World Engines: Creator
{4.5/5} “This… this super Earth in a lifeless Solar System, stuffed with samples of lost life from the real Earth. To show us what we missed? This is clearly a comparative exercise. But I doubt very much it is for our benefit.”
World Engines: Creator by Stephen Baxter, published in 2020
Reid Malenfant and his motley crew emerge into a reality where the planet Persephone exists where Mars usually is. They find people living there, so they decide to land. While descending he sees an arc of electric blue — and then they crash. Later he finds the same thing happened to the people who live there — and for them it’s the year 1992.
This is the sequel to World Engines: Destroyer.
It’s about enslaving people who are not quite human because it’s thought to be necessary — and to protect the rest of the population from disease. It’s about building a rocket, and how different forms of life might evolve in different places.
It’s particularly worth reading for Baxter’s speculation about how history could go different ways, and what beings of unimaginable power, the World Engineers, are up to in the Solar System.
The promise of the duology is fulfilled — you won’t be able to put it down once you’re in the last section. It contains some startling ideas.
I’ve read 16 books by Baxter.