As I have said many times before, good things often come to those who wait long enough. This is certainly true when it comes to audiobooks. Sometimes, if you’re very lucky, your patients is rewarded in a big way. Without further preamble, let’s get into it. We’re taking a look at Voyage by Stephen Baxter. 
Voyage takes place in a world where John F. Kennedy survived his assassination attempt. Although, it did render him paraplegic, and Mrs. Kennedy got killed in the crossfire. The Apollo 11 landing is a success just like in our world. However, Kennedy challenges NASA to land a manned mission on Mars by the 1980s. The novel follows an ensemble cast of NASA employees as they work to meet Kennedy’s challenge.
This was another of those books I’d been hoping would become an audiobook. For a few years, I had to settle for the BBC radio adaption that came out in 1999. It is certainly excellent, and I do plan on reviewing it at some point. Well, I need to to come up with a name for the column. I want something that is consistent with The Audio File and The Alt-Hist File. The A-Ticket File? Ticketed Attractions? I’ll think of something eventually.
Still, I longed to listened to a straight-up audiobook adaptation of Voyage. Then, in 2021, Voyage finally came out as an audiobook. In fact, so did Stephen Baxter’s entire NASA Trilogy. The NASA Trilogy isn’t exactly a series per se. It is three standalone books that all involve NASA in some way. Voyage and Moonseed are alternate history. Titan was set in the near future, for the time it was published, but I guess it has retroactively become alternate history. I’m very pleased that all three books have finally become audiobooks.
To start, let’s talk about the audiobook. Voyage is narrated by Kevin Kenerly. Initially, I wasn’t sure how I felt about Kevin as a narrator. But remember, I listened to the full cast BBC radio adaption first. So, I guess I was, consciously or not, comparing Kevin to the full cast version. That wasn’t fair to Kevin, and I did get past this thinking eventually. All things considered, I did enjoy Kevin’s narration. He reminds me of the sort of narrator you hear narrating science fiction books from the 1990s and/or 1980s. Which is fitting, because Voyage was published in 1996. So, no complaints as far as narration goes.
Okay, now lets talk about the plot itself. I should begin by discussing the structure of the novel. It alternates between two points in time. One section begins with the launch of the Ares 1 mission in 1985, and follows its voyage to Mars. The second section begins in 1969 with the Apollo 11 landing, and follows all of the work that went into creating the Ares mission. Eventually, the second section gets to the launch of Ares 1 in 1985, thus bringing the two segments together. We know that Ares will ultimately fly, but it is the journey, not the destination, that really counts. Baxter certainly manages to keep things interesting. What sacrifices will have to be made, and what challenges must be overcome, so that Ares can fly?
Like I said, this book is very much an ensemble cast, and doesn’t really have a main character. The closest it has is Natalie York. She is a geologist who is obsessed with Mars, and all the potential geological discoveries it has to offer. She helps to train astronauts for the Ares mission, but isn’t a big fan of astronauts. Too much dumb fighter jock stuff, as she phrases it. NASA’s astronauts were initially selected from members of the Air Force, and it appears the practice lasted even longer in the world of Voyage. Ironically, Natalie is initially opposed to sending humans to Mars. She feels that far more science could be achieved using unmanned robotic probes. Unmanned probes would also be cheaper, and more probes means more science. Despite this, as the years go on, she becomes a prime candidate for the Ares mission.
The closest thing to a secondary protagonist would be Joe Muldoon. He was the second man to walk on the Moon, and goes on to become a director at NASA. He’s pretty clearly a thinly-veiled stand-in for Buzz Aldrin. I’m not entirely sure why Baxter didn’t just use Aldrin. Maybe using a fictional character gave more flexibility in characterization and storytelling? Of course, Aldrin is still alive, so maybe Baxter had to worry about slander and libel laws? But the threshold for that is pretty high when it comes to public figures, which Aldrin certainly is.
