Time

Baxter has written a very clever book, very enjoyable. I really liked the way he uses things like Feynman's radio in the story.

People have criticised Baxter for his paper-thin characterisations. In my opinon, the fast-paced nature of Manifold: Time doesn't lend itself to great character development. You really don't have time to invest feelings in Reid Malenfant, Emma Stoney and the Blue Children, except on a superficial level. This is a story about mind-boggling science, the wonder of the Universe and just what human existence means.Having just finished the book, I'm still in that post-brain-melt stage; the science is staggering. You can't fault Baxter for throwing in as many theories as he does, and every one of them is put to wonderful use. As a suggestion, have a connection to the internet open so you can research these theories as they crop up in the book. Reading about Cruithne and Caribbean Sea Squid added a wonderful sense of learning to the novel.If you're looking for a thought-provoking, hard science novel that never lets up until the last page, I thoroughly recommend Manifold: Time.You'll love the one-line nod to Arthur C. Clarke's "2001".

Baxter does it again with an immensely thought provoking blend of hard science and visionary fiction. Like its predecessors - the excellent Moonseed and Titan, Time starts in a world instantly recognisable to us. The impetus of the space race has long since died and responsibility falls on our entrepreneurial hero Malenfant to rekindle the dream. It would be inappropriate to include any spoilers in this review, but suffice it to say that each of the manifold sub-plots has enormous relevance to today's world; Cyberluddism, genetic enhancement, religious fundamentalism, SETI, ecological disaster and, perhaps scariest of all, the appearance in our midst of a next generation of humankind, so intellectually advanced as to generate resentment and homicidal hatred amongst the "normal" disenfranchised homo sapiens. I have always expected nothing less than mind-bogglingly grandiose scope in a Baxter novel and, for my money, Time is his most poetically creative to date. If one universe is not enough, let's have a dozen or a thousand! The fact that the roots of the novel are all based in genuine contemporary science adds to its substantial impact. Astonishing stuff!

You've got to admire Stephen Baxter for undertaking such a difficult project: an adventure across the slopes of time, evolution and the universe to find humanity's place. I think he pulls it off. Some of the concepts were difficult, but the characters are there searching for understanding as well. It's a fun and wondrous read. This book stands with 2001, Fantastic Voyage and even Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Manifold:Time is a well paced, well thought out adventure through some of the more esoteric conceptions found in the outskirts of modern physics. The characters, and in particular the main character, who is a entrepeneur in the best sense of the word, for such an idea driven plot, are well developed. The author extrapolates a near term future in which NASA is a strangled bureacracy and the world is beginning to collapse, and without space based material, the world will not be able to continue to expand. Then an artifact is discovered, and perceptions about the world change. In order not to give too much of the plot away, I won't mention each of the different technical devices used, but I particularly like the concept of (I think it was called) Feynman transfer, where messages from the future might be beamed to the present, if only we were able to detect them. I found less persuasive the use of, essentially, Bayesian statistics with relation to extrapolations of population growth and human survival, since such ad hoc assumptions are approximately as accurate as the 7 day outlook on the weather for the seventh day. As a final point, I liked the symetry, similiar to that found in "The weapon shops of Isher", where events set in motion in the present can affect other parts of time and space, perhaps even in creative and wonderful ways.