Moonseed

Moonseed (1999) by Stephen Baxter
HarperCollins — ISBN 006105903X
Condition: Good

The Moon has traditionally been regarded as one of the safer astronomical objects. It hangs in the sky, influences the tides, provides employment for werewolves and occasionally allows conspiracy theorists to explain why Stanley Kubrick was apparently given an unusually complicated government contract. Stephen Baxter, however, looks at the Moon and asks the much more useful question: what if bringing a tiny piece of it back to Earth turned out to be an absolutely catastrophic idea?

Welcome to Moonseed, a disaster novel in which the disaster is not content with merely knocking over a city or inconveniently closing several airports. Baxter prefers his catastrophes geological, planetary and accompanied by calculations.

At the centre of events is Henry Meacher, a geologist and former astronaut whose involvement with a sample of Moon rock leads to the discovery of something profoundly unpleasant. The material contains — or has become associated with — a mysterious substance dubbed Moonseed, which begins interacting with terrestrial matter.

And by “interacting,” we do not mean politely.

The Moonseed consumes and transforms material, spreading through the Earth’s geology with increasingly alarming consequences. At first the effects can be interpreted as isolated anomalies. Unfortunately, isolated anomalies in Stephen Baxter novels have a tendency to become continental emergencies approximately three chapters later.

Soon the stability of the planet itself is in question.

Earthquakes, volcanic activity and geological destruction follow as humanity discovers that the apparently solid world beneath its feet is perhaps rather more temporary than everybody had assumed. Civilisation, which has invested considerable money in roads, cities and buildings on the understanding that continents generally remain where they were left overnight, suddenly faces an awkward renegotiation of the arrangement.

Baxter is particularly good at this sort of thing because he understands that destroying the world is much more frightening when somebody explains the geology first.

The science gives Moonseed its particular flavour. This isn’t simply a mysterious glowing substance which does whatever the plot requires while scientists stare at computer screens and announce that they have “never seen anything like it.” Baxter grounds the escalating catastrophe in planetary science, geology and space exploration, building an apocalypse which feels disturbingly physical.

Rocks matter.

Fault lines matter.

The internal structure of planets matters.

And suddenly that geology lesson you weren’t paying attention to at school has become extremely relevant.

The scale steadily expands from individual discovery to global catastrophe, while the human story remains focused on the people attempting to understand what is happening and determine whether anything can be done about it. Governments react, scientists investigate and ordinary people attempt to survive while the Earth itself becomes increasingly unreliable.

Naturally, space becomes part of the solution.

Baxter has always been fascinated by humanity’s relationship with the Moon and by the strange historical fact that people actually walked there and then, having accomplished one of civilisation’s most extraordinary achievements, largely stopped going. Moonseed taps into that frustration, mixing disaster fiction with an enthusiasm for spaceflight and the possibility that humanity’s future may depend upon becoming rather less attached to a single planet.

Which becomes particularly persuasive when that planet is disintegrating.

There is something gloriously Baxterian about the scale of the whole enterprise. Many disaster novels threaten New York, London or perhaps California. Baxter looks at this and apparently concludes that the planetary mantle has been getting off suspiciously lightly.

The result combines the pleasures of a traditional disaster thriller — escalating danger, desperate scientific investigation, political decisions and enormous things going catastrophically wrong — with the intellectual machinery of hard science fiction. You get destruction, certainly, but you are also likely to learn something while civilisation collapses.

Think of it as educational Armageddon.

Published in 1999, Moonseed also belongs to an interesting moment in spaceflight history. The Apollo missions were already decades in the past, while the renewed lunar programmes of the twenty-first century were still largely aspirations. Baxter’s vision reflects both nostalgia for the heroic age of lunar exploration and impatience with humanity’s failure to push much farther outward.

His message is not exactly subtle: keeping every member of your species on one geological object may eventually prove to have been poor risk management.

This HarperCollins edition is offered in Good condition. It shows ordinary signs of previous ownership and reading but remains entirely intact, which is more than can confidently be said for the Earth during substantial portions of the novel.

No unusual grey material has been observed consuming the pages.

Crappy Old Books nevertheless recommends sensible storage away from valuable geological formations, just in case.

Ideal for readers who enjoy hard science fiction, enormous disaster novels, planetary science, space exploration and stories in which scientists discover that something impossible is happening and then have the deeply unenviable task of explaining it to governments.

Also recommended for anyone who has ever looked at a Moon rock in a museum and thought, “I wonder what would happen if we brought more of that stuff down here?”

Stephen Baxter has considered the question.

Perhaps don’t.

Crappy Old Books verdict: Humanity brings home a piece of the Moon. The piece of the Moon begins eating the Earth. Geologists become extremely important. Suddenly going back into space seems like an excellent idea. Another cheerful reminder that in a Stephen Baxter novel, the phrase “interesting scientific discovery” should generally be treated as an evacuation warning.

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