World Engines

A post climate change high concept science fiction odyssey

By: Stephen Baxter

Narrated by: Penelope Rawlins, Christopher Ragland

Length: 17 hrs and 21 mins

Publisher's summary

In the year 2570, a sleeper will wake....

In the mid-21st century, the Kernel, a strange object on a 500-year-orbit, is detected coming from high above the plane of the solar system. Could it be an alien artefact?

In the middle of climate-change crises, there is no mood for space-exploration stunts - but Reid Malenfant, elderly, once a shuttle pilot and frustrated would-be asteroid miner, decides to go take a look anyway. Nothing more is heard of him. But his ex-wife, Emma Stoney, sets up a trust fund to search for him the next time the Kernel returns....

By 2570 Earth is transformed. A mere billion people are supported by advanced technology on a world that is almost indistinguishable from the natural, with recovered forests, oceans, ice caps. It is not an age for expansion; there are only small science bases beyond the Earth. But this is a world you would want to live in: a Star Trek without the stars.

After 500 years the Kernel returns, and a descendant of Stoney, who Malenfant will call Emma II, mounts a mission to see what became of Malenfant. She finds him still alive, cryo-preserved....

His culture-shock encounter with a conservative future is entertaining....

But the Kernel itself turns out to be attached to a kind of wormhole, through which Malenfant and Emma II, exploring further, plummet back in time, across five billion years....

©2019 Stephen Baxter (P)2019 Orion Publishing Group

Baxter is improving with characters

Good listen. All the fanciful world building that I love Baxter for but this time the characters were fun too. They won’t stay with you but they aren’t actively annoying. If you like the Three Body Problem series the only author who has such scope would be Baxter I think and with this series at least the characters are less wooden.

The first four fifths was ok

Most of it was Fine, but then it just fizzled out completely unsatisfying. Then to make it matters worse There was more than one narrator and they didn’t stick to the same characters. If you’re going to do two narrators, then each one should have their voices to do and the others don’t overlap. So it was a mess you couldn’t keep track of who the character was by their voice because one person would make that character‘s voice completely different than the other narrator would. I’ve read quite a few of Steven Baxter’s works and always enjoyed them, but not so much this time

Great listen.

Narration by Penelope Rawlins was brilliant.

The were a few chapters that Ragland narrated. It wasn't clear why the full book wasn't narrated by Rawlins only, or Ragland as his style was great too.

Promising concept but dismal execution

The strangest narration decisions I've seen. A very good female narrator for most of the book - that has a male main character. A male narrator would have made more sense. Unexplicable switching between female and male narrators. Just bizarre.

The story was very disappointing. I was very surprised that the story ended where it did. I was sure it would continue with what happened with the second Phobos trip. But bizarrely, no. All in all, very disatisfying.