Official website and blog
The first thing I do upon starting my Astronomy degree is discover that I’m not doing an Astronomy degree.
This isn’t an inspiring metaphor, as when Sean Carroll describes scientists as “Poetic Naturalists”. I mean that, according to the Open University, I am literally not studying an Astronomy degree.
Axiom’s End‘s story concerns the aesthetics and tropes of the sort of mid-2000s science fiction that some would describe as “trashy” … and approaches them with the delicacy of more profound science fiction such as Contact or Arrival. The result is a wonderful collision of artistic sensibilities; it’s like discovering a Power Ranger in the background of a Bouguereau painting, and finding that it’s still beautiful.