{"id":58860,"date":"2026-03-16T05:59:32","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T09:59:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/?p=58860"},"modified":"2026-03-16T10:09:49","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T14:09:49","slug":"crisis-at-proxima-by-travis-s-taylor-and-les-johnson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/non-fiction\/crisis-at-proxima-by-travis-s-taylor-and-les-johnson\/","title":{"rendered":"Crisis at Proxima by Travis S. Taylor and Les Johnson"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Crisis<\/a>On the front cover of Crisis at Proxima<\/em> is a quote from Publishers Weekly<\/em>: \u201cThe spirit of Arthur C. Clarke and his contemporaries is alive and well.\u201d Inside, there is an unattributed epigraph (possibly the authors\u2019): \u201cSmart people with good intentions and high moral standards can solve any problem.\u201d Each quote is presumably designed to show that the novel\u2014<\/strong>the second part of a series entitled Orion\u2019s Arm\u2014<\/strong>is aimed at an audience which consumes what it would classify as \u201cgood old-fashioned SF\u201d: SF based upon science and the scientific method, SF that is optimistic and celebratory. These are all categories that are sometimes looked down upon, often unfairly\u2014<\/strong>there is by no means anything wrong with celebrating the human spirit, even with being old-fashioned. But the best that can be said for Crisis at Proxima<\/em> is that it meanders around these quotes rather than engaging with them.<\/p>\n

These categories can also flag a fear of the modern, the experimental, and the challenging. It\u2019s very comforting to believe that any problem can be solved with a bit of moral rectitude and a pure mind, but it\u2019s far from obvious that we can believe that this is actually true. More importantly, and more damagingly, the novel itself also fails to convince on even its own terms, as a piece of fiction in which we can play with that statement as a thought-experiment.<\/p>\n

In the first volume of Orion\u2019s Arm<\/strong> (we read), an expedition from Earth\u2014<\/strong>whose ship is interestingly called the Samaritan<\/em>\u2014<\/strong>has discovered, on a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, a human civilisation. They are the Fintidierians, who are around the technological level of 1950s USA, and were taken from somewhere in Asia some tens of thousands of years ago by a mysterious race of aliens, dubbed by the Earth visitor the \u201cAtlanteans,\u201d who had ruled and enslaved the Fintidierians before dying out around 50,000 years ago. On a continent named Misropos, which is deemed taboo by the Fintidierians, there are ruins and hieroglyphics which seem to offer a clue to the origin of the Atlanteans, and the superior technology of the Earth visitors allowed the detection of a signal from a particular region of space. Could this be the homeworld of the Atlanteans?<\/p>\n

Now, plans are being made for all this to be investigated.<\/p>\n

There are essentially two plot strands here. In one, the Fintideirians have a massive \u201cfertility\u201d problem (a sharp decline in the birth of females), which seems to have been caused by the Atlanteans. In the second, on the moon of a planet revolving around a nearby star, a ship with still-functioning cryogenic pods is discovered. The inhabitant of one\u2014<\/strong>an Atlantean woman\u2014<\/strong>is awakened and goes on the rampage, sending a signal to wherever the previously-detected signals had come from. It is clear that the technologically advanced Atlanteans are a threat to Earth, and so, partly through altruism but largely through motives of self-preservation, the leaders of the Samaritan<\/em> expedition decide to track down the Atlanteans and tackle the \u201cGender Plague.\u201d<\/p>\n

So far, so standard SF plotting. Indeed, many acclaimed works of SF have had plots which are less novel. But the presentation and resolution of these plot strands quickly run into problems. First, this is the kind of science fiction where plot is developed by people talking to each other and telling them what has happened, what is going to happen, and what the \u201cscientific\u201d elements are. There are, in particular, several passages of people explaining maths and quantum theory to each other in ways that hold up the story. One plot strand is partially solved during an idyllic fishing trip which involves much technobabble about genetics and choosing the sex of babies, all of which kind of leads to the solution but without any real drama or tension. During another fishing trip, fish and chips are introduced to the Fintidierians, one of whom fantasises about exploiting the new exotic discovery (tomato ketchup) brought by the Earth people. This is mildly amusing but hardly gripping.<\/p>\n

