 First edition | |
| Author | Stephen Baxter |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Chris Moore |
| Language | English |
| Series | NASA Trilogy |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Publisher | Voyager (UK) |
Publication date | 18 July 1997 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 581 (hardback) |
| ISBN | 0-00-225424-7 |
| OCLC | 37950953 |
| Preceded by | Voyage |
| Followed by | Moonseed |
Titan is a 1997science fiction novel by British writerStephen Baxter. The book depicts a crewed mission toTitan—the enigmatic moon ofSaturn—which has a thick atmosphere and a chemical makeup that some think may contain the building blocks of life.Titan was nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1998.[1]
The novel explores a range of possible attitudes toward space exploration and science in the early twenty-first century in which he lays down his concerns aboutanti-intellectualism and the loss of thepioneering spirit in modern American politics and culture. InTitan, theUnited States is ruled by afundamentalist ChristianPresident named Xavier Maclachlan who, believing Earth is the centre of the universe, orders the equal treatment of thePtolemaic model of theSolar System in high school curricula, all the while youth culture goes into a rebellious downward spiral with the widespread adoption of digital entertainment technology. Due to its far-rightisolationist policies, the United States have severed ties with the rest of the world (including within themselves with seceding nation-states), especially while tensions grow with the emerging power ofChina, which is engaged in a determined bid to gain control of space after the AmericanShuttle program comes crashing down with the loss ofColumbia (but not in the same way asactual events. In this timeline, instead of disintegrating on re-entry the shuttle makes an irreparable crash landing with the loss of two of the crew), andNASA has no public or political support to help recover from the accident. Consequently, under the militaristic Maclachlan's executive plans, the US military merges with the space agency for its resources to be diverted into defence spending, including using its space-faring vehicles asweapons platforms and forcing NASA to develop ethnically targeted biological weapons tailored to attack theChinese.
Amid this negative climate and seeing no future for themselves after the permanent shutdown of the space program or for the decadent future of humanity, a small team of scientists and astronauts consisting of Paula Bencerraf, a survivor of the Columbia disaster, Isaac Rosenberg, a JPL scientist, Siohban Libet and Nicola Mott, two International Space Station astronauts and lovers, and Bill Angel, an astronaut, must persuade NASA to fund a crewed mission toTitan to confirm findings of life from theCassini and to rejuvenate interest in space exploration to the world. They do so by recycling older spacecraft for several purposes: space shuttleAtlantis isrefitted to carry cargo into orbit as well as a restoredSaturn V for construction of the main ship (a heavily modified version ofDiscovery using the ShuttleOMS engines for chemical propulsion and powered by aTOPAZ nuclear reactor), using habitat modules from the mothballedInternational Space Station, andApollo re-entry capsules are adapted to become Titan landers. On the day of the last launch to begin the mission, with the shuttleEndeavour ready to carry the crew to space, an insaneUSAF general driven by shallow militarism and hatred for space exploration tries to shoot down the shuttle during lift off. Despite damage sustained from ananti-satellite missile fired from a restoredX-15,Endeavour successfully makes it into orbit, and the five crew members begin their six-year journey to Saturn by using a chain ofGravity assist similar to that used byCassini.
En route, Siohban Libet, one of the astronauts, dies after a solar storm. The use of aCELSSgreenhouse for life support provides a continuous food supply, and the astronauts rely on vegetables, grain and fruit from the greenhouse as they travel on, and recycle waste viasupercritical water oxidation. But things take a dark turn as funding and support for resupply and Earth-return retrieval are cut by Maclachlan's administration (proposed and carried out by the very same men that tried to shoot the shuttle down), leaving the team with no hope for survival beyond what they may find on Titan. Once they reach Saturn and prepare to land on Titan's surface, another crew member is lost during the landing procedure with another effectively crippled. Titan is discovered to be a bleak, freezing dwarf-planet containing liquidethane oceans, a sticky mud-like surface composed oftholins, and a climate which includes a thick atmosphere of purpleorganic compounds falling like snow from the clouds; and the only traces of life they find are fossilised remains of microbic bacteria similar to those recovered fromMartian meteorites. The remaining astronauts relay their findings back to a largely uninterested Earth.
Meanwhile, the Chinese, to retaliate for biological attacks by the US, send an astronaut (incidentally the first Chinese to go into space) to cause a huge explosion next to anasteroid (2002OA) in a suicide attack, with the aim of deflecting it into Earth orbit and threatening the world with targeted precision strikes in the future. Unfortunately, their calculations are wrong as they didn't take into account the size of the asteroid which could cause aCretaceous–Paleogene extinction event. The asteroid strikes Earth, critically damaging the planetary ecosystem. The Titan team members are presumably the last humans left alive.
As the surviving astronauts slowly die of disease and in-fighting, they decide to try to ensure life will continue to survive: they take a flask ofbacteria and drop it into a crater filled with liquid water, in the hope that some form of life will develop.
The novel's final sequence depicts the final two crew members returned to life through some unspecified alien process on Titan where they died, several billion years in the future. The Sun has entered itsred giant phase, warming the Saturnian system and aiding the evolution of life, in the form of strange, intelligent beetle-like creatures, on Titan. The astronauts watch as the creatures build a fleet of slowInterstellar probe toseed newplanetary systems before the expanding Sun boils off the surface of the moon.
The depiction of Titan's surface is speculation based on respectable scientific data that was available in 1997—in fact the book "Lifting Titan's Veil"[2] notes that Baxter's story paraphrases closely sections of papers by Lorenz on raindrops on Titan and the geomorphology of crater lakes. TheCassini probe's study of Titan, which began in 2005,[3] would confirm the existence of bodies of liquid[4] on the moon.
