# Review: Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds



## Vertigo (Jul 5, 2018)

Bella Lind and her crew of the Rockhopper push ice; that is they attach crude drives to icy comets and send them on their way to the inner solar system. But when Janus, one of Saturn’s moons, proves itself to be something very different by abruptly heading out of the solar system at high speed, the Rockhopper is the only ship in the system capable of catching it for a brief window of investigation before it gets too far away, that is assuming it doesn’t increase its acceleration.

Pushing Ice is classic Reynolds at his paint-it-on-a-huge-canvas best and yet it falls well short of his best books. That huge canvas, the ideas, concepts, vision and science, are as brilliant as ever, but his characters, never one of Reynold’s strongest points, are here quite dire. The main characters are all pretty much either unreasonably nice or equally unreasonably horrible. In particular the behaviour of one of the main characters is so appalling that I simply found their actions and motivations utterly implausible though possibly not as much as the way everyone else just quietly goes along with that behaviour. I know we humans can be a bunch of sheep at times but there are limits.

The pacing of the book is also somewhat uneven; it starts off well but in the middle becomes severely bogged down before finally beginning to pick back up towards the end. This unevenness, though annoying was not, however, a show stopper and the science kept moving along well enough to keep me reading… just.

Another minus was the ending which seemed to demand a sequel that Reynolds has never written. The whole conclusion felt desperately open ended.

An okay book but very much one where the science takes centre stage at the cost of the characters and, to some extent, the plot. The science and ideas are excellent but they were all that really held my attention, and the lack of any real conclusion coupled with the absence of a sequel made it ultimately somewhat unsatisfying. Sadly a long way from my favourite Reynolds work.

3/5 stars


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## Onyx (Jul 5, 2018)

I would agree that Reynolds lacks something in the character department, but the personal conflict in Ice didn't seem so incredibly outlandish given the extreme events the characters find themselves in. I felt like the major story concludes, and then the last events in the book are more epilogue rather than conclusion.

For people that really like what Reynolds is good at - the mechanics of world-building in a restricted, "realistic" science environment that allows believably outlandish plot turns - Pushing Ice is one of his best works. I would rate it immediately after the four main Revelation books and House of Suns. Whatever its sins, there is so much more meat here than any of his other books. The extremes of his character's choices don't seem that different than those made by Revelation characters, so it felt like familiar turf to me.


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## Vertigo (Jul 5, 2018)

Onyx said:


> I would agree that Reynolds lacks something in the character department, but the personal conflict in Ice didn't seem so incredibly outlandish given the extreme events the characters find themselves in. I felt like the major story concludes, and then the last events in the book are more epilogue rather than conclusion.
> 
> For people that really like what Reynolds is good at - the mechanics of world-building in a restricted, "realistic" science environment that allows believably outlandish plot turns - Pushing Ice is one of his best works. I would rate it immediately after the four main Revelation books and House of Suns. Whatever its sins, there is so much more meat here than any of his other books. The extremes of his character's choices don't seem that different than those made by Revelation characters, so it felt like familiar turf to me.


I guess I just found myself constantly saying "I can't believe you're really saying/think/doing that." The world building was excellent but I just found the behaviours too outlandish even given the situation. In fact given the situation any half decent leader would be looking to build bridges to keep everyone together not actively driving them apart, especially when the only justification was personal hatred. That just didn't gel as being realistic and, to be honest, it wasn't necessary to have those conflicts be so extreme; the plot would have worked just as well with more reasonable levels of conflict. Hard to say more without diving into spoilers!


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## Onyx (Jul 5, 2018)

Vertigo said:


> I guess I just found myself constantly saying "I can't believe you're really saying/think/doing that." The world building was excellent but I just found the behaviours too outlandish even given the situation. In fact given the situation any half decent leader would be looking to build bridges to keep everyone together not actively driving them apart, especially when the only justification was personal hatred. That just didn't gel as being realistic and, to be honest, it wasn't necessary to have those conflicts be so extreme; the plot would have worked just as well with more reasonable levels of conflict. Hard to say more without diving into spoilers!


I know what you mean, I just didn't find those extremes any more outlandish than the way characters in Revelation Space act. So if you can swallow how those characters behave, Pushing Ice doesn't seem very different - to me.

For people that like Reynolds, I would encourage them to read Ice. All of his work is flawed, and Ice is packed with the sort of stuff I think fans enjoy most about his writing.


