The eastern farmers, driven out of their homes by climate collapse and over–exploitation, spread west along the river valleys and ocean coasts, taking their animals and seeds with them. But the drastic injection of chill meltwater caused ocean currents to fail, and the world suffered a cold snap that lasted centuries. Northland survived this too, its already ancient network of sea walls and dykes and soakaways resilient. A remnant ice cap over the western continent collapsed, and chill waters poured down the river valleys to the ocean. Populations bloomed.īut the ice was not done with mankind. Now, as people sought more reliable food supplies, that practice intensified. People had long tracked wild sheep and goats and encouraged the more nutritious cereal plants. Meanwhile, far to the east, other new ideas were emerging. Perhaps that neck would have been severed altogether-if not for the defiance of Northland’s people, who, tentatively at first, with crude flood–resistant mounds, drainage ditches scratched in the ground, and heaped–up dykes of stone and earth, resisted the ocean’s slow assaults. Rising seas bit at the coastlines of Northland, the great neck of land that still connected the peninsula called Albia to the Continent. The land rose and flexed as it was relieved of the burden of the weight of the ice, and meltwater flowed into the oceans and pooled in hollows on the land. Yet the world around them continued to endure significant changes. Soon the ice was remembered only in myth. Humans spread northward, colonizing the recovering land. The silence of the world had been profound.Įventually, grudgingly, the ice retreated to its fastnesses in the mountains and at the poles. He has also published over 100 sf short stories, several of which have won prizes. His books have won several awards including the Philip K Dick Award, the John Campbell Memorial Award, the British Science Fiction Association Award, the Kurd Lasswitz Award (Germany) and the Seiun Award (Japan) and have been nominated for several others, including the Arthur C Clarke Award, the Hugo Award and Locus awards. His science fiction novels have been published in the UK, the US, and in many other countries including Germany, Japan, France. He has been a full-time author since 1995 and is currently Vice-President of the British Science Fiction Association. His first professionally published short story appeared in 1987. He’s a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society. He holds degrees in mathematics, from Cambridge University engineering, from Southampton University and business administration, from Henley Management College. Stephen Baxter was born in Liverpool, England, in 1957.
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