PUSHING ICE REVIEW

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Pushing Pushing Ice by my boy Alistister Reynolds. Probably maybe my favorite science fiction author of all time. He's definitely in that modern pantheon of British science fiction gods along with Ian M Banks and Peter F. Hamilton.

[00:00:21]Pushing Ice. This is a reread for me.

[00:00:24]It's my second time around. I first read it about 10 years ago when I discovered Alistair Reynolds. I just read everything that he'd had published at the time. The basic structure of the plot has stayed with me for all those years, especially the first act. It's very clear. It was the details and the bigger picture that was a little bit more patchy, especially as we get deeper into the book. So, a reread was really great, very worthwhile. the plot. In the future, we humanity have the ability to mine comets and asteroids in the outer solar system. So, Saturn and beyond.

[00:01:05]Inexplicably, one of Saturn's moons, Janus, breaks its orbit and starts accelerating out of the solar system.

[00:01:13]Turns out it's probably not a moon. It's likely to be alien tech that was in disguise the whole time. The only ship close enough to go and investigate before it's gone forever is the rock hopper, which is a mining craft. So, they do, but they get stuck in its wake like a tractor beam. And they get pulled along going faster and faster and faster. And then the book is about the politics on board the rock hopper, the looming event horizon of not being able to turn around and go home. Then its first contact with a super structure that Janus has taken them to light years away from Earth and the nuances of dealing with several different alien species. And it's about the future of the human race and what it would mean to be human if you're born and bred on a spaceship in isolation and never ever knowing what Earth is like and being the captive of an unseen alien race. So, it's just another run-of-the-mill Alistister Reynolds novel where he covers in one book what many authors need a whole series to talk about. It's a shitload of science fiction.

[00:02:25][music] What I really loved about this and what I had forgotten about from the first read is the mystery of why all of this is happening. You never really find out until maybe the end of the book. But is Janus, is the moon, the alien spacecraft, a force for good, or is it a force for ill? Or do we just not understand each other? But he sidesteps this issue for a big chunk of the book and makes it all about the crew. It's the survival of the human race and the realization that this one tiny little ship getting pulled along at almost the speed of light against its will could be all that's left of humanity. And as a thought experiment, it's played out over many years. We get to see decisions made by characters either bear fruit or fail or evolve or just run out of favor. So, as a hard science fiction novel, I definitely got my fix of Reynolds trademark, realistic time dilation. He's the Christopher Nolan of science fiction writing. There's a really great section about a third of the way through the book where he seems to be cutting loose and showing off his astrophysics background. The moon is traveling in a inertialless pocket, a field that it's punching through space, and the rock hopper is traveling behind in the gap.

[00:03:51]And they have figured out the the the time difference and how they can actually catch up with the moon because it's decelerating or it's not accelerating quite so fast so that they can actually land on the moon while they're still traveling at at that speed. I think it's very similar to that almost speed of light chase sequence from House of Suns. Somehow he paints a picture of something that is simultaneously based in reality but very hard to actually understand unless you have a background in physics. But you you get it. It's it's all there right in front of you. you are convinced that you understand time dilation and how these objects are moving through space. I find that extremely difficult to do while you're telling a story cuz it's not it's not a physics paper that you can read on the toilet. Is that just me? I will probably be guilty of repeating myself in my Reynolds reviews, but a lot of writers do this millions of years in the future extrapolation of real science, but they're normally cold [music] and boring, and the pacing is all wrong. I think Alistister Reynolds is the only person that that really nails that style. True greatness in this genre is being able to flick my bean with the science, but somehow weave in the characters and the story. So, you go very close to writing a complete mess, but somehow you stick the landing. So, does Pushing Ice managed to pull this off, this almost impossible trick? I would say yes, just about. We have two main characters who are crew members on this ship. There's Bella, who's the captain, and Svet Lana. She's a she's a she's a scientist. She's Bella's best friend and confidant. They fundamentally disagree on the course of action of what to do in the first act. Svet Lana believes that they should turn around as soon as possible before it's too late and go back to Earth. Bella thinks it's too dangerous and the evidence and the science is flawed. The disagreement leads to mutiny and Svet Lana taking control of the ship, but and this is key only before it's too late to turn around. That goes a long way to making Pushing Ice a far more interesting narrative. It's not just about a spaceship getting pulled light years across the galaxy. I don't think I picked up on that properly the first time I read it, or I didn't realize how important it was. It's a character bearing the full weight of the future of humanity on her shoulders. She has betrayed her captain and her best friend, and she's inherited a situation that she committed mutiny trying to avoid. And for the rest of the book, the original crew carry that burden with them as well, who they sided with in the mutiny vote. And it was a close vote as well. So, let me get this right. Half the crew voted to turn the ship around and side with Svet Lana, but no. So, the people that voted to mutiny are on the current captain's side, but the situation is the opposite to what they want because the ship didn't turn around. And then it's the opposite for the other half of the crew who supported Bella, the captain, but they actually got what they wanted, but the other half mutinated. You see what I mean? So, nobody actually got what they wanted.

[00:07:39]You're you're either on the wrong path, you're still going through space, but you've got your captain is locked up, or you you the other the opposite. Even though I'm struggling to put it into words, it's genius in its simplicity.

[00:07:54]Nobody got what they wanted. Everybody is compromised. There's a lot of tension.

