Editor Sheila Williams mentions in the editorial that Reed is hard at work on a Young Adult novel, and, truth be told, there’s a touch of the YA about this story. It starts with a young boy on Mars, marvelling at the efforts his father is making to terraform Mars, and follows the boy through his long, long life as we hear about (a lot is described, not shown) the successes, and failures of terraforming across the Solar System, and the successful, and failures, of humanity to address our self-destructive inclinations. The young boy is able to rise to a position through which he is able to exert and influence on the bigger picture, despite following the fashion to be reduced to virtually Tom Thumb size, as humanity terraforms itself for the future. There’s a lot in the story, but it isn’t up there with Reed’s best, with a feel of characters and events being moved about at speed chess rates, rather than a more leisurely Grandmasterly approach that Reed often brings.