This isn’t the only time Baxter uses a fictional stand-in for a real person. There’s also the character Hans Udet. He is a former Nazi rocket scientist, but that’s hardly unusual. Project Paperclip brought several German scientists, most famously Werner von Braun, to America. Many of them found work at NASA. Unfortunately, Udet used to be in charge of Mittelwerk. It was a Nazi rocket factory that used slave labor. Eventually, Udet’s past catches up with him. This is a clear parallel to Arthur Rudolph, who had a nearly identical backstory. The American government agreed to drop the charges against Rudolph, provided that he renounced his American citizenship and return to West Germany. Something similar happens to Udet.
In other characters we have Ralph Gershon. He’s a black Air Force pilot, and a Vietnam War veteran. He’s not based on any real figures, but he does provide an interesting parallel. In our world, Robert Henry Lawrence Jr. was also a black Air Force pilot. He was under serious consideration to be part of the Apollo program. Unfortunately, he died when an experimental aircraft he was testing crashed. Ed Dwight Jr. was also a black Air Force pilot who was under serious consideration for Apollo, but never made the cut. Thankfully, Gershon does get selected to be part of Ares. You could also see Gershon as somewhat similar to Guion Bluford, the first African-American astronaut from our timeline.
There are other characters, but I’ll leave them for you to discover. Now, it is clear to me that Stephen Baxter wishes that manned spaceflight was more advanced than it is. He also wishes that NASA was better funded, and that it had already sent a manned mission to Mars. However, he also realizes that, in order for that to be possible, it would require some serious sacrifices. And just what are these sacrifices? Allow me to ask you a question: what is the most important part of a space mission?
I’ll save you the trouble. Money is the most important part of a space mission. The money has to come from somewhere if you want to get to Mars by the 1980s. That means you’ll have to start making cuts and canceling programs to free-up funds. Right off the bat, Apollo 16 and Apollo 17 are canceled. Apollo 15 is also canceled, but the crew of Apollo 15 fly on Apollo 14. So, its almost like Apollo 14 got canceled, but not Apollo 15. Apollo 13 has an accident exactly like our world, so no science happened on that mission. Apollo 17 getting canceled was a particular blow, because that was the only mission where scientists got to go to the Moon. The Space Shuttle is also cancel in favor of reusing Apollo tech. Though, Skylab lasts longer than in our world, and another space station called Moonlab, which orbits the Moon, is constructed. Albeit, Skylab and Moonlab are well past their prime when they’re decommissioned.
Oh, but we’re just getting started. The Viking landers are canceled, and this is a particular sore spot for Natalie. In our world, Viking taught us a lot about the composition of Martian soil. Later, Mariner 10, Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11, Pioneer Venus, and the Voyager probes are all canceled. Let’s go through the list, shall we? Mariner 10 went on a flyby to Venus and Mercury, and was the only probe to visit Mercury until the MESSENGER probe in 2004. Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 were the first probes to visit Jupiter and Saturn. They also famously carried the Pioneer Plaques, which serve as messages to any aliens who find the probes after they’ve left our solar system.
The Voyager probes famously went on a grand tour of the Outer Planets. In fact, some of the most famous pictures of the Outer Planets, and their moons, were taken by the Voyager probes. Voyager 2 is thus far the only probe to visit Uranus and Neptune. Both of the Voyager probes also contain the Golden Records. They are recordings of sounds and music from Earth, including messages in several languages. Like the Pioneer Plaques, they’re for if aliens find the probes.
This has a rather unfortunate side-effect for the world of Voyage. Yes, humans walk on Mars by 1985. However, humanity’s knowledge of the solar system, including Mars, is far less than in the 1985 of our world. Be careful what you wish for indeed. But it isn’t just the lack of knowledge and science regarding the solar system. Who among us hasn’t been in awe at the images brought back by probes such as Voyager 1 and Voyager 2? How many people were inspired to go into science because of those images? Who hasn’t been moved by how the Pioneer Plaque attempts to reach other to other intelligent life forms? All of that would be lost in the world of Voyage.
