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So... When I began this blog roughly 6 months ago, my original intention was for it to serve as more than just a place for my comments on politics. But then, the election, and well...

Now that we're a few weeks into the new year, I thought I'd try and return at least somewhat to that original vision. Which brings me to Stephen Baxter.

For those of you who haven't heard of him he's one of the best writers of science fiction around. The guys' stuff is just blindingly brilliant, and although its still early in his career (relatively speaking), I would easily put him up there with the best of all time. In fact, so would they. Arthur C Clarke and Baxter are currently collaborating on a trilogy together.

But for this post I want to focus on another one of his books - Exultant. It's the second in a very loosely connected series of books (so loose in fact that you can read them in any order) on the far future of humanity. Now, the book is brilliant, and I'm not writing a review or hosting a book club. And to be honest I'm only halfway through the book.

But like the rest of his books it has something in it so thought provoking that, well... I had to get up from reading and share it with you! The book takes place roughly 20,000 years in the future in a time when mankind has managed to colonize most of the galaxy through the use of faster than light propulsion technology. Since FTL travel by nature would involve some form of time travel, it opens up a host of time travel paradoxes. Nothing radical for sci-fi, I admit. But then, this...

A computer built around the idea of the time travel paradox. It works like this. Set the computer to work on an incredibly complex problem, one that would take years, or perhaps even centuries, to complete. Build into the computer a time-travel feedback mechanism such that every few microseconds it passes back to itself the results of any number crunching it has done. Allow it to run. No matter how long it takes to solve the problem, the instant it begins computing the problem will be solved, since the endlessly recursive timecurve allows for infinite power. Brilliant, eh?

Now I realize I'm not even remotely doing justice to the idea in the explanation, and for that I apologize profusely to Mr. Baxter. And I also realize that a "hard" science fiction book like this probably isn't of much interest to many of you out there. In which case, let me suggest this: Evolution by Stephen Baxter. The only way I can think to describe it is as a fictional account of quite literally ALL of human evolution. We're talking 65 million years worth of history. In one book. It was actually the first book of his that I had read, and I bought it only because the premise seemed so totally absurd that it had to either be totally brilliant or totally insane. As it turned out it's brilliant. Beginning 10's of millions of years in the past, it jumps through time, describing the lives of various mammals, pre-humanoids, humans, and post-humans - through their own eyes. What's astonishing about the book is the way that it allows you to actually grasp both the working of the evolutionary process and of time itself. I mean, 65 million years is way, WAY too long for the human mind to comprehend, and yet by reading this book I felt like for the first time in my life I had some grasp, some sense of just how long time is. In fact, I can honestly say that in some pretty fundamental ways the book changed the way I perceive time, and thu, the way I perceive my life. And if that's not a positive review for a work of fiction I don't know what is.

So... consider this my ringing endorsement of anything and everything by one of the best writers of fiction in modern history.

And for the record, no. I have not been paid to make this endorsement.

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