Customer Reviews

Manifold: Space

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I gave 4 stars to this book because the theme is very interesting; Baxter worked on an Earth threatened by an exponencial colonization wave coming from the deep space (directed by an allien especies called "crackers"). The concept is very original and is based in the fact that if the live flourish in almost every star system, in the most incredibles ways, is possible that the rate of growth of the population forces to colonize several stellar systems to survive, and in this process some worlds,inhabited or no, can be destroyed or exploited.
In this book Baxter speculates on the possibility of several processes of colonization like this one, happened through aeons and our system including our own planet has been affected previously.
All this is exciting, but the long periods of time included into the book make a little difficult to tie all the facts exposed. We can find some weakeness in some arguments like:
- If our evolution process was "restarted" in some time, securely our start point was very different and possibly our ancestors could had very different physical characteristics (Depending on the moment at which the Earth was affected). Into the book we find things like pre-historic animals, dinosaurs and Neardenthals returned to the life by the Gaijims to prevent the mankind extintion and start again. This sounds like a Gaijims eternal manipulationd that it is not sufficiently clarified.
- Nemoto is alive after centuries with medical manipulation, and is as if she had a secret for this known by nobody - not mentioned.
- The mankind lost all inventive, curiosity, technological advance, religions, with the incomming alliens (sound incredible to me).
..
Despite the previous details, i did enjoy the book, and found positive technical aspects like the accretion disc in a binary star system with a black hole, speculations about how would be the vision of the stars from a distant star system; so, I believe that something good can be found in the new book: Manifold- Origin.

I think I would really enjoy a physics class taught by Mr Baxter, since the man clearly knows his science, knows which sources to go to and is able to synthesize them in ways that he can explain them without your head exploding. Also, he's able to extrapolate those ideas into some interesting scenarios that suggest some fun possibilities and open the mind up for more speculation. Alas, he's not able to translate that yet into novels with real emotional heft and the bigger his ideas get, the more the story tends to leave you behind. This book is the follow-up to Manifold: Time and as the title implies, while this book still requires great leaps in time, this time out we're more about moving outward than jumping forward. Jumping off the conclusions set by the last novel, Baxter essentially hits the reboot button and drops us in a totally different universe, although some of the characters are still the same. The most notable is our hero Reid Malenfant, who is older than the first book but just as obsessed with mankind securing their destiny beyond the stars. Instead of wondering how we're going to survive, however, he's more interested in why they aren't any other intelligent races in the galaxy, or at least why it seems that way. Meanwhile, an intelligent race does apparently decide to move into the solar system from far away and that's where the fun starts. Always willing to boldly go (split infinitive and everything), Reid disappears into a portal that was left by some prior alien race and the voyage of discovery begins. As I mentioned before, Baxter is fiend when it comes to idea and everything is well thought out. From the weird robot-like Gajin that show up, to all the other aliens that pop in every so often, to the effects of time and history when extrapolated thousands upon thousands of years into the future, it's like he's taking you through an exhibit hall in his mind, showcasing all the fun science-based ideas he has and dressing them up as science-fiction. However, it doesn't take long before the reader quickly starts to lose the plot and everything begins to drown in a sea of glorious information. There are gates that allow people to travel but since it's lights-speed, time dilation still applies and when they come back to Earth, it's hundreds of years in the future each time, leading to effects that aren't much different from what the soldier suffered in Joe Haldemann's famous The Forever War, namely culture shock and the sense of dissociation and alienation. Things progress and Baxter shows us people on the moon, people on different planets, different aliens in other star systems, the galaxy, the picture keeps blowing up bigger and bigger until you almost can't contain it. But we don't really ever find out what it all means. The cover copy on the back of the book suggests that the main thrust of the plot has something to do with the reasons why intelligent life flares up and then dies out, leaving artifacts scattered all around the galaxy that other races pick up on, and Baxter sprinkles plenty of hints that the solar system was previously used by other races for various purposes, but it's buried under such a sea of static that it's hard to sort through it all. Especially since Baxter seems to be acting like an excited child, throwing each new idea in our face almost as he comes up with it, "You like this? Well how about this? Or this? Or even this?" until you're almost numb from it. By the time he gets around to answering the central question, almost five hundred pages later, you're been dazzled by as many marvels as science can handle but feeling strangely empty at the same time. It almost feels like "Who cares?" and regardless of anything else, I doubt that's the reaction he intended. Still, he gets an A for effort and the individual moments are extraordinary, showing that he's a mind possessed of a far vision and the fact that he's able to take all this knowledge and assemble it into something resembling a story is amazing in itself. But when you add it all up, it's not quite everything it's supposed to be. Hard science junkies will probably eat it up like the candy it is, everyone else looking for slightly more emotional content may find it rough going at times but for anyone who wants to see if all those complicated ideas that involve words with too many letters actually might mean something, well this is as good a place to start as any.

