Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

So: just after my recent reread of Moonseed, Stephen’s latest arrives. World Engines: Destroyer is the first in a new trilogy but involves a lead character that regular Baxter readers have met before.

From the publisher: Hundreds of years in the future, on a stagnating and almost empty Earth, a space shuttle pilot from the early days of the 21st century is awoken from the cryogenic sleep he entered after a devastating accident.

As he comes to terms with this new world, he begins to realise that their history does not match what he remembers – and that only he may be able to stop the coming catastrophe destined to destroy the planet.

Until he meets a young woman who seems to have a drive of her own, and a plan…



The character from the past is Colonel Reid Malenfant, from the Manifold series (Time, Space, Origin and Phase Space). Some readers will stop there, as Malenfant was a character that seemed to draw polarising opinions when first published. I can see why, as he’s not the most likeable person – he’s grumpy and aggressive to the point of being rude, cantankerous and annoyingly unpleasant – which did put some readers off him twenty years ago. He’s not really changed much here, either, as a fish out of water, a modern Buck Rogers in an alternate 25th century.

So why has Baxter resurrected him here? Personally, I thought of Malenfant as a character based on Baxter’s own experiences – he spent time visiting NASA in the late 1990’s and 2000’s – but then expanded and magnified. He is the dark side of the American ideal – pushy, always right (even when not), the ultimate capitalist with goals and expectations that exemplified and expanded on the lifestyle of the rich and entitled at the end of the 20th century.

Basically, he’s the logical extrapolation of the SF ideal so common in the 1950’s & 60’s, a military-trained, politically right-wing Republican, out to make a profit.

However, in this case his resurrection is ideal. What would such a character make of a world significantly changed four hundred years after his last memory?

World Engines is a story of the future as seen by an observer with little connection to the world he lives in. As such this allows him to observe and try to make sense of the environment round him, a SF-nal tradition that goes back to H G Wells (The Time Machine, The Sleeper Wakes) and Buck Rogers’ creator Philip Nowlan, if not before.

So: what does Stephen offer us here? The 25th century of this alternate Earth (clues: President Nixon assassinated in office, first man on the Moon Neil Armstrong died there) has had major changes. Physically the landscape has changed. The London Malenfant is brought back to life in (why London and not the USA? There is a reason given, but it’s not too strong an argument) has had major coastal flooding and thanks to climate change now feels almost tropical. Much of the land between London and Birmingham is once again forest, to offset the carbon emissions as much as anything.

Socially things have also changed. The world is now at peace, with ‘nations’ now become regions. The Earth’s population is down to about one million, with everyone entitled to universal credit, as created by good old Tricky Dicky Nixon. There are food replicators and AI. No-one has to work, but there is a feeling that people should volunteer assistance for the greater good when required. Where work is needed to be done, the volunteers help out. (Star Trek’s Federation would love this.)

It all sounds wonderfully bucolic, a time of peace after significant upheaval. However, hanging over everyone’s heads is the knowledge that in the year 3397 Earth will be destroyed by a collision with ‘The Destroyer’.

Malenfant has therefore been reawakened for two reasons. One is personal – a message from his long-presumed-missing wife who, lost on a mission to study an anomaly near Phobos, has asked for him. The second is for a higher purpose, namely that the Planetary AIs that have kept watch over the Earth (but note – not governed) are interested. They realise that, as a voice from the past, Malenfant is asking questions that modern day 25th century humans are not. And these questions – and their answers – may be important.

After spending the first half of the book doing very little – there’s an ongoing soap-opera dilemma between Greggson Dierdra (In the future surnames are given first) , the young human who has volunteered to look after Malenfant, and her mother Greggson Mica and her partner Prefect Morrel Jonas, but most of the first part of the book is Malenfant looking at (and trying to make sense of) some sort of Logan’s Run-type future.

The book only started to get interesting for me once the decision had been made to take Malenfant, Diedra and an android named Bartholomew who is Malenfant’s medical support into Space. We are wheeled through a series of Grand-Tour phases – Earth to Space Station near the Moon, Moon to Phobos – before finally getting to examine the mystery.

They meet Emma pretty quickly, and although Emma knows Malenfant, it is quickly determined that this is not the Emma Stoney Malenfant married, but one from an alternate Earth in 2005. Further investigations lead to the big revelation that Phobos appears to be a point where different universes at different times meet. Malenfant, Dierdra, Emma II and Bartholomew meet Vladimir Viktorenko, a Russian from a universe where in the 21st century there is war between Russia and the USA and Wing Commander Geoff Lighthill and his crew from a 2005 where Britain rules the race into space.

The big question is why this happens at Phobos, and whether such actions happen by chance or whether Phobos has been deliberately assembled by something. To discover what Malenfant has to hitch a ride to Persephone, the ninth major planet from the Sun, discovered in the late twenty-first century

After this point it all goes Cixin Liu (the clue’s in the book title) before finishing things off very quickly in order to leave a number of key plot points hanging for the next book.