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## Parson (Jul 5, 2018)

*Vertigo... *I agree right down the line with your take on *Pushing Ice*. It really soured me on Alastair Reynolds. I found the conflict between the two characters to be so contrived and unbelievable I have not read any of his since I read this one. I did enjoy the *Revelation Space *series, but they too eventually became unbelievable on a human level.


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## Vertigo (Jul 5, 2018)

Parson said:


> *Vertigo... *I agree right down the line with your take on *Pushing Ice*. It really soured me on Alastair Reynolds. I found the conflict between the two characters to be so contrived and unbelievable I have not read any of his since I read this one. I did enjoy the *Revelation Space *series, but they too eventually became unbelievable on a human level.


I would recommend House of Suns which has all his good stuff with much less of his bad!


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## Stephen Palmer (Jul 13, 2018)

I hesitate to say this about an author whose earliest novels I enjoyed and who has such a good reputation, but I wonder if he is a bit of a one trick pony?


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## Vertigo (Jul 13, 2018)

Stephen Palmer said:


> I hesitate to say this about an author whose earliest novels I enjoyed and who has such a good reputation, but I wonder if he is a bit of a one trick pony?


I wouldn't go that far myself. Some of the Revelation Space books were excellent (Chasm City and The Prefect (will be interesting to see what Elysium Fire is like)) though some definitely fell short. I also, possibly unusually, enjoyed the Poseidon's Children series. I think he is just very uneven going from sometimes brilliant to other times quite poor.


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## Serendipity (Jul 13, 2018)

Stephen Palmer said:


> I hesitate to say this about an author whose earliest novels I enjoyed and who has such a good reputation, but I wonder if he is a bit of a one trick pony?



I am very reluctantly coming to the same conclusion... I do wonder if he has not given himself enough time to build another universe in the detail and complexity of the Revelation Space series. 

(I say this because I have, more by accident than design, come up with two very different universes... I thought it would easier and quicker the 2nd time round... Nah!)


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## Onyx (Jul 13, 2018)

Serendipity said:


> I am very reluctantly coming to the same conclusion... I do wonder if he has not given himself enough time to build another universe in the detail and complexity of the Revelation Space series.
> 
> (I say this because I have, more by accident than design, come up with two very different universes... I thought it would easier and quicker the 2nd time round... Nah!)



I don't get this. There is a character motivation problem in Pushing Ice, not a world building problem. The world he created is detailed, novel and contains some big ideas throughout.

Reynolds is clumsy when it comes to character's interactions, but not at the business of creating new and different SF in general.


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## Brian G Turner (Jul 13, 2018)

I've only tried _The Prefect_, thinking I was picking up a hard SF book - but it all felt very much like a space fantasy and it was disappointing for it. I'd be happy to give him another chance with _House of Suns_, though, seeing as that's being recommended as his strongest standalone.


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## Onyx (Jul 13, 2018)

Brian G Turner said:


> I've only tried _The Prefect_, thinking I was picking up a hard SF book - but it all felt very much like a space fantasy and it was disappointing for it. I'd be happy to give him another chance with _House of Suns_, though, seeing as that's being recommended as his strongest standalone.


That's odd that you have avoided a SF author this prominent and relatively prolific for this long. I'd think you'd be all over a scientist that writes SF.


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## Brian G Turner (Jul 13, 2018)

Onyx said:


> That's odd that you have avoided a SF author this prominent and relatively prolific for this long. I'd think you'd be all over a scientist that writes SF.



Oh, I read _The Prefect_ a few years ago, but it didn't inspire me to read more by Reynolds. However, as above, I'm happy to try again on the strength of recommendations.


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## Serendipity (Jul 13, 2018)

Onyx said:


> I don't get this. There is a character motivation problem in Pushing Ice, not a world building problem. The world he created is detailed, novel and contains some big ideas throughout.
> 
> Reynolds is clumsy when it comes to character's interactions, but not at the business of creating new and different SF in general.



First let me state where I'm coming from... There is an interaction between the world and the protagonists - a kind of two-way street that puts constraints as to what each can do - if the world is not built to a sufficient degree of detail, it will come out in the characters and what they do.

The main assumption with Reynolds' work (as far as I can see) is that his humans are mainly based on the humans we are all too familiar with. This works for his Revelation Space series because he assumes humans make their homes to fit around their standard way of being. Which I suspect is the secret of the success of this series.

