Coalescent: A Novel (Destiny's Children, Bk. 1) [Mass Market Paperback]

Stephen Baxter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 23, 2004

Now, joined by his boyhood friend Peter McLachlan, who arrives in Rome with a dark secret of his own, George uncovers evidence suggesting that the women of the Order have embarked on a divergent evolutionary path. But they are not just a new kind of human. They are a better kind, genetically superior, equipped with all the tools necessary to render homo sapiens as extinct as the Neanderthals. And, chillingly, George and Peter soon have reason to fear that this colony is preparing to leave its overcrowded underground nest. . . .
Stephen Baxter possesses one of the most brilliant minds in modern science fiction. His vivid storytelling skills have earned him comparison to the giants of the past: Clarke, Asimov, Stapledon. Like his great predecessors, Baxter thinks on a cosmic scale, spinning cutting-edge scientific speculation into pure, page-turning gold. Now Baxter is back with a breathtaking adventure that begins during the catastrophic collapse of Roman Britain and stretches forward into an unimaginably distant, war-torn future, where the fate of humanity lies waiting at the center of the galaxy. . . .

Destiny’s Children
COALESCENT

George Poole isn’t sure whether his life has reached a turning point or a dead end. At forty-five, he is divorced and childless, with a career that is going nowhere fast. Then, when his father dies suddenly, George stumbles onto a family secret: a sister he never knew existed. A twin named Rosa, raised in Rome by an enigmatic cult. Hoping to find the answers to the missing pieces of his life, George sets out for the ancient city.

Once in Rome, he learns from Rosa the enthralling story of their distant ancestor, Regina, an iron-willed genius determined to preserve her family as the empire disintegrates around her. It was Regina who founded the cult, which has mysteriously survived and prospered below the streets of Rome for almost two millennia. The Order, says Rosa, is her real family– and, even if he doesn’t realize it yet, it is George’s family, too. When she takes him into the vast underground city that is the Order’s secret home, he feels a strong sense of belonging, yet there is something oddly disturbing about the women he meets. They are all so young and so very much alike.
Stephen Baxter possesses one of the most brilliant minds in modern science fiction. His vivid storytelling skills have earned him comparison to the giants of the past: Clarke, Asimov, Stapledon. Like his great predecessors, Baxter thinks on a cosmic scale, spinning cutting-edge scientific speculation into pure, page-turning gold. Now Baxter is back with a breathtaking adventure that begins during the catastrophic collapse of Roman Britain and stretches forward into an unimaginably distant, war-torn future, where the fate of humanity lies waiting at the center of the galaxy. . . .

Destiny’s Children
COALESCENT

George Poole isn’t sure whether his life has reached a turning point or a dead end. At forty-five, he is divorced and childless, with a career that is going nowhere fast. Then, when his father dies suddenly, George stumbles onto a family secret: a sister he never knew existed. A twin named Rosa, raised in Rome by an enigmatic cult. Hoping to find the answers to the missing pieces of his life, George sets out for the ancient city.

Once in Rome, he learns from Rosa the enthralling story of their distant ancestor, Regina, an iron-willed genius determined to preserve her family as the empire disintegrates around her. It was Regina who founded the cult, which has mysteriously survived and prospered below the streets of Rome for almost two millennia. The Order, says Rosa, is her real family– and, even if he doesn’t realize it yet, it is George’s family, too. When she takes him into the vast underground city that is the Order’s secret home, he feels a strong sense of belonging, yet there is something oddly disturbing about the women he meets. They are all so young and so very much alike.

Now, joined by his boyhood friend Peter McLachlan, who arrives in Rome with a dark secret of his own, George uncovers evidence suggesting that the women of the Order have embarked on a divergent evolutionary path. But they are not just a new kind of human. They are a better kind, genetically superior, equipped with all the tools necessary to render homo sapiens as extinct as the Neanderthals. And, chillingly, George and Peter soon have reason to fear that this colony is preparing to leave its overcrowded underground nest. . . .


From the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Known for his hard SF, Baxter (the Manifold trilogy) explores social and historical issues as well as human evolution in the first of his Destiny's Children trilogy, with mixed results. In the present, George Poole discovers that he has a twin sister who belongs to a mysterious, ancient quasi-religious order in Rome; in crumbling post-Roman Britain, Regina, founder of the order, longs to recapture the days of her girlhood, when she lived a life of stability and privilege. In alternating chapters, George and Regina each make their way to Rome. George meets his sister and begins to learn something of the order that took her in; Regina-complex, bitter, obsessive-crafts the order that lasts to George's day. Regina digs under the streets of Rome into catacombs for secure living space. George, distantly related to Regina, feels the familial pull of the women still living in the warrens underground, but when he befriends a young, pregnant member of the order, he realizes that they have evolved into a new life form, a coalescent one comprising drones working within a decentralized social order. Regina's carefully researched world never quite comes to life-Baxter tells rather than shows-and the feminist implications of a coalescent life form that exploits and alters femininity are not addressed. Still, Baxter provokes thought by plausibly creating specific circumstances that result in evolution. For now, it's unclear whether a coalescent structure is good or bad, though presumably later books will provide some resolution.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Baxter connects the lives of George Poole in the present and Regina at the end of the Roman empire. George's father has just died, and the picture of a girl, Rosa, comes to light in his effects. Rosa is the mysterious twin George never knew, and he becomes consumed with the desire to find her. Regina's part of the story begins in Britain at the end of Roman rule and takes her through the western empire's collapse to Rome itself. Back to the near-past: George's sister, it develops, had been sent to the Order of Mary, Queen of Virgins, which has existed, hive-like, in Rome since the time of Regina, one of its founders. George is Regina's descendant, and the order being rather a family affair, George arrives at many uncomfortable realizations as he learns more about it. Opening with an artificial anomaly discovered in the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune and ending with disturbing extrapolation of humanity's future, Coalescent is a fabric of many slowly developed plot threads woven into a tight tapestry. Regina Schroeder
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: Del Rey (November 23, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345457862
• ISBN-13: 978-0345457868
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 1.1 x 6.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #120,131 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #30 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > High Tech

