Manifold: Time by Stephen Baxter Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Manifold: Time
Book Review: Good Science, Good Story, but...
Summary: 4 Stars
Manifold: Time is filled with some good scientific stuff, especially if you have an interest in quantum mechanics and similar fields but don't know much about them. It also presents some theories that are a bit more...let's say, wacky.The story is also interesting. The plot itself was fairly interesting, and the way in which it is written - by continually switching viewpoints - keeps you on your toes. It tackles some neat concepts and in the end, comes out ok.
There a few problems, the largest of which is that the book has light material for a very, very heavy subject. This is a fun romp through off-the-beaten path science by an crazy billionaire mixed with apocalypse theories, the purpose of humanity, and characters that could have been drawn out far better. All of those are interesting (well, maybe not the last item), but do not mix well.
It also brings up some neat ideas about the need for children (and the need of parents to have them) which I felt could have been brought out a bit more.
In the end, a fun read, but I'd suggest one of the Xelee Sequence books (Ring, Flux, Raft...) for first-time Baxter readers.
Saltz
Book Review: Good science, but depressing
Summary: 3 Stars
Baxter's novel Manifold: Time is a mind-boggling exercise in concrete scientific concepts put to theoretical use. It is interesting, well-written, and intellectually stimulating. But it has rather thinly drawn characters, and the ending, which is perhaps meant to be uplifting, strikes a depressing note.Baxter tells us his story using multiple points of view. Some characters appear once, and others many times. We occasionally feel some emotion for them, but not much, because they rarely seem fully realized. This book is enjoyable if you wish to read about informed concepts (Baxter has a doctorate in aeroengineering research), and it is successful enough to have been nominated for the 2000 Arthur C. Clark Award. But don't read it for a human story, unless you're interested in one on the galactic scale.
Book Review: Good squid!
Summary: 2 Stars
I liked the squid. She was the best character in the book. The rest of it was more or less ok - definitely not something I would keep. Check it out of the library and save yourself the money. A good airplane book.Book Review: I Got Bogged Down...
Summary: 3 Stars
I am a fan of Stephen Baxter's. Vacuum Diagrams and The Time Ships were two of my favorite sci-fi books in the last ten years (at least among the Sci Fi I have read.) And I was looking forward to diving into a meaty trilogy of his that we could me reading for awhile. However whereas those two novel's took some fascinating contemporary science and built interesting conflicts and narratives on top of them, this book drowns beneath them.
Too often the action gets bogged down in a scene where one scientist or mathematician is standing in a room with one of the protagonists (who were neither) explaining some scientific principle or another which Baxter feels in imperative to the story. And just as the protagonists through one cliche or another express their confusion ("In English" - "X...tried to act like they understood." - "Malenfant tried to contain his frustrating confusion.") over and over and over again, so too was I squinting at the page and struggling to distill the important principles. Invariably the scientist or mathematician would sigh in patronizing frustration at the protagonist/me and simplify things...which they could have just done to begin with.
This happens over and over again to the point where I just got bored and ended up getting bogged down in this one for quite awhile. It's a pity because this past weekend I finally made a concerted effort to finish it and, where the first 250 pages were like a pushup drill, the last 150 were a lot of fun and I flew through them. In typical Baxter style, the story was elevated from interesting straightforward premises to questions about the very nature of the universe and what could be our place in it's present, beginning, and ultimate end. Even in the midst of the climax there was STILL that convention of the smart characters stopping to explain what was happening to the dullards in the story, but at that point the action had reached a level that I didn't care.
Even though I found this one excruciating at points I'm surprisingly still interested in the sequels, if only because I have no idea how this one could carry on. If you can soldier through the first half this one gets a hesitant recommendation.
Book Review: I already read this one, it was called "2001: A Space Odyssey."
Summary: 2 Stars
Stephen Baxter and several other new writers are continuously compared to Arthur C. Clark, Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and other of the all-time greats. I will stick to the classics. Does one get compared to a legend by copying him? The inside cover reads: "Battling national sabotage and international outcry, Malefant's bootstrap company builds a spacecraft, plots its course, and trains the genetically enhanced Sheena 5 for her one-way journey (... b)ut Sheena has plans of her own."
What? Another sentient ship? No, it turns out to be a sentient squid! Her part of the story is interesting, but not as involving as HAL-9000. In "2001" a giant black monolith sparks intelligence in pre-humans. In "Time" a big blue cylinder sparks superintelligence in humans. Both function as portals, according to the programming. Although not necessarily in the same order, in each the main characters are taken by their respective portals, placed in a virtual motel rooms, turned into advanced programs, and given a grand tour of creation.
I would not discourage someone from borrowing this from the library, as I did, if they have the time, it has its merits, but you could read "2001," "2010" and "The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov in less time and get much more story.