But if he allowed his world to have more effect on his protagonists (and not entirely rely on standard tropes described in previously written works), then (I find this difficult to describe exactly in a few words) he would find the exaggeration of some traits, the dwindling of others and the new synergies between them would lead to some very interesting stories that explores character in novel ways.


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## Onyx (Jul 13, 2018)

Serendipity said:


> First let me state where I'm coming from... There is an interaction between the world and the protagonists - a kind of two-way street that puts constraints as to what each can do - if the world is not built to a sufficient degree of detail, it will come out in the characters and what they do.
> 
> The main assumption with Reynolds' work (as far as I can see) is that his humans are mainly based on the humans we are all too familiar with. This works for his Revelation Space series because he assumes humans make their homes to fit around their standard way of being. Which I suspect is the secret of the success of this series.
> 
> But if he allowed his world to have more effect on his protagonists (and not entirely rely on standard tropes described in previously written works), then (I find this difficult to describe exactly in a few words) he would find the exaggeration of some traits, the dwindling of others and the new synergies between them would lead to some very interesting stories that explores character in novel ways.


Revelation Space takes place hundreds of years on the future. Pushing Ice is supposed to be less than a century from now. Why would the Pushing Ice characters be more divergent than their future Revelation Space cousins?



Brian G Turner said:


> Oh, I read _The Prefect_ a few years ago, but it didn't inspire me to read more by Reynolds. However, as above, I'm happy to try again on the strength of recommendations.



The Prefect, its sequel and a lot of the short stories are side stories to the Revelation Space universe. Probably not a good starting point, but more fan service.


Reynolds is not a perfect writer by any stretch. His dialogue and characters often are lacking. He just does other things extremely well. But several of his books are so-so and Slow Bullets is awful. But if people can actually like David Brin, Reynolds is a stand out.

I really struggle to find stuff I want to read. There are maybe fifty really impressive SF books that I've ever come across, and Reynolds manages to have many attributes of those great books - transporting the reader to a truly original place - much like Niven does.


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## Vertigo (Jul 13, 2018)

Yeah I'd agree with @Onyx that, certainly in Pushing Ice, it's the characters not the world building or science that is at fault. But, to be fair, I think he does sometimes manage to get the characters right, at least sometimes better than others.

I'd also agree that The Prefect is definitely not a good starting point; you'd probably have done much better had you read the other Revelation Space books first. But even they are not all good; Absolution Gap was, I felt, quite weak.

Sad that I've heard so often that Slow Bullets is not good as I've not read it yet and as a bit of a completionist, at least for authors I like, I am still planning on reading this as well as Terminal World which I believe also suffers from rather mixed reviews.


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## Brian G Turner (Jul 13, 2018)

Onyx said:


> I really struggle to find stuff I want to read. There are maybe fifty really impressive SF books that I've ever come across



That list could make for a very interesting thread in itself.


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## Ursa major (Jul 13, 2018)

Vertigo said:


> but his characters, never one of Reynold’s strongest points, are here quite dire. The main characters are all pretty much either unreasonably nice or equally unreasonably horrible. In particular the behaviour of one of the main characters is so appalling that I simply found their actions and motivations utterly implausible though possibly not as much as the way everyone else just quietly goes along with that behaviour.


I totally agree with this. It was if he couldn't think of any other reason for getting certain events to turn out as they did (and as his plot required).

Note that Reynolds can write characters who are appalling, including ones whose appalling actions drive the plot, but this was different, as in those other examples either the power dynamics or the context allowed those actions to appear plausible. (This is not to say that I always liked the stories in which this occured, but it didn't pull me out of the story as it did in _Pushing Ice_.)

I still made it to the end of the book -- because of the huge canvas, the ideas, concepts, vision and science, etc. -- but it could have been a much better read.


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## Onyx (Jul 13, 2018)

Since we're specifically talking about the 



Spoiler



coup


 that takes place, I have to say that while the one character's actions were seemingly extreme, the assent of the crew that supports that action is not outlandish. Scapegoating is a real group dynamic, and easy to go along with when that seems to be the way the tide is running.


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## Ursa major (Jul 13, 2018)

Onyx said:


> Since we're specifically talking about the


I wasn't. I had a problem with this in _numerous_ places in the book.

