For QTL’s first summer book club, I chose a book I had not yet read, because I really wanted to expose the rest of the reviewers (besides Andrew of course) to some harder science fiction. Now, in my opinion, hard science fiction is a pretty loaded term, but I think it does a decent job of explaining a type of process that certain writers engage in. Alastair Reynolds is someone who falls into that sweeping generalization for me, and so I decided to expose everyone to the cold depths of space and despair with his standalone Pushing Ice.
It’s the year 2057, and Rockhopper is on a routine ice pushing mission. But when the captain, Bella Lind, is informed that one of Saturn’s moons, Janus, is breaking away from its well-known orbit, the Rockhopper is the only ship within the vicinity that has a chance of catching up to it and seeing just what the hell is going on. With a slim majority, the ship’s work force votes to follow it so they can shadow it for five days before returning home. But as the ship gets nearer to the clearly alien object that was once an iceball, something is awry as the ship and the object are travelling faster than calculated. It isn’t long before the ship is light-years from Earth, with no chance at returning to the time they were from. Not to mention, there are divisions within the crew that will only be heightened by the distance and the burdensome problems that plague the Rockhopper.
When I read Reynold’s, I’m ready for his understanding of astrophysics blended with deep existential dread about the nature of the universe and his belief in humanity’s potential despite its many contradictions. Pushing Ice delivers on all three of these fronts, even if some of the scaffolding is built from some of the weaker characters that Reynolds has written. It’s an incredible ride that will have you biting your nails while questioning your own place within the wider universe. Pushing Ice plays no games and offers some particularly brutal death scenarios that can be relegated to “workplace incidents” after pushing the workforce too hard. More on this later.
It all feels well delivered through Reynolds’ prose as well. He has this matter-of-fact style that really highlights just how bonkers a situation can become. It’s not exactly dry or overly technical, but it has those qualities. It’s a perpetual straight man telling you that physics has spun so far out of control that all you can do is hang on with a spoon and a balloon animal that really sells it for me. He’s very good at explaining a problem without lording it over you. The same goes for the solutions.
Where I had a little issue with enjoying Pushing Ice as a story is within the characterizations. Generally, the characters are all serviceable to the plot, even if one of them sort of disappears into a sort of two-dimensional hole in the latter half of the book. The human emotions on display and the vendettas feel real. How would you treat a friend in a position of power who made a choice to doom you to an eternity outside the solar system you call home? I found myself frustrated by the actions of that character, but I think it stems more from that lack of despair on display. I think if there had been more emotional processing of the events, especially in the latter half of the story, these actions would feel more justified, even if they still are irrational.
Something I really want to highlight about Pushing Ice is the concept of the incident pit. Essentially, the pit starts with a single incident that can rapidly spin out of control as solutions and issues cascade to a point of no return. The novel plays with the idea in several smaller scenarios involving individual lives. One particularly horrifying event involves a near miss, but the person almost killed by gravity has their heat vents blocked by space concrete, and would be cooked alive in a matter of time due to waste heat not escaping. It’s a showcase that these people’s lives are a physics equation away from death. The entirety of the novel’s plot itself is one giant incident pit as reality and physics start to unmoor the ice pushers from time. To even conceptualize their existence in this thought experiment approaches hyperobject proportions, but the narrative is grounded in this small group’s particular struggle as the aeons go by unnoticed.
The reason why I bring it up is that despite being locked in this inescapable conundrum, these people continue to work to survive. They have the know-how, they have some technology from which to bootstrap some solutions, but often run into bottlenecks or technological walls that stop them from pushing ever forward. And yet they look at that boulder and push it, as they consistently say within the story itself, “we push ice. It’s what we do.” These people are trapped in their own reality with their co-workers. Sure they are friendly, they have to be. They live in close quarters on long spaceflights to grab ice comets. But this is not the time or place that they chose. These are not the people they want to survive an apocalypse with. But it’s who they are stuck with.
Though I don’t think Pushing Ice is an allegory for climate change, I think you can read it as a metaphor for it. We are very clearly facing many crises on many fronts with inactive leaders choosing to barrel towards the center of the pit. The novel is both bleak in its outlook, but optimistic in its sense of potential for survival. Humans as individuals will fight to their bitter end, and so will societies. It plays with the idea that societies are designed to push the boulders they are dealt, and adapt as the boulders and hills change.
So what are we to do as mortal beings locked in the time, place and crises that we are faced with? We are unmoored from the reality we were taught to exist within, time having been accelerated by the very economic systems we have to live in. We’re trapped with people not of our own choosing, straddled with the choice of falling in, or scrabbling to climb out without the promise of seeing the edge of the pit. And I’ll be reall with y’all, it fucking blows that we’re trapped here with this choice. But it’s not like human existence has been rosy to this point. Human history is a series of incident pits, or maybe one long giant one where we’ve finally hit the circle at the drain moment. I personally don’t think that’s a healthy mentality, which is why I choose the hard scrabble to give the next generations a fighting chance to crawl a little higher, a little farther. The only way out of the dark is through it and eventually you’re going to join it regardless. And if I’m going to die, I’d rather go down fighting.
Pushing Ice, though it’s been around a long time, still has lessons to offer. It’s Reynolds doing the thing I like him most for, staring into the darkness, knowing it will never balk, but challenging it anyway. It’s bleak, it’s exciting, and it feels grounded despite its absurd premise. It’s not as optimistic as say House of Suns, but it hits some similar notes in a very different key (okay, roast me music people, I have no idea what I’m talking about).
Rating: Pushing Ice Push it good, push it real good.
-Alex