[00:08:00]Yeah. And it's all made possible by that first action in the story. The Rock Hopper was just the closest ship to go and give chase. And it's full of engineers and miners and laborers. Not a very carefully selected delegate of global politicians. This gets me thinking about first contact in general.

[00:08:21]If and when we, the human race, ever contact an alien culture, are we assuming that they're going to be a unified race, the pinnacle of their civilization? If those things currently flying around off the coast of San Diego, ever slow down and talk to us, do they realize that we are a divided globe, that we don't agree on anything at all? Really? Wait, we we are the rock hopper. Anyway, this idea of factions and politics gets thoroughly tested and explored while the science fiction story is sort of going on in the background and I think the book slows down quite a bit in the middle if I'm allowed to be picky. Hello, Mid of the Future here.

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[00:09:51]Thank you so much. Peace.

[00:10:00]But it's okay because Push and Ice changes gears in the third act and the aliens show up and we have a destination and the realization that we may be specimens in a galactic zoo, I think.

[00:10:15]But that mystery still remains. We are dealing with elements that are way more advanced than us. Janus, the moon itself, and the other aliens. The situation and the politics on the Rockhopper get mirrored when we start talking to these other alien civilizations. One of them says that this other group of aliens are very hostile. Then this group say that that group are full of [ __ ] And then they both say that there's an even stronger alien coming [music] that's going to [ __ ] everything up. And we have to kind of take their word for it. It's very tense. We don't quite know what the hell's going on and who to believe. It really makes you focus on why would you trust another alien species and what would you base that trust on? There's the fountain heads who are kind of a bit hippie and they're very calm and friendly and they share some technology with us and they heal the sick and rejuvenate us. They seem like the type of aliens that we want to hang out with.

[00:11:16]Then there's the musk dogs, and they're scary looking and dirty and smelly, and they're made up of bone and gristle, and they [ __ ] and piss all over the floor.

[00:11:27]And they're clearly designed in the book to be the opposite of the fountain heads. And it all plays into this original lovely idea that he's set up, which is these aren't anthropological people that that we have sent to investigate aliens or or whatever that is, experts on alien culture, if there is such a thing. These are engineers.

[00:11:51]They didn't want to be here. And suddenly they're representing humanity and making decisions that could either save everyone or kill everyone. And ultimately that does come down to a very small group of people making those decisions and maybe just maybe just one person the leader and that's a lot of stress to take and it's good writing that I felt that personally I've come to the conclusion that Alistister Reynolds makes a bigger logical leap when it comes to writing his artificial intelligence, his characters and his aliens to fit the story better. It makes for a better reading experience. His science, his physics is always solid, at least in the first 10 books. There's no faster than light travel. And anything that feels a little bit out there is based on real science that he thinks is possible with the current level of understanding. But I think any two aliens or life forms that were to ever come into contact with each other would be so far apart technologically that there wouldn't be any tension at all.

[00:13:02]Even if two humans 100 years apart, one would be able to dominate the other so easily. And 100 years apart on our technological level is [ __ ] all compared to a galactic scale. So, I think he shrinks that ratio, that size down to barely nothing or puts things in place so it's not used and exploited to make for a more interesting story. That's the basics of this book. There are some other grand ideas. He always throws out some more nuggets to chew on. I'm not sure I completely understood all of the time dilation stuff, especially near the beginning of the book. I think it's humans way in the future talking about the events in in this book. I'm not sure. I don't really do any extra research when I do these reviews. I I just use Wikipedia for the names and and and some of the time frame. So, I'm just working from feel. I'm just working from memory. And the discovery of the Thailand artifact, this the space suit that could speak Thai. What was he saying that the the ship the rock hopper and the moon were traveling at a certain speed which meant they warped time? So they were traveling around in their own effectively their own uh little time bubble. So Earth basically overtook them and effectively aged quicker which meant when they caught up with the space suit it had kind of overtook them. I'd love to understand exactly how how he's explaining that because I think it's all there in the science and I know it's all to do with relativity, how you experience time yourself. I couldn't quite grasp it, but I do appreciate the fact that that it's there, but he he lost me just a little bit. And the whisperers, the manifestations of humans into a sentient thought pattern, was that what that was? that felt a little bit added on. It came quite late in the story. I love the fact that all these different ideas are swirling around and I don't mind that I don't understand them all because I I'm a little bit stupid. It's a book full of lots of amazing ideas, but I don't think anyone in particular really hits the highest of of the highs. For instance, it's not the greatest exploration of first contact, even though that's there. It's not the greatest exploration of meeting aliens, even though there are three or four, five different alien groups. Nor is it the best example of time dilation and moving through space, although there is a big chunk of it there. So, it's an early example of of Alistister Reynolds.

[00:15:56]It's quite early in his career and he goes on to do all these different things better, but I think it's still a very worthy addition to his bibliography.

[00:16:08]It's not his greatest work, but then again, his greatest work is amongst the best stuff I've ever read, but it does definitely stay in my top 100 easily.

[00:16:18]And it's a standalone book, which is quite a rare thing in science fiction and fantasy. A score for Pushing Ice.

[00:16:25]It's not perfect, but it's utterly enjoyable. I'm feeling 83%. That's pretty damn good. Did you love Pushing Ice? Did you hate Pushing Ice? Or are you somewhere in this middle zone here? Don't be shy. Let us know in the comments, please.

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