In recent years, perhaps feeling that established literary genres aren’t already vague enough, some people have adopted the term “speculative fiction” as an alternative to “science fiction.” Whatever the new label’s merits, it’s fair to say that some SF is more geared toward an imaginative sort of forecasting of what the future might actually have in store, which is the direction taken by the stories collected in the series of anthologies put out by MIT Press that started out as Twelve Tomorrows and of which Tomorrow’s Parties is the latest instalment.ĭespite the subtitle here, Tomorrow’s Parties isn’t just what’s come to be called CliFi (climate-change SF). “Lost in Time” is obviously high-concept Hollywood fluff, but if you’re looking for a bubble-gum page-turner with lots of silly action, cliff-hangers, and plot twists it’s hard to beat a time-travel murder mystery with dinosaurs. As he struggles to survive Triassic Park, his daughter Adeline tries to figure out who framed him back here on Earth Prime, while also working with the other Absolom scientists to develop a machine that can bring her dad back. Nevertheless, that’s the premise here as Sam Anderson, one of the scientists who developed the patented Absolom time-travel technology, is convicted of the murder of a colleague he’d been dating and then jettisoned to dinosaur-land. This makes Stephen Baxter’s new novel a bit talky in places, but the focus on a trio of friends and the backdrop of speculative “hard” SF on a grand scale combine to make “Galaxias” an engaging enough cosmic mystery story, with an ending that opens up in a big way.Įven for veteran SF readers used to creative new ways of dealing with crime - like convicts having their memories wiped, or transported to penal colonies on other planets - the idea of criminals being sent back in time hundreds of millions of years so that they can fight it out with dinosaurs in an alternative Earth timeline may seem a bit of a stretch.

It seems the removal of the Sun is a message that’s been sent to us, though the meaning of that message is obscure and the nature of Earth’s response much debated by the scientific bureaucracies in China and the West. Obviously some very powerful forces are at work, which the global brain trusts take to calling Galaxias. But then, just as quickly as the Sun left, it comes back. This truly does seem like the end of things. But then the Blink occurs - a name given to the sudden disappearance of the Sun.

The effects of climate change have even forced the relocation of the British Parliament to Newcastle and the American government to Alaska. By the year 2057 the Earth has already been through a lot.

Mystery of time and space review