Second, this is the kind of science fiction which isn\u2019t really science fiction, but simply has the coating of \u201csci-fi\u201d to give it the flavour of things we have seen countless times on TV screens. For example: communication via implants. One character \u201ctapped his collar to activate his microphone, exactly like the characters in the old twentieth-century sci-fi shows he watched with his grandfather as a child.\u201d There are \u201csmart contact lenses\u201d and artificial intelligence assistants with no real sense of how such devices might have changed society: \u201cHe activated the star chart app in his contact lenses and let the embedded artificial intelligence find the star for him.\u201d\u00a0Here are spaceships powered by technobabble: \u201cPowered by the ship\u2019s fusion reactor, the Samara Drive emitted an extremely intense beam of UV light that functioned as reaction mass to accelerate the Samaritan<\/em> (and the Emissary<\/em>) at up to one gee for extended periods of time.\u201d And \u201csociety,\u201d of course, is default United States of America. The USA still exists, and the rest of the world might as well not. (There has, though, been something called the \u201cgreat economic reset of 2066\u201d which caused people to emigrate from Slovakia.)<\/p>\n

The Samaritan<\/em> is a US ship with a (largely) US crew. We do have characters like Polkingham, one of the \u201cfew Brits,\u201d who is indistinguishable from everyone else (perhaps his use of the swear-word \u201cbloody\u201d is some sort of cultural marker), and Nkrumah, whose \u201cheavily accented English\u201d might refer to a Ghanaian origin, though he bears the Irish first name Kieren. There is a New Zealander whose cry of \u201cI say it\u2019s time for full bangers, Mike!\u201d is, I assume, not<\/em> a sexual invitation. The Fintidierians speak pretty much like everyone else, too, and, although initially they have names like Sgurom Smyo, many of them end up taking American names which is soon \u201cquite the fad.\u201d It must be obvious to at least some readers that here proceedings are following the example of many colonised countries, but this is hardly questioned.<\/p>\n

And so, following on from this, we need to believe two things which are increasingly difficult to<\/em> believe: that this near-future setting (the beginning is dated February 15, 2101) is pretty much our present given a few magical-tech items; and that an Asian society transplanted from Earth many thousands of years ago is going to end up pretty much like the twentieth-century USA. Take this description of a biology lab: \u201cLike most Fintidierian buildings, it looked like something you would see in an old 2D movie set in the USA circa 1945 to 1950, with lots of concrete, austere windows, high ceilings, and exterior pillars.\u201d You can hotwire Fintidierian cars just like you could twentieth-century automobiles. There is no exploration of major scientific, technological, or philosophical differences, save a passage in which the Fintidierian Secretary General Arctinier muses about the way the name of the Samaritan<\/em> Ambassador Charles Jesus echoes that of someone described earlier as \u201chis more famous and godlier namesake.\u201d Arctinier has clearly heard about \u201cthe Christian religion\u2019s savior of the same name\u201d\u2014<\/strong>but do the Fintidierians have a religion, or any philosophical beliefs or dogmas underpinning their society? We are not told. There are aliens, perhaps, but there is nothing alien<\/em>.<\/p>\n

There is even idiot-plotting which flags itself as<\/em> idiot-plotting. During a terrorist incident, Roy Burbank, an engineer, is locked in a room from which he easily escapes. As he reflects: \u201cDon\u2019t kidnap and lock an engineer in a room filled with electrical equipment and expect him or her to complacently accept their fate.\u201d On the other hand, if they hadn\u2019t done this, it might have been more difficult for the authors to imagine his escape.<\/p>\n

Taylor and Johnson have written a number of books, together and separately, and judging by reviews on Amazon and Goodreads there is a market for them. Most readers will not read their work critically. Crisis at Proxima<\/em> is not written, or read, with any thought to literary awards. The authors have massive experience in related fields. Taylor is described as \u201ccurrently working\u201d on \u201cvery large space telescopes, space-based beamed energy systems, and next generation space launch concepts\u201d\u2014<\/strong>some of the ideas in Crisis<\/em> clearly come from such work, and they are clearly in the tradition of scientists writing science fiction, which is an honourable one. Despite what I am writing, I can fully understand the appeal of this book as a moment\u2019s entertainment. Much of what I have flagged as flaws\u2014<\/strong>the avoidance of any exploration of ideas, the constant referencing of those SF images and common-stock technologies which have leaked into the mainstream, the blandness of character\u2014<\/strong>identify the story\u2019s appeal, but it is a curious one.<\/p>\n

