One of the
interesting phenomenon I observe in science fiction is the group of fans who
believe that hard sf is the true sf. The
‘science’ in ‘science fiction’ being the ultimate litmus test, writers like
Larry Niven, Gregory Benford, Paul McAuley, Stephen Baxter are revered as gods,
Greg Egan perhaps the ruling deity.
Having a strong preference for works which foreground extrapolation on
existing knowledge, their forums and blogs revel in the technical details and theoretical
underpinning of their favorite authors’ conceptions. Looking at its title, and then perusing Ian
Sales' blog It Doesn’t Have to be Right…it just has to sound plausible would give the appearance that the
author would be subject to such discussion.
But if there was any doubt, his 2012 BSFA winning novella Adrift on the Sea of Rains clinches it.
What Mike
at Potpourri of Science Fiction Literature rightfully identifies as an “unabashed glorification of the
heydays of NASA”, Adrift on the Sea of
Rains fictionalizes in-depth research of the Apollo program, both
conceptual and actual, to produce a Cold War alternate history that has a very
real, very hard sf feel. In the story,
the US has established a lunar base in an attempt to stay one step ahead of the
USSR. A small group of astronauts and
scientists calling Falcon base home, the story opens some time after a nuclear
war on Earth has left them stranded with no contact. Only a few months of provisions remaining,
the group, captained by Peterson, must deal with isolation, lack of morale, and
character inter-tension as best they can staring down their fate. But when a radio signal is picked up from
Earth one day—the first since nuclear hostilities, the hope of seeing Earth
once again rises.
Like a pig
in the mud of space technology—lunar modules, space shuttles, orbiting
stations, space suits, etc., Adrift on
the Sea of Rains at times reads like the science fiction novel Tom Clancy
never wrote. Sales loading one half of
the narrative with acronyms, tech (both real and alternate history), gear,
equipment, physics, etc. no doubt is left: the novella is HARD sf. And if this is not convincing enough, roughly
twenty of the novella’s seventy or so pages are dedicated to a glossary of
terms and a bibliography detailing Sales’ sources of data and inspirations. Such a quantity, in fact, there are a couple
of moments that the detail overwhelms.
One part of Peterson’s story, for example, briefly crosses the line from
fiction into technical manual. Something
akin Ron Howard’s Apollo 13 in terms
of content, for NASA junkies or those interested in the tactile details of what
mankind has achieved in space thus far, the story will melt like caramel.
The other
half of Adrift on the Sea of Rains is
prose of a more personal, more human nature.
Offsetting the technical detail, the time Sales spends inside the heads
of his characters likewise has a realistic feel. None of the astronauts a classic Heinleinian
hero, they are men and women, scientists and pilots, watching their lives
dwindle away, reacting in those subtle ways that trained, civilized,
intelligent people do: controlled but straining at the leash. The limits imposed on them undesirable but
sufferable, there are no grand melodramatics that such a scenario would lead
to, and have lead to, in other genre stories.
Thus, for as much technical detail their external lives are described in,
Sales keeps his approach to their inner humanity likewise at a realistic level,
much to the benefit of the story.
In the
end, Adrift on the Sea of Rains is
hard sf with human interest—otherwise known as geeking out embedded with true emotion—that
will appeal to anyone interested in a realistic vision of the possibilities for
NASA and the Apollo program in the 70s and 80s.
The first of a series of novellas from Sales, it is one facet to a
projected four-sided object. Each of the three novellas to follow intended to present alternate facets of the Apollo program,
Sales’ larger intentions - the qualities of said object - are just waiting to be
defined by comparison. What isn’t
waiting are the results of the litmus test: this is hard sf.
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