The Qax have been driven from Earth. The new free Human Government is intent on seeking out all collaborators from the time of the occupation. These collaborators, named Pharaohs, are immensely long-lived, benefitting from the Qax immortality treatments.

Hama and Nomi are sent to Callisto to investigate two Pharaohs to verify whether these two have knowledge or expertise that could benefit mankind.

Reth Cana is a pharaoh physicist, investigating differences between realities. He is also a very arrogant man, dismissive of the shorter lived humans and their position as rulers. Gemo his sister is a woman who has difficulty relinquishing her past. She had a daughter in her past, a daughter who did not inherit the longevity, and so Gemo watched her age and die. She now has an imprint of her daughter as a young woman in her brain that can act semi-independently and interact with others in the form of a hologram.

I like novellas, I always have done. I also like Stephen Baxter’s writing so this was a book that had a definite appeal for me. I suppose I may have built this up a little bit before even starting it. It didn’t quite live up to my own internal billing unfortunately. Now, that does not make this a bad book by any means – just that it is not as good either Mayflower II or Riding the Rock – two absolutely fantastic novellas also released by PS Publishing.

This is a solid read. It’s hard sf through and through, technology paying a central part in the story rather than just being a means of allowing the events of the story to happen.

This book might not be the absolute greatest thing in Baxter’s catalogue, but it is another worthy entrant in what has to be one of the most impressive banks of work.

Synopsis
The year AD 5408. Earth is left devastated by centuries of brutal alien occupation.

But now the overlords have been driven away. On Earth, factions struggle for power, and to restore mankind's fortunes.

Hama Druz - young, idealistic - is assigned by the ruling Coalition to investigate the affairs of the surviving 'pharaohs'. These ancients have been kept alive by a longevity technology banned by the occupation authorities, but granted to the pharaohs in return for their collaboration. In the crowded, angry squalor of an alien-built city, Hama is confronted by a pharaoh - Gemo Cana - who presents him with moral complexities Hama never imagined.

Soon Hama's mission takes him far from Earth. On Jupiter's frozen moon Callisto, another immortal has been labouring for centuries over a secretive scientific project which might provide mankind with great opportunities... or unimaginable dangers.

Hama finds himself at a pivot of history, as mankind confronts the complexity of its past and the challenge of a dangerous future.

A new story set in Baxter's acclaimed Xeelee Sequence, Reality Dust is a powerful drama of science, history and the human heart.