Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20328 in Books
• Published on: 2000-08-07
• Binding: Paperback
• 464 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Stephen Baxter, Britain's foremost author of "hard" SF rooted in real physics, is renowned for thinking big. Time begins with a US entrepreneur's deceptively low-key plans to reclaim space and exploit the asteroids, bypassing NASA's bureaucracy and safety regulations. One bizarre cost-cutting measure: the "Big Dumb Booster" pilot is a genetically enhanced, intelligent squid. Then the mission is redirected following a weird mathematical prediction that humanity hasn't long to live, and a "Feynman radio" transmission from the future that highlights a particular asteroid. Here a space-time gateway opens on unimaginably distant futures, stepping far beyond the dying sun of Wells's The Time Machine to visions of a galaxy reshaped by humanity to hoard its energy ... beyond stars, beyond black holes, beyond even mass. And the emerging message, seen most clearly by a new generation of persecuted, ultra-gifted children, is that this seeming triumph--this total exploitation of our universe's possibilities--isn't good enough. A better path awaits, via a cataclysm that dwarfs mere supernova explosions... Baxter pays homage to the transformations of Clarke's Childhood's End (there's also a nod to 2001), but without the mysticism: it's all respectable, if speculative, physics. His final, devastating payoff makes sequels seem impossible. Two are planned. Rousing stuff, on a cosmic scale. --David Langford

Synopsis
In the millennium's last great novel, Stephen Baxter takes us a short step beyond Y2K. The year is 2010. We have survived! So far. Cornelius Taine of Eschatology, Inc., mathematical genius, predicts that in just 200 years our species will be wiped out. Even evacuation from Earth will not save us from extinction. Reid Malenfant, entrepreneur, has Big Dumb Boosters ready to fly from the California desert, to be piloted by an enhanced squid named Sheena 5. When Taine offers Malenfant the ultimate dream of saving the species, Sheena's mission is diverted to investigate Earth's recently discovered - and very remote - second moon. What Sheena 5 discovers there is nothing less than a revelation: the secret reason for our existence visible at last beneath the rippled surface of Time's river. Malenfant and Taine must follow Sheena! But they are pursued by an enraged US Air and Space Force, and a mighty battle in space may cut short their hopes for the ultimate transformation of mankind.

Customer Reviews

A waste of...?
I discovered Baxter via the Gollancz 'Future Classics' series which included his uber-epic, 'Evolution'. It was one of the most unique books I've ever read (and I've read a lot), spanning the entire evolution of the human race, and I would recommend it to anyone with even a quarter of a brain.
'Time' on the other hand, was a disappointment of truly epic proportions. I have harboured a desire to write novels myself, but I've never gone through with it for fear of it turning out exactly like this. The structure of the story is so amateur in its construction it actually made me laugh out loud on more than one occasion, with potential plot-lines being discarded even before they've begun. You can tell without doubt that when the writer began this book he had absolutely no idea what was going to happen at the end, or if he did then he changed his mind several times en route, ultimately ending it by killing off all but one character and wiping out the entire universe,presumably to give himself a clean slate on which to hastily scrawl the two sequels, 'Space' and 'Origin', which incidentally I shall never read, so little do I care about the outcome of this jumbled 'saga'.
Baxter obviously has some radical and far reaching ideas about time, space and other inherently 'big' concepts, but his laughable attempt at character development meant I had very little desire to keep reading, only doing so because I'm still waiting on my next Amazon shipment. In fact I actively disliked most of the characters: the ludicrously named Reid Malenfant, the 'star', is a middle-aged entrepeneur clearly based on Baxter himself, or at least what Baxter dreams of being, and is used as the instigator for all of the plot u-turns; his ex-wife is possibly the most annoying character in any book I've ever come across - all she does is follow Reid around moaning at him about money and bills and blah blah blah. I was ready to kill her by the end, but luckily Baxter took care of that for me in one of his impulsive changes of story. The effect of all the high-science stuff interspersed with this pathetic domestic bickering was like skipping back and forth between The Sky At Night and Eastenders.
All in all I found this book to be a complete waste of time. If it hadn't been for Evolution I would have written Baxter off as a seriously sub-standard author. As it is I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he's just inconsistent.
So if you're thinking of buying this, don't. Buy Evolution instead. Or, even better, buy the Hyperion cantos by Dan Simmons and be over-awed by the magnificent potential of sci-fi.

Visionary and compelling - a novel of tremendous scope
"Time", the first book in Stephen Baxter's Manifold trilogy, follows the story of Reid Malenfant, washout NASA astronaut and entrepreneur with ambitions of propelling humanity beyond the the confines of Earth and towards limitless expansion among the stars. However, when a genius mathematician arrives at his Nevada headquarters predicting the end of the human race in only 200 years, Malenfant throws all his efforts into finding out how this potential catastrophe can be avoided. Before long he finds himself on his way to a remote asteroid in search of answers - regarding both the nature of the universe itself and humanity's purpose within it. At the same time a new phenomenon is sweeping Earth: a sudden wave of hyper-intelligent children. Are they to be encouraged or feared? Are they connected to the doomsday predictions? Into the middle of all this Baxter still finds room to work in messages from the future, genetically enhanced squid, and a mysterious alien portal - all of which combine to create a rich and diverse possible future.

The story is told in slightly unusual fashion for the genre, employing not only simple third-person narrative but also faux journal entries, newspaper articles and transcripts of television broadcasts. This gives Baxter the flexibility to control the pace of the story as it builds from relatively mundane beginnings towards its epic conclusions. It is also very effective in bringing to life Malenfant's world as it faces up to its future and the prospect of impending apocalypse. His characters are similarly compelling; Malenfant in particular, with his rogueish charisma and classic American can-do spirit, is excellently drawn.

As regards the science, the mere fact that Baxter has been able to write a coherent work of fiction about such grand cosmological themes is remarkable. That he has done it in such a plausible and engaging fashion is even more remarkable. Much of what he describes has been drawn together from real scientific research, as he explains in his Afterword. There are perhaps a couple of inconsistencies (as other reviewers have pointed out), but these are mere blemishes in an otherwise excellent book. (Incidentally, for further reading on some of the cosmological questions raised in "Time", I would highly recommend "The Goldilocks Enigma" by Paul Davies.)

Everything considered, "Time" is an astounding novel with tremendous scope. Baxter shows himself to be an exemplary writer of modern SF and I very much look forward to reading the sequels, "Space" and "Origin".

Good story
A good story and enjoyable read but I felt it fell foul of a few issues.

I too noticed the problem with them witnessing the event at the end of the book - to witness it they'd already be overtaken by it.

There is also the issue of some technology for the sake of it and things being set too near in the future. E.g. softscreens seem to have replaced all forms of computer yet this is only a few years in the future. An there is an imaginatively named (or not so depending on your opinion) new version of a cola drink - seemingly pointlessly named just for the sake of it and so that a character can take a drink of it...

And, if they had the technology to build all the small, ingenious robots, why did they have to go to all the trouble of using an artifically advanced squid just to pilot a ship. As well as having to haul all that water into space just to sustain it...

Still good though...