Title: Proxima
Author: Stephen Baxter
Genre: Science Fiction
Publisher: Penguin
Number of Pages: 464
Source: Publisher
Release Date: November 4, 2014
| A paranormal category romance from Entangled's Covet imprint... The very far future: The Galaxy is a drifting wreck of black holes, neutron stars, chill white dwarfs. The age of star formation is long past. Yet there is life here, feeding off the energies of the stellar remnants, and there is mind, a tremendous Galaxy-spanning intelligence each of whose thoughts lasts a hundred thousand years. And this mind cradles memories of a long-gone age when a more compact universe was full of light...The 27th century: Proxima Centauri, an undistinguished red dwarf star, is the nearest star to our sun - and (in this fiction), the nearest to host a world, Proxima IV, habitable by humans. But Proxima IV is unlike Earth in many ways. Huddling close to the warmth, orbiting in weeks, it keeps one face to its parent star at all times. The 'substellar point', with the star forever overhead, is a blasted desert, and the 'antistellar point' on the far side is under an ice cap in perpetual darkness. How would it be to live on such a world? Needle ships fall from Proxima IV's sky. Yuri Jones, with 1000 others, is about to find out...PROXIMA tells the amazing tale of how we colonise a harsh new eden, and the secret we find there that will change our role in the Universe for ever. |
I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy of Proxima by Stephen Baxter, and while I don't read this kind of Science Fiction, my dad does. So please help me welcome my dad in reviewing his first book for me!
Proxima was an enjoyable read. As with all Baxter novels the hard science was great, however I had trouble with the fact that the native creatures were not really developed at all in the story, and while they were in the story it was never explained how they got their intelligence and I would have liked them to play a bigger part in the storyline.
I had a hard time connecting hard time connecting with any of the characters because they didn't have any confidence and were always second guessing themselves while wandering around Proxima IV trying to stay alive. That being said, I really liked how Yuri never gave up. or trying to better himself. I loved that t he kept persevering and took other people along with him and helped them survive as well on the planet. The most enjoyable character was the robot, ColU. He was witty, and I felt like ColU was the only character who was inquisitive about the planet, which I enjoyed.
Proxima was pretty dark, and read almost like a science seminar, which I really liked. If you like really like hard science fiction and the science part in hard science then this is for you, because the storyline secondary to the science, but that is what I like about Baxter's books.
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