This one should work. It has lots of big ideas and lots of extrapolations into alternative futures that I normally love. It’s also written in that Clarkean style of Baxter’s that I really like, that slightly detached, look-at-the-bigger-picture observational style about big events and epic timelines.
And yet… I struggled with the first half, most of which seemed unnecessary (although I guess that this may be proved wrong over the arc of the trilogy). What was the point? If it was to show that in the future Earth is rather dull (I’m sure my thought that their existence was rather like H G Wells’s Eloi is deliberate), then it served its purpose. It may be, as hinted later in the book, that it is to show how dull, safe and complacent Dierdra’s life is before Malenfant.

And then it may be the characters. Is it because Malenfant as a character is so unlikeable? It’s been an issue for me before, admittedly. It may be. However, it is noticeable that Malenfant is different in this book. Far from being the gung-ho hero of old (although he has his moments!) this time Malenfant is more of an enabler, someone who observes and at the same time is a catalyst for others to reach their goals, and it is true that the book sees Dierdra blossom from a contented youngster to an adult with a purpose.

But, ultimately I think the issue is that the first part takes such a long while to get going – about 250 pages of a 500 page-or-so book are centred here – and that it is so small scale, so focused on Malenfant, that instead of seeing this new wider world, we stay in the English Midlands where not a lot is going on, frankly. I would have liked to see more of the Earth, though there are little glimpses of the bigger picture both geographically and historically – the Sahara is now a forest, so too much of the English East Midlands, whilst London and Cape Canaveral are flooded, for example.

It is only when we get to the middle part of the book that I began to enjoy the plot. Baxter is very good at demonstrating that sense of wonder in relatively few words to create the Epic. Though it is all tell, not show, there are some brilliantly tantalising snapshots of other “what-if’s” that could be worth exploring further. I appreciated the point that the different means of getting into space are all based on some of the different ways suggested from our own timeline – in other words, not the ISS and the Space Shuttle.

The characterisation is rather amusingly portrayed with the British contingent of the Royal Air Space Force showing a supreme example of the stiff upper lip. Bartholomew as the android doctor, though, is rather annoying in his continuous grumpiness. As is Baxter’s style, there’s not too much depth going on here, although the Russian perspective broadens the palette a little.

When the bigger picture is revealed, there are interesting points raised, which regained my interest. With this in mind, I was rather surprised to find that the last part was disappointing, though. Instead of inspiring, in some sort of Space:1999 gesture, there’s a needless tension created with pulp fiction science* and a cliff-hanger that after 500+ pages of build-up is an abrupt let-down. There are still major unknowns here.

To sum up, then, there’s a lot of World Engines I liked, but I can also see why others might not. Whilst parts were good, it is a very unevenly paced read. Is it the best place to start reading his books? Probably not, although there is a lot to like. As much as I wanted to like it, and was looking forward to reading it, ultimately this felt like it was not one of Baxter’s best, and in the end it was a disappointment overall. Whilst I will read the next book in the series, this sadly isn’t one to wholeheartedly recommend to others.





*To be fair, Stephen in his Afterword does point out current scientific research on such possibilities, which you can follow up on, if you wish.

Reid Malenfant was a shuttle pilot in the 21st century. Following a disastrous flight he is cryogenically frozen in the hope that he can be thawed again sometime in the future. That time has come & Malenfant wakes into a very different world several hundred years into the future.

I have been reading a lot of post-apocalyptic science fiction in recent years so it was am interesting change to be back with more “old school” sci-fi akin to the traditional Arthur C. Clarke & Isaac Asimov works.

This book took me a long time to read. It is a good size book with a fairly complex story. However, there is a lot of science in this book and it was important to get my head round at least the basics to understand the book. I wanted to do this book justice so took the time to read it thoroughly.

This is a complex book with a lot going on. We have a wide range of characters from different timescales and a whole new future world to come to terms with. However, it is very well constructed with excellent characters.

I am reluctant to say more about this book. I do think it is important that you learn things at the same time as Malefant. Spoilers really would spoil this book.

Suffice to say this was a fantastic read with a great story, good characters & a world that I would very much like to come back to. I had a slight wobble about the ending but with hindsight I am not sure how else it could have finished. I really hope that this is a series to be continued. I really must hunt out more of Stephen Baxter’s work having previously only encountered him in the “Long Earth” series with Terry Pratchett.

I received a free copy of this book via Netgally.

I read the Long Earth series written with Terry Pratchett and I was curious to read something written only by Stephen Baxter.
The blurb sound promising and I can say I wasn't disappointed.
It's a great sci-fi novel, well written and gripping. I loved the amazing world building, the fleshed out cast of characters and the plot.
I look forward to reading other works by this author.
Highly recommended!
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

This review is based upon a proof copy provided to me free of charge by Netgalley and the publishers, and does not influence my opinion in anyway..
This is the sort of stuff I want Stephen Baxter to write more of! High concept science fiction covering things on a cosmic scale. To be honest, the minute I knew that this featured versions of characters from the Manifold Trilogy I was hooked on reading this, and it does not disappoint. Some of the science behind the fiction was, a little too far above my physics GCE knowledge but that does not stop it from being enjoyable so go with the flow and enjoy the ride. Wonderful book, and if this is the first of a new series which the ending implies it will be, then great, and I will look forward to reading it in future...

I have never read any books by this author before (I will be correcting that soonest) I read the synopsis and thought it could be interesting, maybe a book to read indoors on a rainy day, it’s so much better than I expected, I was immediately drawn in to the story and the characters arcs, great science combined with better fiction, highly recommended