Natalie frequently complains about how much more data could be obtained with unmanned probes. Ares 1 does a flyby of Venus to use the planet’s gravity to slingshot to Mars. They drop an unmanned probe to the planet’s surface. Natalie should be in awe of actually orbiting another world, but all she can think is about how little science they’re getting out of the probe. She’s a geologist at heart, and is frustrated at how the little probe can’t expand upon the tantalizing glimpse of Venus’ geology it offers. Rather ironically, scientists become some of NASA’s biggest critics. They feel that NASA is too laser-forced on the manned Mars mission. They feel that the money would be better spent on scientific research. For her part, Natalie strongly agrees.
Voyage essentially extends the Apollo era mentality of NASA into the 1970s and 1980s. Science wasn’t neglected during Apollo, but it wasn’t the primary focus. The main goal was simply to go places for the sake of going to them. In our world, after Apollo, NASA put more emphasis on scientific work, both via probes and via manned missions to orbit. It wasn’t as glamorous as Apollo, but it did produce a lot of projects that did benefit people back on Earth.
Speaking of probes, the Soviet Union does slightly better with it unmanned Mars probes. In our world, almost every Soviet probe sent to Mars ended in complete failure. The probes were named the Mars series. The Soviets were very creative when it came to names. For example, Mars 2 and Mars 3 attempted to map the Martian surface from orbit. Unfortunately, the area they mapped was covered by a massive dust storm, and their trajectories couldn’t be reprogrammed. They had landers, but the Mars 2 lander crashed, and the Mars 3 lander stopped transmitting after ninety seconds.
Mars 7 had a rover, but its computer malfunctioned, and the lander was launch prematurely, completely missing the planet Mars. In the world of Voyage, however, the Mars 7 lander successfully makes it to the Martian surface. Perhaps the butterfly effect is at work? Then again, outside of the space program, history doesn’t seem to change very much. All of the American presidents occur in order, Watergate still happens, no big dramatic differences.
Well, there are a few minor changes. Gene Roddenberry, inspired by the Ares 1 mission, scraps his plans for Star Trek: The Next Generation. Instead, he comes up with an idea for a crew on a smaller ship exploring uncharted space. He plans to call it Star Trek: Explorer. Damn, if only it had been called Discovery instead, that would have been very amusing. There is a short story set in the same world as Voyage called “Prospero One.” It follows an alternate British Space Program, which actually manages to launch an astronaut into orbit and return him to Earth safely.
Interestingly, the scenes in Venus orbit make no mention of the Venera probes that the Soviet Union sent to Venus. Yet there’s no mention of any further Soviet Mars probes, so the money didn’t get diverted or anything.
Baxter does make a strong case that it might have been for the best that things turned out the way they did in our world. And yet, wouldn’t it be something if humans had already walked on Mars? There would be serious downsides and sacrifices, but at the end of the day, it would still be quite the spectacle. It would be one of those moments that would go down as a major milestone in human history. There’s a brief afterword where Baxter explains his thought process, and way he made the changes to history the he did. He concludes more or less what I’ve stated.
Even the naysayers are in complete awe when Ares 1 finally launches. I have heard that rocket launches are quite the spectacle to behold. There’s only one chapter actually set on the surface of Mars; most of it is devoted to preparation for setting foot outside the lander. I know some people didn’t like that, but it makes sense from a thematic perspective. It’s right there in the title. This is a book about the journey, not the destination. Not just the interplanetary voyage of Ares 1, but all the work that happened back on Earth to make it possible. And none of it ever feels boring or dry. We see political dealings, negotiations for production contracts, and other behind the scenes details. We also get very detailed descriptions of how the various spacecrafts work. Baxter makes it all sound quite interesting. I’ll also add that Mangala Valles was a nice choice for a landing site. You don’t see it in fiction too often compared to other locations on Mars.
So, there you have it. Voyage imagines a manned Mars mission, in 1985, launched an alternate NASA. It truly is a novel about the journey, not the destination, and all the better for it. I love alternate history that involves manned spaceflight, and this did not disappoint. I’m glad that my patience has been rewarded once again, and you certainly shouldn’t wait to give Voyage a try.
Well, I think that should do it from me for now. I will see you guys next time.
