Two Tales of Titan

This review originally posted to Dueling Modems, 1 October 2001.

Half Life by Hal Clement, and Titan by Stephen Baxter (and containing spoilers for both)




Two books that I read within a few weeks of each other, both dealing with the Saturnian satellite Titan—the idea of comparing the two seemed obvious to me. There are some actual similarities, too, but the experience of reading them seemed very different to me.

Half Life reads as a tour-de-force by Clement. Throughout the story, no two of the characters are ever in the same room at the same time (although they're physically close to each other throughout and sometimes serially in the same room). In this vision of the future, humanity has been attacked by dozens of new or mutated diseases, to the point where healthy, fertile people are a rarity and basically everyone is in perpetual quarantine.

The characters in the novel have been sent to explore Titan—its chemistry is similar to that of prebiotic Earth, and there's hope that studying it might give a clue to curing the fantastically virulent diseases threatening the survival of humanity.

The story deals with the exploration of Titan. Because all characters are ill with different diseases, they can't ever meet face to face, so all conversations happen over what amount to walkie-talkies. Although there is some incident, it's basically a story of scientific effort leading to discovery. The climax is when one protagonist solves a difficult puzzle, and then the story ends.

I don't feel Half Life was entirely successful. I'm the kind of person who reads history of science books for fun, so I suspect I'm in Clement's target audience, but I didn't find it particularly compelling. The characters are mostly uninteresting to me, I didn't find the (vestigial) plot all that compelling, and the final puzzle solution I found plain implausible. Definitely not Clement's best.




On the other hand, Titan was both depressing and irritating to read, while offering nothing to this reader. The title, it would seem, should really be Bitterness, because the whole novel reads like a fictionalized treatise on how stupid certain people are, notably opponents of the space program (and science in general). In this novel, another Shuttle crash combined with the rise of a viciously Creationist, anti-intellectual pseudo-Fascist movement to political power in the USA ends the civilian space program. As a sort of final spasm, everyone interested in space travel manages to get approval for a manned (one-way) mission to Titan, using up all the remaining Shuttle equipment, along with the completed components of the International Space Station and mothballed Saturn V boosters.

How bitter is it? The Luddite/Creationist forces manage to mandate the teaching of Aristotle's physics in school (because anything newer contravenes the Bible). The US Air Force is presented as nearly omnipotent villains. Presented in a really odd, off-kilter manner, at that—the Air Force is shown as shooting at the Shuttle during the launch of the Titan crew. The whole military part of the book is weird. A full shooting war takes place (entirely off-stage!) when China invades to reconquer Taiwan, and the only US military involvement is by the Air Force—the Navy, Marines and Army don't seem to exist. Why? Either Baxter is ignorant, or he didn't give any thought at all to the matter. Every military officer shown in the book is in fact a villain.

How bitter is it? The space opponents and militarists combine to exterminate the human race. The militarists (including the bizarre germ-warfare developing Air Force [because only the Air Force can exist]) threaten the Chinese so much that they drop an asteroid off the US Eastern Seaboard. Unfortunately (and utterly implausibly) the Chinese make a truly ludicrous miscalculation and drop a dinosaur-killer instead of a mere culture-destroyer and whoops! No more humans.

This leaves the Titan expedition exploring for no one's benefit, really. The only ray of hope Baxter offers is that a future civilization of ammonia-based life gets samples of surviving Earth-type life descended from the human explorers and their samples, and spreads it to other stars. That's right, the "hopeful" ending is that life with some biochemical similarity to our own biosphere arises on other star systems.

How bitter is it? There's a weird epilogue (so described by a character!) in which the last two humans to survive are resurrected by the "ammonos" billions of years in the future. Dramatically it's clear why: someone has to be around to witness the alien panspermia project. By internal logic it's nuts: these aliens have the ability to restore people dead for longer than vertebrates have existed to this date to life, and they do it to . . . study them? What could they possibly want to learn? How can they make them healthier than they were at the ends of their lives, and younger-looking, if they don't understand mammalian biology impossibly well?

And why don't they resurrect the other humans who died on Titan and were buried and frozen there?

And how do they revive the woman who died and wasn't frozen? She drowned in very cold but not frozen water that she herself had just infected with decay organisms.

And why is this bitterness? Because the main thing one of the resurrected people does is complain that the future he's in is the one that should have existed during his (original) lifetime.

And there's way more bitterness in the book—like hatred of the next generation, that standard of all writers over 30. In Baxter's future, literally no one after his (and my) generation invents anything except new forms of stupid youth culture.

It's just a tremendous outpouring of bile and vitriol, most unpleasant to read.




Interestingly, there are incidents in common between the two novels. Both have the biochemical effects of human bodies on Titanian evolution as key points, both have the human race in danger of extinction, both have a base on Titan being built by hand labor.

If you want to read a novel about Titan, I strongly suggest Half Life (which at least has a great pun for a title) over Titan.

Poking holes in bad movies

I really do nitpick for a hobby. One place I use as an outlet is Jabootu's Bad Movie Dimension. I got into the online bad movie reviewing thing via being a big fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000. I found several of the bad movie review sites hilarious, but being me I started sending correction sheets to the proprietors. One such was Ken Begg, chief acolyte of Jabootu.

Ken is a very funny writer. Also prone to mistakes. I volunteered as a proofreader, and was accepted.

I don't think Ken really believes I enjoy proofreading for him. He keeps doing stuff like thanking me. For a person with my personality, though, removing a bunch of mistakes from good writing (so it's easier to read) is gratifying. I like doing it.

Anyway, check out the Bad Movie Dimension.

NItpicking: the explanation

... or, why this exists. Basically, I read a lot. Sometimes I watch video or listen to music or something. I wanted a place to state opinions on all of that. This blog is it.

Why "nitpicking"? Because I compulsively nitpick. According to my mom, my very first sentence was a correction. Stopped at a railroad crossing, she said, "Look at the choo-choo!" to 10-month-old me.

And I said, "Not choo-choo, mommy. Twain!"

I've been correcting people ever since.

You can expect to find lots of book reviews here, with occasional movie, comic book, or other reviews. You can also expect to read about I-CON, the science fiction convention I work for.

I love comments. I love to talk.

What you won't find here is personal stuff. Anything about my personal life is likely to be in my private newsgroup at Dueling Modems. I like that interface better, and I can restrict who sees that more conveniently.

Welcome. Hope you like it here.