Anti-Ice

by Stephen Baxter

Book Overview

Discovering a new element, Anti-Ice, a mysterious substance that unleashes vast energies when warmed, a millionaire industrialist dreams of power from an item that promises world peace--or world... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061054216
• ISBN13: 9780061054211
• Release Date: October 1994
• Publisher: Harper Voyager
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 4.2" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

Baxter's Best Tackles Steam-Punk

Fans of steam-punk and Victorian adventures will love ANTI-ICE by Stephen Baxter. In this book, Baxter flawlessly combines many great SF themes. Victorian exploration, super science, alternate history, and the personal accounts of a minor functionary made this a delight for me to read.The industrial revolution has come a little early and in an unexpected form. An Antarctic expedition finds a substance called anti-ice. So dubbed because if it starts to warm up, it releases incredible amounts of energy. Thus evolves a British empire like you have never seen. Imagine all the great creations of Verne being controlled by the British and available to the common man. Anti-ice becomes the new fuel of the empire. Its discoverer continually finds new ways to use its power. One such method was to power a flying rocket that he travels the world in. But after some sabotage, he finds himself in space and headed for the moon.Besides fueling the empire, anti-ice can also be a terrible weapon. And wouldn't you know it, Bismarck is on the march and the French are out to stop him. Look out! If you like alternate history of the great voyages of Verne, this is a book for you.

Grand good time sci-fi alternate universe adventure!

I really enjoyed this book! Like all of Baxter's work it just seems to have a heck of a lot more meat on its bones than a lot of what I read. Good speculative SUBSTANCE, if you know what I mean. Yes, I had to pick up an encyclopedia and read a few paragraphs on the Crimean War. Took all of two minutes and added exponentially to the depth of the reading experience. Good book, good ideas and a whopper of a finale!

a tribute to the founders of sci-fi

I found this book immensly enjoyable.The reviews That It recieved were unjustIfied.In the last 30 years of sci-fi wrItIng,when the quality of narrative Is lost under heaps of tiresom scientific mumbo-jumbo,It Is refreshing to find a tribute to the Inventors of the jenre.However,one Must ask,Why Is It that readers reject such attempts at reviving the classic methods?sad Answer: READERS TODAY D`ONT LIKE TO THINK! the sad trend today Is to write text-books and pass them for fiction,And the rare effort to bring back A sense of wonder gets rejected.ThIs Is a rare book of quality and those who don`t like It have Only their small Intelects to blame

Loved it

Loved the book, loved the short stories about Anti-Ice Stephen Baxter's also written (slightly different universe)Stephen should definitely write some more books with similar themes. Excellent, easily his best book.

A fun, exciting, Vernian alternate history.

This is the novel Jules Verne might have written, if he'd suspected the possibility of nuclear energy, and been able to write interesting, likeable characters. Set in the 19th century, the novel concerns the effects of the discovery of "Anti-Ice", a substance which is inert when frozen, but when heated releases colossal energies. It can be used as an energy source for fantastic Vernian vessels, such as luxury liners, trains and spaceships, or as a city-destroying explosive. An adventure story, "Anti-Ice" follows the fortunes of young Ned Vicars of the foreign office, who meets explorer/inventor Josiah Traveller and is whisked off into fantastic and horrible adventures and romance. The novel also features some typically Vernian descriptions and explanations of a variety of craft and devices which employ anti-Ice.