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exploring a new theme, February 9, 2004

By 

Alex Tolley (Los Gatos, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Coalescent (Hardcover)

I liked this book more than some of the other reviewers. The theme clearly extends from his earlier works, most notably, Evolution. In this case the pace is slower, as our 2 protagonists, one in the ancient Roman empire, and the other contempory, spin the texture of the novel. The central concept, the evolution of a human hive species, while not original, is reasonably, if a little implausible biologically, characterized. More importantly, we are given a rationale for its existence and structure. We are are also given tantalizing clues as to where Baxter may want to go with this idea. In one case, the hive engineers the destruction of a another, nearby. In the second, we see a vignette of a familiar Baxterium universe where hive societies have spread out to the stars.

The book is weakest with its side plot of the discovery of an alien artifact in the Kuiper belt, and the possible suggestion of detection of a photino bird. I sense that Baxter wants to ensure the threads of his Xeelee sequence are incorporated into the plot, but in this book, the first of a promised series, this thread seems gratuitious. Perhaps the following novels will expand on this backdrop.

As other reviewers have argued, the hive is a living cellular automata. Because the rules for this particular hive were created by a founder, there is the possibility of exploring other structures based on different rules, defined by different constraints. Given the space of viable possibilties, one can easily see this idea expand like another "Manifold".

In summary, this book is a solid read, which entertained this reader with an interesting theme, painted against a detailed historical backdrop. I look forward to more in the series.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Allowances Must Be Made, August 17, 2005

By 

Seachranaiche (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Coalescent: A Novel (Destiny's Children, Bk. 1) (Mass Market Paperback)

I think there were, possibly, three different books within "Coalescent": an historical story of Regina and her ancestor George, a speculative science story of emergent organizational systems, and some futuristic space story. That these were all combined into one book is a shame, but I don't blame Baxter-not really-I blame his publisher. I have not read anything by Baxter that I didn't think was great or extremely thought provoking (including this book) but I have been noticing the bastardization of great plots lately, all for the sake of marketing, I presume, such that seemingly unrelated stories can be hacked together into a profitable series (to see this trend run amok, read anything by John Ringo). It is hard for me to believe that authors are incorporating these devices into their books on their own.You can always tell when your favorite author has been co-opted-their books begin to be released in $25.00 hardcover editions (do you all remember when Weber's Honor Harrington books only came out in very affordable paperback editions?) Alas, though, in order to be able to accumulate enough reading material to wile away our hours, allowances must be made.

For the first story in "Coalescent", the historical story, I became engrossed-I could not put the book down. This was a fascinating historical story with no apparent connection to the science-fiction genre (until the bastardization occurred), but I became caught up in the story and I didn't care that it wasn't science-fiction. Baxter recreates the soon-to-collapse world of Roman Britain brilliantly through the eyes of the young girl Regina, and all of the hints of collapse are right there, within Regina's childish interpretations of the events affecting her life. As the long, slow demise begins to spread across Britain, the reader can feel the despair of the era in a very tangible way. Baxter is highly skilled at creating and maintaining these emotions (just read or re-read "Titan", as Baxter's idealistic astronauts are confronted with the reality of long-distance space travel). George, the present-day ancestor of Regina, is going through his own spiritual demise-his need to connect with something larger than himself leads him into a journey of discovery. As he explores London's ancient Roman walls, the reader can easily place George's ancestor, Regina, along the same walls but in ancient times. There is a connection, albeit separated by almost two thousand years, which ultimately takes George to Rome. This is where the speculative science story begins to expand.

My first advice to the reader would be to stop here and imagine-or write-your own ending. Too bad that this isn't the way things really work-we all know that we have to push ahead, to hope and pray that the author will come through for us. Baxter begins to flesh out his character, Peter, whom I began to call "Mulder" in my mind. Peter is an obsessed paranoiac, but his character could have still played a pivotal role. By this time, though, Baxter is heading toward his silly third story, the space adventure, and Peter becomes nothing more than a device to move the story along. The second story deals with emergent organizational systems and possible evolutionary destinations for Homo sap. This was fascinating stuff, and could have yet tied in satisfyingly with Regina's ancient story, but Baxter spends ¾ of the book developing Regina and her world-by the time his characters get to Rome, the story is being hurried along to make room for the space adventure to come. I have rewritten the book in my mind-it could have been a great story.

The third story, the space adventure, is just plain silly.

So what is the prognosis here? There are enough interesting elements in "Coalescent" to make it worth a look in paperback, but be prepared for an emotional let-down. The sequel to this book, "Exultant", seems to have no connection to the central characters in "Coalescent", and I will not read it (sorry Stephen). Perhaps the fan sites will start a movement to rewrite these great, but bastardized, stories so that we can enjoy them, covertly, on-line.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not one of his better efforts, April 19, 2005

By 

Bugbear "bugbear74" (Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Coalescent (Hardcover)

Ah Stephen, what have you done? I found this book mostly disappointing. Yes it does come together in the end so to speak but the end could have come sooner with the elimination of about one third of the entire novel. Although Regina's story sets the background there was just way too much of it and it could have been handled in much shorter form. I also didn't like how Daniel appeared to be a key part of the story and then he vanishes, showing up for a cameo at the end. Throw in the fact that young Daniel just happens to be able to hack in to hospital computers and what not and well, it's all a little silly.

S.B. is a brilliant author but this is certaintly nowhere near his usual efforts. 2 stars.