Titan

Titan, by Stephen Baxter, was a re-read for me. I first read it in 1997, when it was published. I decided to re-read it as the landing of the Huygens probe on Saturn's moon Titan (an event in the book) made me think of the book.

The book opens with the destruction of Space Shuttle Columbia. Alas, the real destruction of the Columbia did not go as well as the fictional one (in the book, all but one member of the crew survives). In the book, the consequences of the shuttle crash are the shutting down of the International Space Station (something that still might happen in reality) and the planned dismantling of NASA.

Right before the Columbia crashes, Huygens lands on Titan...and signs of life are detected.

This leads to an audacious plan: Send various salvaged equipment to Titan along with a crew to explore and colonize the moon. Using Apollo Command Module capsules, the "display" Saturn V's (a better fate than having them rust away) and a modified space shuttle (Discovery, appropriately enough, as that was the name of the ship in 2001: A Space Odyssey—recall that in the novel version, the mission is to Saturn, not Jupiter), the crew sets out on a multi-year mission that involves gravity assists from Venus, Earth and Jupiter before arriving in Saturn space.

Meanwhile, back on Earth things fall apart. The space program falls apart and planned resupply missions for the Titan colony are cancelled. The ecosystem of Earth crashes. The United States splits into several countries. China asserts its increasing dominance. Eventually, all of humanity dies during a conflict between the declining West and the rising East.

Arriving at Titan, our intrepid explorers have lost one crew member (during a solar storm), have another crew member get injured (during a dangerous crossing of the ring system) and lose a third crew member (during the landing on Titan). They have to work to find local resources (water and various organic compounds) to keep their failing life support systems working.

I'll leave off the details of the final section of the book to avoid spoiling it for those who have not read it. Let's just say that Baxter whips up a finale worthy or Olaf Stapledon at his most visionary. Baxter is both very depressing (after all, humanity is wiped out) and hopeful (life in the solar system does spread to other solar systems eventually) in the course of the book.