Anti-Ice, by Stephen Baxter

Just finished reading this, and I found it thoroughly enjoyable. Written by the author of 'Voyage', 'The Time Ships,' and several other AH works, the POD is that a small comet impacts in Antarctica, and inside it is antimatter (although it's never called that) locked magnetically away from touchign normal matter, until the ice melts...then BLAM!

The British stake the meteor, and use the anti-matter in everything from proto-nuclear warheads in the Crimean War, 'nuclear' missiles used to keep Prussia and France at bay, and to fuel a voyage to the Moon (this is the main focus of the story).

Kuralyov said:

Just finished reading this, and I found it thoroughly enjoyable. Written by the author of 'Voyage', 'The Time Ships,' and several other AH works, the POD is that a small comet impacts in Antarctica, and inside it is antimatter (although it's never called that) locked magnetically away from touchign normal matter, until the ice melts...then BLAM!

The British stake the meteor, and use the anti-matter in everything from proto-nuclear warheads in the Crimean War, 'nuclear' missiles used to keep Prussia and France at bay, and to fuel a voyage to the Moon (this is the main focus of the story).

Click to expand...

Sounds awesome. How do the Brits keep the anti-matter contained tho?

Some property of the ice keeps it from coming into contact with normal matter, until the ice melts. I remember it being stated that the ice was superconductive; however, the author cleverly manages to escape explaining how it's contained due to the fact that the primitive scientific technology at the time can't explain it.

Kuralyov said:

Some property of the ice keeps it from coming into contact with normal matter, until the ice melts. I remember it being stated that the ice was superconductive; however, the author cleverly manages to escape explaining how it's contained due to the fact that the primitive scientific technology at the time can't explain it.

Click to expand...

Sounds interesting--but how do they chip off a piece without the whole thing going *ka-boom*?

Doctor What said:

Sounds interesting--but how do they chip off a piece without the whole thing going *ka-boom*?

Click to expand...

I've just started reading this, so I'll try and get back to you on that, assuming that you remember asking so many moons ago.

So far I've been enjoying it. The Victorian-style narration is just wonderful.

Doctor What said:

Sounds interesting--but how do they chip off a piece without the whole thing going *ka-boom*?

Click to expand...

Well, most of the major processing of anti-ice seems to be done in Antarctica, where temperature really isn't an issue. My guess is that all the anti-ice needed for export is broken up in Antarctica, then shipped to Britain in dewar flasks.

I'm about a third of the way in, and the book has really become a compendium for just about every Crazy Victorian-Era Megaproject you can imagine. The Brits have managed to bridge the Channel with monorail lines supported by giant pylons on pontoons, they've build a "land liner," which seems to be an ocean liner with wheels, and Josiah Traveller, the Da Vinci of anti-ice, has his spaceship that just keeps reminding me of the one Wallace and Gromit built in their basement.

Ivan Druzhkov said:

Well, most of the major processing of anti-ice seems to be done in Antarctica, where temperature really isn't an issue. My guess is that all the anti-ice needed for export is broken up in Antarctica, then shipped to Britain in dewar flasks.

I'm about a third of the way in, and the book has really become a compendium for just about every Crazy Victorian-Era Megaproject you can imagine. The Brits have managed to bridge the Channel with monorail lines supported by giant pylons on pontoons, they've build a "land liner," which seems to be an ocean liner with wheels, and Josiah Traveller, the Da Vinci of anti-ice, has his spaceship that just keeps reminding me of the one Wallace and Gromit built in their basement.

Click to expand...

Yeah, that's about it. I've had a copy for quite a while now, and dust it off every once in a while. It's a nice Victoria-wank.

They basically chip off the ice in antarctica while it's too cold for it to blow up, and then ship it home in regrigerators. It's interesting to think that all that was holding people back from this kind of a tech was not having a power-source.

Amerigo Vespucci said:

Yeah, that's about it. I've had a copy for quite a while now, and dust it off every once in a while. It's a nice Victoria-wank.

Click to expand...

I think his real triumph of steampunk comes in The Timeships, his sequel to the Time Machine. There’s a short sequence in the first third of the book where the Traveller ends up in a 1938 where WWI never ended. By then, all the cities in Europe are covered in immense concrete and steel Domes in which the civilian population huddle other, leaving the countryside to the bombs. War is fought with these great contraptions called Juggernauts, which resemble A7V Sturmpanzerwagens, only bulkier, as well as with clockwork missiles, heavy bomber aircraft, and gas of all descriptions. Imagine Iron Storm, but even crazier, and you’ll get a picture of what this world’s like.

Ivan Druzhkov said:

I think his real triumph of steampunk comes in The Timeships, his sequel to the Time Machine. There’s a short sequence in the first third of the book where the Traveller ends up in a 1938 where WWI never ended. By then, all the cities in Europe are covered in immense concrete and steel Domes in which the civilian population huddle other, leaving the countryside to the bombs. War is fought with these great contraptions called Juggernauts, which resemble A7V Sturmpanzerwagens, only bulkier, as well as with clockwork missiles, heavy bomber aircraft, and gas of all descriptions. Imagine Iron Storm, but even crazier, and you’ll get a picture of what this world’s like.

Click to expand...

That would appear to be inspired by another HG Wells book, The Shape of Things To Come, (written in the 1890s/1900s) in which he envisaged a sort of stalemated WW1 continuing for 30 years until the entire structure of civilisation broke down much as you describe, until a cabal of scientists used advanced technology to enforce a peace.

Finished it over the weekend. I'm pretty sketchy on my turn-of-the-century scifi, but I thought Anti-Ice was a pretty good homage to the subgenre. I was actually pretty impressed at the amount of thought Baxter put into coming up with a plausible 19th century spaceship and spacesuit. Still, I wouldn't want to take a spacewalk in that thing!

I also particularly liked the hints he gave of how anti-ice has affected the politics of the era. By the end of the book, it seems like anti-ice is a lot like Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen: no one's quite sure how they were created, they make the nation that found them immeasurably powerful and confident, and they both give people an impression that the world would be a safer place if they never existed. I'd be surprised if Europe in the anti-ice timeline doesn't end up as a nuclear wasteland dotted with American "exploratory bases" by 1920.