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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Manifold: Baxter, May 5, 2002
This is a third volume in the Manifold series; the same characters reappear in a different universe. Now, I agree with other reviewers. This book contained far too much violence and the Zealots (the "villains") were disappointing. Baxter does best with antagonists who are never seen, such as his mysterious Xeelee Sequence. As mentioned, characterization is as weak here as for Baxter's predecessor, Larry Niven. The ending was very sad and left me thinking: in *Manifold:Time: Malenfant and the super-children collapse the universe and create a myriad of potential universes. At the end of *Origin* we're told that the Red Moon (itself reminiscent of Baxter's *Moonseed*) wanders between a series of parallel Earths. *Manifold:Space* presumably happens in a universe outside this circuit, as its galaxy contains myriad intelligent species. These books had several interesting themes in common: Malenfant's journey and ultimate death, love and faith as essential to human existence, the Neandertal toolmaking as a meditation, malfunctioning and meaningless supertechnology, and a vast, incredible view of all reality that dwarfs most sf writers' abilities to make their readers *see*. (The black hole miners, mentioned in the first and third book, are an idea so amazing that they deserve a whole novel...) The extremely depressing tone of all Baxter's writings is present here as well, and makes this less satisfying a read than it would have been if he let his heroes win for once. Overall, a strange series that reveals this writer's weaknesses as much as his strengths. A writer who has to reuse so much material needs to slow down or stop until he has more to work with.
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19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Save your money, April 10, 2003
This review is from: Manifold: Origin (Mass Market Paperback)
I read Manifold:Time, his first in the series, and found it a very satisfying SF read. The science is solid, the characters well-developed and the pace perfect. The next in the series, Manifold:Space, was a disappointment, but still bearable--Note that although the characters (at least their names) are the same in all 3 books, it is not really a series as the author uses "parallel universe" plot lines to make each book stand on its own. The third one, Manifold:Origin is truly a waste of paper. The plot has so many holes, inconsistencies and in general inanities that you almost feel the whole thing is a joke, or maybe Mr. Baxter really sacrificed ideas for speed (less than a year between M:Space and M:Origin). The main character of the book, a well-developed and engaging personality in the first book, is shallow and failry boring in this instance, with few endearing or engaging traits. The main plot line starts with his significant other being kidnapped to (he presumes) a new planet that has just appeared orbiting the Earth and replacing the moon. He fights tooth and nail to get a ship to go there (never mind why an overcrowded planet with existing technology would not be rushing to colonize a new planet with water and atmosphere less than 5 light-minutes away). When he gets there, primary objective being to resuce his loved one, he is met by hostile hominids and is saved by what appears to be a lost English lord. of course the next logical step is to: leave the ship, his only means of getting out, open and abandoned, have his only communications device with Earth destroyed, and proceed to go have beers and sleep off the hangover at the Brits' camp. Never mind that he also just found out that this planet happens to be a "link" between parallel Earths and just phases in and out bwtween universes and therefore any second he could be phased to a different universe and forget any hope of coming back. The plot goes downhill from there. it becomes excrutiatingly boring and even less believable. It is a shame that an author with such a stellar oeuvre felt compelled to publish such an unworthy novel. I hope his next effort is more satisfying, but after M:Origin, I will definitely wait for reviews before buying it.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Mind-blowing, touching, and flawed, February 16, 2002
ORIGIN finishes off Stephen Baxter's trilogy in a way that may initially seem less grand than the other space operatic installments, yet makes sense given that all three books deal with the Fermi Paradox and its depressing prospect that intelligent life is unique and alone in our universe, confined to Earth. In ORIGIN, Baxter responds by dropping the relentless quest for aliens pursued in the first two books, and instead tells a slightly more accessible story about what we do have--our humanity--and all the profound secrets and insights lying deep within our collective evolutionary past, and future(s). It is a story of the destiny of the human species. When the main characters from the series find themselves on a rogue, wandering moon that seems to be capable of traveling through the vast manifold of potential universes, Baxter directly justifies (not that it necessarily needed it) the reusing of the same characters gimmick that unites the trilogy, as well as provides for a few sly quips ("Maybe we knew each other in a past life" etc). In characteristic fashion, he flits from one stylized narrative to the next, presented from the eyes of the diverse hominids and pre-hominids that mysteriously share this primeval moon, assessing events in their own terms, all in minimalistic and lucid prose. Also characteristic of Baxter, the personalities are flimsy (even Emma Stoney, this story's definite heroine) and are often revealed to be little more than puppets ventriloquizing the author's ideas, or explanations. Inconsistencies abounds, most notably the huge fluctuations of apparent cognitive capacity held by various characters, and the
completely pointless but nevertheless disturbing side-tale starring Shadow, an alienated and abused presapient "Elf-woman." Overall, though--for readers of TIME and SPACE--this is a strikingly dark story. For those who haven't cared to think about it, early life was grisly and short, poignant little bursts of sentience unfortunately chock-full of violence, rape, and cannibalism. Baxter explores this delightful blur of pain a little more acutely than I would have wanted, but ORIGIN's real heart of darkness is in its analysis of the humanity that we stake a claim to--us modernized humans who read stuff like this--and its essential faults, which I read to be overanalysis and the drive to possess and expand. The basic facts of our humanity are not so much decried as compared to other ways of life in the "It doesn't have to be this way..." scenario used throughout the MANIFOLD series. Needless to say there are many melancholy revelations sprinkled throughout, and a surprising ending which makes one question what redemption may be to a homo sap. Despite its shortcomings, I enjoyed ORIGIN better than the other two precisely because of the subject matter. Baxter has a way with his writing that makes incongruity seem trivial when you meet and engage with his incredibly potent ideas, expressed in beautifully streamlined prose. To end, a rumination on a past mode of living, an immersion in the moment of a sunset as perceived by a Neanderthal: "Joshua felt himself dissolve, out from the center of his head, to the periphery of the world. There was no barrier around him, no layer of interpretation or analogy or nostalgia; for now he was the plain and the sea and the clouds, and he was the slim doe that looked up at the cliff, just as he was the stocky, quiet man who gazed down from it. For a time he was immersed in the world's beauty in a way no human could have shared."
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