A Son of the Rock

Tor.com, 2019, 172 p.

Reynolds can be relied upon to give us good, solid well-written SF. This is a departure from his usual galaxy-spanning Space Opera epics though; a tale of environmental catastrophe and time travel.

Permafrost is the name of the time travel project, whose base is located in Kogalym in the far north of Russia. In 2080, after an event known as the Scouring has removed nearly all life on Earth starting with insects and radiating outwards from there, Valentina Lidova, an 80 year-old woman is recruited into the project seemingly because she is the daughter of mathematician Luba Lidova who worked on the mathematics of paradoxes. It is explained to Valentina that time has a block structure, more like a crystal lattice than a river, circuit diagram or tree. But the lattice isn’t static. It can adjust itself or be adjusted.

The project is regulated by four AIs named The Brothers, each after one of those in the Karamazov novel. The time travel mechanism involves twinned electrons called Luba pairs one of which is sent back into the brain of an experimental subject in the past.

The choice of Valentina as the first chrononaut (though Reynolds eschews this term) surprises the rest of the trainees as she joined the most recently. She is sent into the mind of Tatiana Dinova, a woman undergoing brain scans in 2028.

Complications ensue when Valentina discovers Tatiana is able to communicate with her and when others of the trainees sent to an earlier time begin to interact with her. It seems that even further in the future than 2080 efforts are being made to disrupt their mission and their controllers have become desperate and taken risks.

The story then settles down into what are in essence two chases, one in 2028 to secure the caching of a sample of seeds for use in 2080 and one in 2080 to obviate interference from the further future.

This is excellent, well-constructed SF.

Pedant’s corner:- “There were flaws in it imperfections,  impurities and stress points.” (There were flaws in it; imperfections,) “the thunderclap arriving after a lighting flash” (lightning flash,) focussing (focusing.) “Cho had even showed me” (shown me.)