Pushing Ice by Alistair Reynolds

The last fifteen years or so have seen a resurgence in space opera. Moreover, space opera is not just prevalent but mush of what is being written is very good indeed. In fact, by most standards – ranging from breadth of ideas to complexity and inventivenss of the created universes to characterization to writing quality – modern space opera stands and head and shoulders above its ancestors of the 1930s and 1940s.

Numerous writers – Iain Banks, Vernor Vinge, Stephen Baxter, and others – have been major contributors to the new space opera. (I’d recommend Hartwell and Cramer’s The Space Opera Renaissance to anyone who wants a comprehensive overview.) But perhaps no one has done a better job of combining old fashioned sense of wonder with hard science and modern sensibilities, all within the scope of marvelous adventure stories, than Alastair Reynolds. Reynolds burst on the scene with Revelation Space, and followed that with three more novels in that universe. He also has produced a number of good short stories and a stand-alone novel. Pushing Ice is also a standalone novel, not related to the Revelation Space universe. Yet, like his earlier novels, it’s marvelously inventive.

The story starts in the relatively near future and first looks to be an adventure story set in the solar system. But, in a series of steps, Reynolds leaps further and further into the future, at each step unveiling more wonders. The Rockhopper is a ship of miners who push ice – that is, mine icy comets. As the novel starts, though, a spectacular event causes them to abandon the comet they are working on. Saturn’s moon Janus suddenly left its orbit and is in the processing of leaving the solar system. Rockhopper is the only ship in position for a flyby – mankind’s only chance to get a good look at whatever alien technology is driving Janus. At this point, the novel seems to be a B.D.O. (big dumb object) story, akin to Rendezvous with Rama. But that all changes when Rockhopper is caught in Janus’s wake, pulled along with it out of the solar system at a speed very close to that of light toward Spica, where astronomers, pointing their telescopes, have detected a massive artificial object in orbit. This, apparently, is Janus’s destination.

From here though, the novel continues to defy expectations. At every point when it seems it is going to settle down – whether as a B.D.O story or as the story of human’s rebuilding society on Janus – it changes gear, heading in a new direction and revealing new wonders. Reynolds deftly moves from one spectacular happening to the next, one-upping himself time after time.

The two major characters of the novel are Bella Lind and Svetlana Barseghian. Sometimes friends, often rivals, sometimes enemies. Bella is the captain of Rockhopper who makes the decision to stay with Janus, rather than making a risky attempt to escape its influence and remain in the solar system. Svetlana is an engineer who Bella overrules at several key instances; she thus blames Bella (with some justification) for their predicament. Both are stubborn to the point of mulishness and capable of holding grudges that last for decades. Both, though especially Svetlana, can be unlikable and frustrating – to the point that you want to grab them and shake them. Yet the tension between the two – mediated by Svetlana’s husband Parry Boyce – helps to center and ground the novel amidst all the spectacle of the universe around them. And every time I found myself thinking “nobody could possibly carry on a grudge for that long,” I just have to look at the news and remember that there are parts of the world where people still hold grudges over what happened centuries ago. (Or, closer to home, remember how some SF fans held grudges for decades over who was or was not excluded from the first Worldcon.)

This is a very enjoyable novel, a skillful mix of sense of wonder, adventure, and character, with a believable (if strange and wonderful) background. It comes to a satisfying conclusion (though Reynolds does leave room for a sequel, should he decide to write one). Reynolds continues to be a major force of the new space opera, and I hope to see much more from him.