I am so hugely impressed with Stephen Baxter that I almost cannot express it in words.
Hyperbole is boring, and bullshit is worse, but he is seriously one of the major, if not THE major forces driving science fiction forward these days. Just when we thought all the good plots were taken by Heinlein and Asimov …
In Flux, which was published in 1993 but entered my consciousness just a week ago, Baxter reminds science fiction readers that all good story-telling revolves around the human beings, human nature, and human stories.
Never mind the fact that they live in a neutron star. Never mind the fact that they measure mere microns in height. Never mind that they are travelling close to lightspeed. And never mind the fact that, believe it or not, Baxter is a hard sci-fi author who sticks to ‘reality’ as best as currently understood by physicists and other scientists.
Unbelievable.
You MUST check it out.