Permafrost – Alastair Reynolds

There’s an excellent novel trying to escape from this novella. If it had been a short story, there would have been fewer plot elements and plot devices. If it had been a novel, they would have been better-developed.

It’s the late 21st century, and food production has collapsed to the point where the human race faces starvation and extinction. Disaster could yet be averted if seeds for the right food crops existed, but they were lost decades ago. For plot purposes, there is a theory of time travel that allows sufficiently-small changes in history. Such as someone hiding some of those seeds where they can be found a few decades later. For plot purposes, there exists a nanotechnology that lets one person control another. A bit of hand-waving, and people in the late 21st century can control people a few decades earlier and have them obtain and hide some seeds.

What I’ve described is not the story proper, it’s the scaffolding that supports the story. But it’s scaffolding that occupies about half the word count of the novella - and a very different scaffolding could have supported almost the same story.

The story wouldn’t be very interesting if it consisted of someone in the past obtaining a box of seeds, burying them, and leaving a note, so there is an antagonist. Someone is trying to prevent this from happening. The novella isn’t long enough to motivate the opposition well.

The remaining core of the novella - the story about people rising above themselves in an effort to save the world - is very good.