Manifold: Time by Stephen Baxter Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Manifold: Time
Book Review: Whew! Felt like I was part of the action!
Summary: 5 Stars
Not having read Stephen Baxter's novels before, I took this one up by chance. The book grabbed my attention from the start and kept my attention throughout the book...none of the usual 'setting the stage'. A must read for hardcore science fiction fans of any genre!Book Review: Who'd a thunk squids be so much fun
Summary: 4 Stars
Manifold: Time is absolutely bursting with amazing science. Anyone interested in cosmology and the physics of time will love this book. Stephen Baxter early on provides a mind-blowing ride from the beginning of the universe through the end of time. After jangling our gray matter about with this whirlwind tour, he then zooms through ever deeper arguments about time and how it fits into our universe. The book encompasses cosmologically huge timescales (bigger than I imagined would be possible), and gives the reader at least a chance to comprehend the universe's huge extent in space and time.
Manifold: Time has some other very interesting scientifically based arguments to make concerning the short-term survivability of humanity on earth. A look at the bibliography at the end of the book demonstrates how strongly hard-science based this book really is. Less hard science, but a lot of fun, is Baxter's use of augmented squids to "man" space flights.
For all these positives, Manifold: Time unfortunately also has some major faults. Baxter asks a lot of big questions, and the various outcomes he envisions might be correct. But the people that populate Manifold: Time are not up to the task: they never have enough depth in character or in numbers to match the questions posed. And Baxter is too secular with the story; religion and faith might not have the answers, but humanity would force them to have a much bigger part (both positive and negative) than portrayed in this book. Baxter's presentation feels incomplete and somewhat sterile.
The key to Manifold: Time and whether you might enjoy it is cosmology and time. For many, the science may go overboard, and the flawed character development and negatively sterile view of humanity might disappoint. But if you are intrigued by scifi extrapolations about the beginning and end of the universe, and find time paradoxes fun to contemplate, then you will surely enjoy Manifold: Time.
Book Review: Worse than a text book
Summary: 1 Stars
This is a very deceptive book. It starts with no fanfare: I was immediately sucked into what appeared to be a great setup for a plot. However, I soon realized that the plot does not so much develop as advance jerkily and unpredictably. The reader is dropped into implausible situations that exist only to give his "scientific evangelist" characters a framework from which to lecture, Ayn Rand style, on some aspect of physics. In fact, the constant introduction of new physics seems to substitute for actual plot.As soon as Baxter kills off the physicist responsible for most of the lecturing, the book degrades rapidly. Without physics to substitute for plot, the book drags on for a few hundred pages until it ends abruptly.
The idea of this book has merit. I was initially excited to see where Baxter would go with the ideas he proposes in the first chapter. But on many occasions, just when I thought the next physics lecture would tie everything together, he threw in something completely out of the blue.
The plot (what there is of it) does not resolve at the end. We are left with an great explosion, and a physics lecture to justify killing off every major character in the book.
Don't waste your time on this book.
Book Review: You will believe a squid can fly...
Summary: 4 Stars
or at least pilot an interplanetary ship and begin a mining project on an asteroid. What should seem like a silly mess becomes an intriguing science fiction adventure with a sense of wonder that is like that first viewing of 2001 or Star Wars. I look forward to the remainder of the triology and to other works by Baxter.Book Review: good, but a bit overwhelming
Summary: 4 Stars
This is one of the better sci-fi books I've read in some time. It's only problems is that it presents a lot of information to the reader in the form of scientific theories. The author tries to present them in forms the average reader can understand, but I was still overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information coming at me. You could easily read this book with a modern physics book next to you so you could learn more about all of the different theories that are presented. I also still don't know if I believe in the Carter Catastrophe, but this is a work of fiction so anything could happen.Other than the aforementioned problem this book was excellent. Other than the main characters name of Reid I enjoyed all the characters immensly. They behaved like real people who have the real problem of deciding what to do with the information they have discovered. I don't like the idea of the squid however and thought that was a bit strange, but like I said before this is a book of fiction and alot can happen.
The pacing is excellent and every time I thought I knew what was going to happen I was shocked by what was around the corner. This book goes into the deep idea of how humanity is going to survive in the long term, not just a few hundered years, but a few hundered millenia. It tackles the ideas of what our role in the universe is and what we as a species are capable of doing. At the end of the book after reading an ending I was totally suprised by I just sat there in amazement. This book made me think about things I had never thought about before. A really great book if you can get over the deluge of theories it throws at the reader.