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'''Pushing Ice''' is a 2005 science fiction novel by Welsh author Alastair Reynolds. According to Reynolds' Web site, the story takes place in a universe separate and distinct from his Revelation Space universe.[1]

Contents

Plot summary

Trivia

Plot summary

''Pushing Ice'' is set in the not too distant future and in the very far future of the human race. In the distant future, the elected rulers of humanity gather to decide on a suitable ceremony to honour the person they consider was responsible for modern humanity, Bella Lind. In the early days of humanity's exploration of the solar system, Lind was the captain of the ''Rockhopper IV'' (a ship for mining cometary ice). When Saturn's moon Janus leaves orbit under its own power, the ''Rockhopper IV'' was the only ship capable of catching it. Lind and the crew were asked to undertake the dangerous mission and send back as much information as possible before they had to turn back. However, on approaching the moon, now revealed to be a ship of some sort, they are caught in the ship's wake as it accelerates closer to light speed and drawn too far from the solar system to make it back. In a last ditch attempt, they land on the ex-moon and try to survive as the speeding ship takes them further away in space and time from home. ''Pushing Ice'', like H. G. Wells' classic ''The Time Machine'', explores the futility of existence when compared with the vastness of time.

Trivia

★ A spacecraft being propelled inadvertently by general relativistic effects, in the direction of the star Spica, was also included (as a very minor plot point) in the novel ''Earth'' by David Brin, published fifteen years earlier.

★ The strange behaviour of the Saturn moon Janus as described in this book is real. Janus and Epimetheus swap places every 4 years, see Orbital relationship between Epimetheus and Janus.