great though, especially this one:
Naturally, the rigid doctrinal bureaucracy chooses to prosecute him rather than promote him -- but with a twist.
I liked that. Take a standard literary cliche, but add a 'twist'. Well, it all certainly sounds like a 'tiwst' on convention, what with all the scifi jargon and strange sounding alien names. I know that sounds flippant, but it is cool. I must admit, this following part was funny though too:
One advantage of following Baxter's work is that you rarely have long to wait between novels.
Hah, is that an advantage.. or a disadvantage?
Sounds a little unoriginal and.. weird. But hey, who am I to condemn a book that I haven't read. Oh, slashdot. Maybe if I see it in the bookstore I'll pick it up, I'll see what other readers say.
"There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all."
- Bob Dylan
The review makes the book sound like an enormous dystopia: I have seen the future, and it is horrible. Dystopias succeed, when they do, by pointing out dangerous trends in the present, and showing what could happen if they're allowed to grow unchecked. Nothing in the review gives any suggestion of that, and without the insight into today, a dystopia is simply depressing and morose. Even so, it's a good review, because it told me exactly why I personally wouldn't want to read this. If you're interested in this type of thing, I hope you enjoy it.
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I'm somewhat skeptical of hives for humans because of the differences between human genetic structures and the genetic structures of true hive makers (Hymenopterans e.g., bees, ants, and wasps).
The hive construct arose in these insects because of a unique genetic quirk called haplodiploidy -- females are diploid (getting 2 copies of each chromosome, one from each parent) and males are haploid (getting a single copy of each chromosome from the mother only). This quirk makes females more related to their sisters than to their own daughters. If a bee, ant or wasp "wants" to be selfish, it foregoes having its own offspring and raises sisters. This creates the basis for a very strong social bond in which individuals maximize their own fitness by belonging to a group. Humans have no such genetic basis -- the bond for sociality is limited to a more transactional trade of social tit-for-tat.
I like Stephen Baxter and will have to read this series to see if/how he addresses this issue.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Probably just like any other eusocial society? With an egg laying queen, sterile female workers, and mouthless drones who live just long enough to mate? For a neat mammal example of this structure, see Nake mole rats.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Come on, we're all grown ups (well, some of us are)...doesn't anyone read anything outside of the scifi and fantasy realm???
Stephen Baxter is amongst the hardest of the hard sci-fi writers. I read a review of Coalescent, and in it, the reviewer described the end of the book as set in "a typical Baxterian universe". To me, there's no better way to describe it.
Exultant, to me, is a story that could read as one of Baxter's masterpieces, if only he got a few more elements right. (Alas, that's not the first time I've thought that of his stories). The narrative often doesn't flow well, sometimes cutting to dry physics lectures, and feeling like a disjoint list of tasks that must be done, filling in time until we make it to the climax, which seems rushed. Also, there seem to me to be some fairly obvious plot holes... for instance, his faster-than-light travel doesn't create time paradoxes except at the beginning of the story, where it's a plot device.
This is only a loose sequel to Coalescent, with some recurring themes. It's a very different book (as you may guess: one is set in Roman Britain and the other is 20,000 years in the future) but it also has a strong focus on hard physics. Some of this is at the expense of the characters... for instance, Baxter really needs to work on his romance writing, or (for preference) leave it out. But the action scenes were done well, and you really get the sense of the vast human empire and the insignifance of one little life.
But the central theme, A brief life burns brightly, is strong, and Baxter explores it well. As usual, he's got plenty of fascinating ideas, like how life may have proliferated in the deep past, causing some events that we've otherwise put down to straight, lifeless physics...
Even after all that? I'm hooked. I'm re-reading the story, and I haven't read anything from the Xeelee Sequence up until now, but that's next on the list.
Termites are eusocial and diploid, not haplodiploid. Naked mole rats are also eusocial and diploid, as other posters mentioned.
:P
There are a lot of non-social haplodiploid wasps and bees, too. Some races of European honeybees have cheating workers that try to lay their own eggs for the other workers to raise instead of the queen's eggs.
Other factors such as overlap of generations and group defense may be more important than chromosome count in the evolution of eusociality.
Personally, I think humans are more likely to spin off a strain of social parasites than become eusocial.
Not sure if I should read the book or not, though undoubtedly I will end up doing so because there aren't that many talented sf writers broadly published, and because the review said it was in the Xeelee universe full of invention.
Coalescent was an extremely frustrating book to read for someone who loves hard sf, speculative and "Golden Years of SF" style philosophical versions like Heinlein, Van Vogt, etc.
After a long time of waiting for the other shoe to drop in Coalescent and the "real" sf story to start, I gave up being bored to tears and worked hard at getting into what was the only "historical" (well historical fantasy) novel I have read since maybe A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
I ended up liking the history part but found the ages long saga interminable and stifling . Sure the hive idea was cool but it could have made a series of short stories or a hard sf novel on its own, I thought. Hear's hoping that that is exactly what the new book is. Sounds a bit like Riddick though!
Matt R.