On the Blink

Taking the long view is something that most people will agree is a good idea. Except that often, what we really mean is that other people should take the long view. But what would happen if there was an event so catastrophic and extraordinary that it involved everyone, whether they liked it or not – an event far more serious even than a pandemic?

What if the Sun disappeared? And what if this occurred during an eclipse, a moment designed to heighten the emotional impact of the disappearance? And what if – mild spoiler alert – the Sun’s vanishing act was orchestrated by an alien intelligence that had been watching Earth for a long time?

Such are the questions that underpin Stephen Baxter’s latest novel, a rumination on both our present situation and the future that, despite slipping into the publishing schedule with surprisingly little fanfare, reads like a book that was particularly important to its author.

In part, that’s down to the tone. Baxter’s recent work, for all his reputation as The British Hard Science Fiction Guy, has often had a lightness to it.

Think, for example, of the doughty British Empire spacefarers who show up in the World Engines sequence. In Galaxias, while Baxter undoubtedly riffs off the cosy catastrophe narratives of yesteryear, gags and moments of light relief are in short supply.

Leaving aside for a moment the peril inherent in the set-up, the Blink – as humanity comes to call the temporary loss of sunlight – is visited on a near-future world already being ravaged by climate change. This is also a world of refugee crises, pandemics and the balkanisation of even powerful countries in a time where people find it difficult to talk across political divides.

" What if the Sun disappeared? And what if this occurred during an eclipse?"

It’s a world we see largely through the eyes of the selfdubbed In-Jokes, a trio of friends ironically self-named because each is “studious, thoughtful” and, during a “gloomy virus-lockdown term” at Yale, found themselves on the outside of other groups. Each of the trio brings a different perspective to events: Tash as an advisor to a long-serving British minister, Mel as an astronomer and Zhi as a spacefarer.

they spend time discussing the science behind plot points, but that’s forgivable in a book where the science is important – as we watch, for instance, humanity’s efforts to build a ship that can

Sometimes, when they meet up, travel out into deep space, a ship powered by a dark energy drive. Besides, lots of clever and big science is needed to help deal with the aftermath of the Blink.

Yet this isn’t an old-fashioned engineer/scientist-as-hero novel. It’s also a book about how it takes political nous and emotional intelligence to deal with crises.

Such as those that occur when the Blink causes, for example, the Earth’s mantle to slosh around because the planet’s orbit has changed. Suffice to say that you wouldn’t want to live next to a volcano on such a planet… It’s also worth noting that, without this being an overtly political novel, Baxter doubts the ability of petty populists to deal with such a world.

Most of all, though, it’s a novel about taking the long view. Galaxias, as humanity dubs the alien intelligence that has just put on an awesome display of strength, clearly doesn’t want humanity to leave its home system. What should humanity do about this?

To say too much about Baxter’s framing of approaches to this question would be to risk spoilers.

Better to conclude by noting that, while it lacks the fireworks of Baxter’s space operas, this is a book that quite beautifully uses familiar SF tropes to explore how fragile we are as a species – and how robust and clever we can be too.

Jonathan Wright

In Galaxias, the North Sea is dammed as a measure against sea level rise – an idea researchers have begun to explore.