(I can't list them now as I read the book a long time ago, and as I had borrowed it from the local public library, I don't have a copy to look through.)


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## Onyx (Jul 13, 2018)

Ursa major said:


> I wasn't. I had a problem with this in _numerous_ places in the book.


I was referring to Vertigo's review: 


Vertigo said:


> In particular the behaviour of one of the main characters is so appalling that I simply found their actions and motivations utterly implausible though possibly not as much as the way everyone else just quietly goes along with that behaviour.


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## Ursa major (Jul 13, 2018)

And...?

The point is that the handling of the characters was poor in many places in the book, so even if you were correct in saying that the example you mention is not one of them -- and I don't recall feeling that generous to the author when _I_ read that section -- it does not mean that accusation of poor charater handling has been rebutted.

The review is of the whole book, not one small part of it.


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## Onyx (Jul 13, 2018)

Ursa major said:


> And...?
> 
> The point is that the handling of the characters was poor in many places in the book, so even if you were correct in saying that the example you mention is not one of them -- and I don't recall feeling that generous to the author when _I_ read that section -- it does not mean *that accusation of poor charater handling has been rebutted.*
> 
> The review is of the whole book, not one small part of it.


I didn't attempt to rebut it.


So...?


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## Ursa major (Jul 13, 2018)

In that particular case, you are saying that the handling of the characters is not badly done (and giving a reason why you are saying it). That falls under the definition of rebuttal.

And I said that, whether or not you have a case on that point (and I don't believe you do, but that is a matter of opinion), it does not mean that the rest of the book is free of that flaw (which it isn't).

I have already spelt all of this out, so why the "So...?"


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## Onyx (Jul 13, 2018)

Ursa major said:


> In that particular case, you are saying that the handling of the characters is not badly done (and giving a reason why you are saying it). That falls under the definition of rebuttal.
> 
> And I said that, whether or not you have a case on that point (and I don't believe you do, but that is a matter of opinion), it does not mean that the rest of the book is free of that flaw (which it isn't).
> 
> I have already spelt all of this out, so why the "So...?"



So...  did you read all the other posts I made specifically about what you're saying I've rebutted?



Onyx said:


> Reynolds is clumsy when it comes to character's interactions,





Onyx said:


> Reynolds is not a perfect writer by any stretch. His dialogue and characters often are lacking.





Onyx said:


> All of his work is flawed



I made a comment about a specific interaction in the book, and you seem to be really stuck on that comment being a rebuttal of matters outside that particular item. Given everything I've said in the thread, I don't follow why you keep raising it as an issue. It clearly isn't any sort of rebuttal of your post as you and I agree about Reynold's faults. I'm not sure what I need to do to convince you that there is no "And?"


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## Stephen Palmer (Jul 14, 2018)

Rather ironically given that this is 2018, we're going back 50 years to when most SF books were written about science or science extrapolation not people in an extrapolated milieu. The history of SF could so easily be re-cast as the history of male writers who don't understand people and why people do things.


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## Vertigo (Jul 14, 2018)

Onyx said:


> Since we're specifically talking about the
> 
> 
> 
> ...





Spoiler



My biggest issue was putting Bella in solitary confinement for over 13 years - that is plain and simple torture for such a long period of time. During that time the only person who actually spoke to her was the doctor on his rare visits. The people taking her supplies were forbidden from talking to her. I don't believe she would have remained sane under such conditions (confined to one small structure) and everyone was fully aware of the situation. I simply don't believe that it would have been done and considered acceptable. You say it was exceptional circumstances but it was not a war - only three people had been killed, one murdered and two punished for that murder. The really annoying thing is the plot did not even require such extreme punishment. If Bella had been kept under house arrest but closer to the main settlement and under much more humane conditions that would have worked equally well. Svetlana's entire motivations and behaviour were exaggerated to utterly implausible obscene levels.


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## Ursa major (Jul 14, 2018)

Vertigo said:


> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> My biggest issue was putting Bella in solitary confinement for over 13 years - that is plain and simple torture for such a long period of time. During that time the only person who actually spoke to her was the doctor on his rare visits. The people taking her supplies were forbidden from talking to her. I don't believe she would have remained sane under such conditions (confined to one small structure) and everyone was fully aware of the situation. I simply don't believe that it would have been done and considered acceptable.


I had forgotten about that aspect of the story... but agree with your conclusion about the likely impact on that character.


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