I worried this novel might fail to set itself apart from so many similar disaster movies. Happily, this fear proved unfounded. Sunstorm is the thinking audience’s answer to popcorn disaster flicks. It trades fast-paced action and thin plot for a more compelling and engrossing science-based drama. This is not to say the book lacks entertainment value. It has plenty.After a mellow start, Sunstorm steadily builds in pace and scope until a grand climax. As with part one of the trilogy, Time’s Eye, I was struck by a certain richness in Stephen Baxter’s narrative style. (I’m assuming Baxter did the majority of the writing). The richness comes from his ability to blend ample doses of technical material with a well-constructed plot. His writing is more technical than Arthur C. Clarke’s. Still, for my literary taste, Baxter’s narration oscillates at a pleasing rate between the technological and the emotional. Sunstorm exhibits a great deal of humanity as the characters deal with the very real challenges of extended space flight. Yes, they are a fairly generic ensemble, but genuine nonetheless. I found several moments of the book haunting as an army of astronauts braced for the coming sun storm. Alas, I can’t say this novel was especially fresh or innovating relative to its native genre: sci-fi. Still, as a big fan of Clarke’s space odysseys, I enjoyed this reimagining. Reimaging allows Baxter to update the science while staying true to the core themes and philosophy Clarke established in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Here are a couple of my favorite lines from the book as teasers: “…this was a deep-rooted place, where the bones of the dead lay crowded a hundred generations deep in the ground.” (pg 336) “The crazies are the ones who think they understand it all.” (pg 104)
En un futuro relativamente cercano, un día recibimos los efectos de una tormenta solar como no hemos recibido antes. Una civilización tan dependiente de la electrónica como la nuestra sufre las consecuencias, prácticamente como un pulso electromagnético que arrasa con la mayoría de comunicaciones y sistemas.Esto ya es bastante malo, caos generalizado pero podemos salir adelante. Pero cuando se buscan respuestas y se ve que es solo el anticipo de una tormenta masiva mucho peor, que acabará con toda vida en la Tierra arrasando con todo, evaporando los mares y dejándonos sin atmósfera, algo habrá que hacer como especie para intentar sobrevivir. El mayor reto al que nos hemos enfrentado... y parece todo demasiada casualidad, algo falla aquí.Se puede leer sin la primera, el personaje que hace de unión apenas influye en la historia salvo para unirlo con la primera y dar pie a la tercera parte de la saga. Se centra en el enorme desafío ante una extinción segura y cómo nos buscamos la vida para intentar salir de esta... y no todos remamos en la misma dirección. Buen desarrollo, planteando toda la ingeniería necesaria como algo pausible y no tan lejano. Un futuro puesto aquí a 20 años vista que no habría que descartar (bueno, esperemos que el sol no se ponga a estornudar un día de estos tb), con momentos llamativos como la posibilidad de IAs planetarias y sus personalidades. Lástima que fuera la última novela de Clarke y la tercera fuera escrita solo por Baxtor, supongo que por eso aún estamos esperando a que la traduzcan
What do You think about Sunstorm (2006)?
This is probably the worst Clarke’s book (because, admit it, who cares about Baxter?) I’ve read. Not that it’s bad, and it does keep you engrossed and turning pages from the very beginning, but:-the scenario has not the grand scope that Clarke has gotten us used to and the idea is far than original (the sun is going to destroy the Earth? Come on, this is Hollywood stuff!). The first book of the trilogy was much more original and interesting as a premise-He’s using many of today’s ideas and facts as bases for tomorrow’s achievement – for instance, Google has turned into a self-conscious legal entity. Or that the EU has turned into the Eurasian Union (and the UK is still a country of euro-skepticals). This reads rather cheaply, extending current and latest trends into the future. This is not originality, and is easy to do.-Clarke always had a huge love for science, but why he feels compelled to force-feed it to us through totally fake dialogs and explanatory paragraphs, instead of quietly integrating the scientific principles into the plot is beyond me. You can’t have supposedly world-class scientists explaining to each other the basic stuff for the benefit of the reader – the dialogs feel really fake and it takes you out of it. The authors even do that with rather simple physics principles that anyone interested in SF should understand by themselves-Lamest quote I've read in a while (taken from a dialog, pp143-144): "The idea of an electromagnetic launcher dates back to the 1950s, I think. A science fiction writer. Famous in his day...". How lame is that? :6Still reading it, hope it gets better…
—Themistocles
Well, I did like it. I think I liked the first volume better, but it's hard to rate individual volumes that are really part of a trilogy. The overall concept is great, and I suppose it works best as a trilogy rather than as one enormous book. Some might find a little more didacticism than they would like in terms of the explanations of the science, but I found the information both interesting and enabling in terms of fully understanding and ppreciating the story and the sacrifices made by the various characters. We are already on the moon, and have landed probes on Mars. We'll likely have manned expeditions to mars within my lifetime and surely within the lifetimes of my children. The sheer immensity of space creates an entirely different context for the petty squabbles taking place on one small planet in one solar system. I think my biggest take from this book is a sense of looking outward and an appreciation of the fact that we are approaching a threshold that will change the world we know, much in the way that the discovery of the continents of the western hemisphere changed the Eurocentric view of western civilization.
—Robert
This was gripping. I loved the entire concept of following the life of the sun, the processes of a star. A catastrophe faces Earth - the entire solar system in fact - because of a developing anomoly set in motion over 4,000 years ago by the Firstborn. ***Spoiler***Consider first the intelligence then the patience of beings capable of calculating how to shift the orbit of a planet 15 times the size of Jupiter, spending a thousand years incrementally doing just that until it breaks free of a star
—Keith Bowden
