Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds

Come and join the joyride

Now this was fun. Alastair Reynolds is a prolific writer and has been publishing award winning science fiction over the last three decades. Yet, I had only previously read his “Revelation Space” series (a space opera I sincerely enjoyed although I don’t actually like space operas) but have now (finally) picked up his 2005 novel “Pushing Ice”. I can now say that this will not have been my last Alastair Reynolds book - despite the book’s shortcomings, in Pushing Ice he has once again managed to write an epic space adventure reaching far into the future.

Pushing Ice begins in the (not too) distant future. 18,000 years from now a delegate at the Congress of the Lindblad Ring proposes a far-reaching memorial project to honour “The Benefactor” - the woman who brought humanity to the stars.

From there (with not much more detail than just described here) we jump back into the year 2057 and into out very own solar system where the crew of the “Rockhopper” is working to prepare to mine a comet (also known as “Pushing Ice”) when news breaks that Janus, one of Saturn’s moons has left its orbit and is beginning to accelerate on a path that will take it out of the solar system (and the planetary ecliptic) and towards Spica. Being the only ship close (and fast) enough to get a closer look at Janus before that spaceship turned moon turned spaceship becomes too fast to follow, the crew, encouraged by a hefty bonus from the ship’s owners, decide to start their pursuit of Janus in the hope of fame and glory, scientific discovery, and earthly riches.

Without giving too much away, things don’t go as planned. As Bella, commander of the Rockhopper says, “We push ice […] Exploration of alien artefacts definitely wasn’t in the fine print when any of us signed up for this line of work.“ Maybe a short course in “chasing alien spaceships” would have been useful for the group as their little detour unexpectedly turns into a grand tour of the galaxy.

Where the books shines is in the big ideas: Alastair Reynolds fabulously plays with time dilation at relativistic speeds. That speech at the Lindblad Ring Congress 18,000 years in the future? Far in the past. As story spanning hundreds of millions of years and countless civilizations? Check. Exploring not just one giant artificial alien structure but two (with the second one the size of an entire solar system)? You got it.

In many ways this exploration of space reminded me of Arthur C Clarke’s Rama series: An alien object discovered “close” to earth, an exploratory expedition turning into a galactic voyage, and a rendezvous with very alien civilizations.

So far so good.

Where the book unfortunately falls short is in characters and plot continuity. Over the course of the journey, control of the Rockhopper changes hands several times between Bella and her best friend/worst enemy Svetlana. Unfortunately, their love/hate relationship (and their decisions) often makes no sense. Several of the big shifts in power in the book remain woefully unexplained. They just become a given in the storyline. And a number of side stories (the religious ideas of a splinter group of humans, the alien cultures encountered along the way, the basic idea behind the structure our human travellers find at Spica - none of that is explored further. A missed opportunity. (Also, the two main characters are just really, really annoying.)

Pushing Ice is a not a short book but it makes for a gripping read. With such a story at hand, Alastair Reynolds should have taken even more space expanding on his ideas (and spending more time developing the characters and their relationships). There is a reason why there are so many sci-fi trilogies: Not only can you sell three times as many books (if people like part 1 that is), but you actually create more room to develop your ideas. With Pushing Ice, Alastair Reynolds unfortunately passed on that opportunity.

Still, for fans of a truly galactic story, reading this book is worth every minute.

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