This is a book for readers who don\u2019t really like reading; science fiction for readers who think that they like SF, but who don\u2019t know what it can do to jolt people out of complacency, or who don\u2019t care. It has some of the elements of pastiche, but unfocussed images like \u201c[t]he door itself had grown into some strange mixture of cables, tubes, metal appendages, and the most bizarre Cthulhu shit she had ever seen\u201d and \u201c[t]he imagery was like something out of an animated Japanese horror movie from a century prior\u201d are neither precise nor baroque enough to evoke any real meaning beyond their status as clich\u00e9. When Terry Pratchett, for instance, constantly drops references to the \u201cwhite knowledge\u201d that \u201cfills up your brain without you really knowing where it came from,\u201d he is doing something similar; but his instances are more direct, wittier, designed to allow the pleasurable shock of recognition and the sly nod indicating a shared culture. Here, it\u2019s hard to avoid feeling that this is not comedy but simply a set of nudges towards vague icons, used because they avoid having to spend time on detail.<\/p>\n

Some of the comments on the novel have noted approvingly its \u201cold-fashioned\u201d quality, but this is yet another target that is missed, as we can see by the reference to \u201cArthur C. Clarke and his contemporaries.\u201d There are those among SF\u2019s readership who read Clarke when his major works were published, and who saw in him a writer excited by the potential of the future, by genuinely observing the universe with a sense of wonder. There are those (indeed, sometimes the same readers) who\u2014<\/strong>many years after Clarke\u2019s visions have faded\u2014<\/strong>see in the SF of the period a mode that simply ignores many major issues and is wooden in characterisation. Neither reaction is wholly incorrect. Positions can be debated, but what is interesting is that there now seems to be a readership that ignores or actively rejects the approach of the first tranche of readers and actively embraces what those who hold the second position condemn.<\/p>\n

Of course, \u201cSmart people with good intentions and high moral standards can solve any problem\u201d is meaningless, but much entertainment can be had with problem-solving. What is questionable here is whether the characters of this story are<\/em> \u201csmart\u201d or possess \u201chigh moral standards.\u201d (Our ketchup millionaires seem very happy about infringing any patent held by the Heinz company because \u201cThat company is over four light-years away. What\u2019re they going to do about it if we do copy their recipe?\u201d) And we all know what the road to Hell is paved with.<\/p>\n

In Clarke, we had the anticipation of the future and wonder at the universe. There is no \u201cfuture\u201d in Crisis at Proxima <\/em>to wonder at, or fear. There is little in it which reflects the dreams and fears of the present, or the astonishing excitement that thinking about the universe can provoke. To the extent that \u201cClarke and his contemporaries\u201d were engaging with this (and I believe that, whatever their faults, they were<\/em>), the novel falls away from their model, keeping only what later generations have argued with\u2014<\/strong>their deep, if often unwilling or unconscious, identification with the more conservative strands of social stances or literary style. Nor are we shown anything like the triumph of competence which writers like Heinlein argued they were promoting.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the basic \u201cproblems\u201d at the heart of the novel are solved by the gosh-wow handwaving science developed by the young Fintidierian Grag, who bounces thoughts off his Earth mentor Chris Sentell, along with the help of\u00a0 knowledge instilled through the \u201csuperconducting quantum interference transceivers\u201d which enable sleep-learning while he is in cryosleep. This is not so much Clarkean, in fact, as Gernsbackian: The novel\u2019s \u00a0view of science very much echoes that presented in Gernsback\u2019s Ralph 124C 41+<\/em>, serialised in 1911 and issued as a novel in 1925. Its final chapter has Ralph bringing his girlfriend Alice back to life. He needs the \u201crare gas\u201d Permagatol, but there is none available \u2026 So, naturally, he invents a substitute<\/em> (\u201cThe gas he evolved was Armagatol\u201d). Or, to put it another way, \u201cand then we were saved\u201d; or \u201c[w]ith one bound, Jack was free.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is, in fact, precisely what the science fiction of the 1950s was reacting against, and why, whatever spirit Crisis at Proxima<\/em> is written in, that of \u201cClarke and his contemporaries\u201d is not it. It\u2019s a novel which meets the expectations of its readers in that it tells a story, is full of infodumps which give the impression of imparting educational information, and it passes the time. The shame is that the expectations are, clearly, so low.<\/p>\n
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This is science fiction for readers who think that they like SF, but who don\u2019t know what it can do to jolt people out of complacency, or who don\u2019t care.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":58861,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-non-fiction","category-reviews"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Crisis-at-Proxima-cover.jpg?fit=987%2C1500&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p82q22-fjm","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58860"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58863,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58860\/revisions\/58863"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}