Manifold: Time by Stephen Baxter Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Manifold: Time
Book Review: On a friend's recommendation
Summary: 4 Stars
Recently a friend and I were talking about science fiction over coffee, and he said that I needed to check out Baxter's work. I usually don't look for new fiction, I let it get suggested to me--that way I have some feeling of why it will appeal to me.
I picked Manifold: Time because its title suggested time travel, and I'm a sucker for time travel stories. Straight up time travel, science thrown to the side. I also love hard sci-fi. And Baxter delivered both.
When he talked about squid and their communication, I turned the page. I wanted more. He talked about going into space as a commercially viable enterprise, and I thought I was going to read a Heinlein book. Which would have been very good indeed.
Then Baxter threw his curve. He introduced an eccentric charater from an organization called Eschatology. At first I thought with a name like Eschatology, I might have stumbled in to Philip K. Dick, but was I wrong.
The man from Eschatology introduced the time element; which as I said, I was looking for. The time thread of the book begins, for all purposes, at Fermilab, which is home to the Tevatron. And Baxter painted a picture so accurate that it meshed with my memory--I grew up very near Fermilab. The deal was sealed.
He made good on the deal with his use of advance and retarded signals to advance the story. The quantum science of time. Oooo. And what's better than the science being right? Having it all get paid off the right way. No garbage. No deus ex machina. Just honest story telling while trying to unravel and explain the mysteries of our universe.
I would wholeheartely recommend this book to anyone who likes hard sci-fi. I'd peg Baxter as somewhere between Philip K. Dick, whose work Baxter has obviously read, and Robert Heinlein.
Book Review: On second thought, hold the calamari--I'll have the salad
Summary: 3 Stars
As a science lesson "Manifold Time" works to perfection. Unfortunately it's supposed to be a fiction book. The science, anyhow, is certainly fascinating. Radio waves beamed back to the past; "quark nuggets"; "vacuum decay"; multiple evolving universes--all real, according to the author's afterword, and all quite challenging.And there's this loopy probability puzzle known as the Carter Catastrophe here. It, too, is real, says Mr. Baxter. But then, so is Zeno's Paradox. I wouldn't get worked up about Carter, although the characters in the book certainly do.
That's because the author wants them to get worked up. Mr. Baxter, like Woody Allen in one of his films, is apparently in a funk because the universe is expanding and will eventually wither away by heat death. So why bother? Especially since, well, Mr. Baxter, despite all the fascinating theories about evolving universes, seems to believe we're pretty much alone here--against all odds.
And because a few billion more years of evolution, alone, don't quite do it for our Mr. Baxter, he's concocted a truly hashed up plot, filled with stock characters from a Heinlein parody. (His Reid Malenfant is just a pale copy of an RAH "grand old man"; his colleage, Cornelius, keeps bringing what plot there is to a screeching halt in order to deliver his science lessons. You may actually welcome those intrusions.) The simple folk go absolutely bananas worrying about this catastrophe while Malenfant, who at one point discovers he _is_ the center of things and hurls an invective at Copernicus, manages to take a grand tour of the manifold of universes--it ends up somehow in a virtual hotel room (don't ask!).
And then there are the "blue children"--annoying, brilliant but autistic, mini-Howard Roarks, whose grand scheme is to blow everything up in order to make the evolution of universes more efficient and woe to anyone and anything that impedes them from their appointed rounds. The two characters sympathetic to the children are a Congresswoman and Malanfant's ex-wife. Everybody else wants to delete them with extreme prejudice to prevent them from creating their new order, and after a while some readers may well feel the same way.
Others, however, may find this creation of a new order fascinating and necessary. Still others--those of us content simply to have life-as-we-know it hang on here for a few billion more years or so--may find that Mr. Baxter's scenario is, well, fascinatingly fascist.
Oh, lest I forget: also appearing here are intelligent space-faring squids. Feisty critters they are too. I rather liked 'em whenever they turned up. They're the meek, who inherit the earth, but by then it isn't worth very much.
Book Review: One-of-a-kind
Summary: 5 Stars
I really liked it. The book was filled with new things for me. I learned a lot about not only time, but about how the galaxy was formed and about the randomness (or lack of) of the whole thing. It's also right off the headlines; just check the news about NASA landing on Eros! Could Eros be the beginning of commercial exploration of space? Baxter makes a good case for it.
One of those rare books that I will surely re-read many times.
Book Review: Original, mind blowing.
Summary: 5 Stars
Quite a piece of work. The most creative work I've read in a long time. The ability of Baxter to not only touch on the pure physical side of science but also weave in sociology, philosophy, theology, political science and even biology. A great read. (that's alot of 'ologies)Book Review: Profound Ideas
Summary: 4 Stars
Baxter's 'Manifold Time' focuses on some truly profound ideas and mind-boggling time scales. Very deep.
Yes, the dialogue, plot, and characters are at times a bit thin. Overall the plot and writerly craft pick up during the second half. But the point of 'Manifold Time' is the science and the ideas, and sublime ideas they are. If you are just looking for a dumb, cheap thriller, this is not for you. But anyone who appreciates Carl Sagan or Michio Kaku and the accompanying deep thoughts of astrophysics and the universe should appreciate this book.