This is an odd story. It develops into a quest for the meaning of life. I enjoyed it's start: China and Japan have taken the lead in space exploration because the United States has not shown the desire to put money into such ventures. Then there is the time traveling aspect: going through portals to other systems takes the time it takes for light to travel, so rather then instantenous appearance, it is five or six years to get there and the same amount to get back. Rather simple, but no one has mentioned it before.
The ending is a treat, a bit unsatisfying because you want to see happiness and success, and it is there in a sense, it is not what you expect.

Manifold: Space is a very frustrating novel. As with its predecessor, Manifold: Time, it is brimming with great hard science surrounding a very good premise. In the Manifold series, Baxter gives detailed and extended perspectives to "Fermi's paradox". Fermi articulated that, due to the huge extent and age of the universe, either life on Earth is completely unique and we are alone in the universe (the basis of in Manifold: Time), or life must be everywhere and we simply have yet to discover it (as espoused in this novel). The paradox with the 2nd view is that if life is everywhere, the age of the universe implies that we cannot be the first cognitive, noise-making intelligence; why, then, haven't we found evidence of this other life? Baxter's answer to this paradox is quite interesting: he ties up the multiple story threads of Manifold: Space with a good ending.

Unfortunately, problems Baxter had with characterizations in Manifold: Time come to full flower in Manifold: Space. This novel is too seriously flawed too make it an overall enjoyable read.

There is a lack of any kind of human "community" in Manifold: Space. The various astronauts/space discoverers that are central to the story are all unhappy loners. They go into space alone, seemingly unaided, and appear to have no friends or colleagues. The first astronaut to set foot on Venus, as one example, never communicates with anyone beyond a single individual on earth, and that individual is also a loner. Baxter often beautifully elucidates the technical side of space exploration, but appears to have no clue as to the human elements. Manifold: Space is a cold unhappy story: interesting science populated by lonely, depressed individuals.

This has to be the most epic story out there, Stephen Baxter laces hisexcellent story with real science and tons of interesting and ralistic theories!

Fascinating, unputdownable space opera yarn. Certainly has its weaknesses, characterisation is maybe not so strong, and the much vaunted "hard science" still relies on "deus ex machina" plot devices such as stargates (!) and miracle anti-ageing treatments not seen since the old testament. However, the "idea density" is so high that you would expect some duffers. Also, since I stayed up til 340am to finish it, I have to give it 5 stars! Author's misanthropic, Malthusian outlook does become a bit tedious at times but overall great speculative fiction.

Incidentally, I have not read part 1 (Manifold: Time) and as far as I can see Manifold: Space is self-contained, however other readers who have read both may like to comment on this.

Manifold: Space is the second of three books dealing with some of the big questions about the universe. The first book Manifold:Time assumed that humans were the only intelligences in the cosmos, and looked at what might happen over the next 1,000,000,000 000,000, 000,000 000,000, 000,000 000,000, 000,000 000,000, 000,000 000,000, 000,000 000,000, 000,000 000,000, 000,000 000,000 years (and every zero counts!). It was awe-inspiring but with a few flaws.

This second book assumes that we aren't the only intelligence and it attempts to answer the question called Fermi's Paradox - if aliens exist, why aren't they here already ? After all, space is vast and the universe has already existed for thousands of millions of years. If they exist, what is holding them back?

The plot is long and stretches over millenia. The central character is an American called Reid Malenfant, who is involved in making First Contact with an alien species , the Gaijin. As he then travels from star to star he leapfrogs the centuries as Earth's society collapses. Conservative and constrained settlements on the asteroids, Triton and a hauntingly sad Moon mean that humanity still survive, but in the Gaijin's shadow.

As another set of aliens force the remnants of the human race into a final showdown, Malenfant gradually understands the nature of the cosmos and the motivation of the Gaijin. Life exists on almost any planet, but the physics of the universe means that death and extinction almost inevitably follow.

With such an cosmic setting , it's difficult to produce an adequate climax, but Baxter does not disappoint here. Despite what other reviewers have said, I think the book is well-written and I have read it twice. It's one of the best examples of Britcosmic - and I recommend it if you like serious SF.

I disagree with reviewers who say that Manifold: Space is too complex -- the universe is complex! -- but strongly agree that the characters are flat, the plot has gaping holes (was this originally a collection of short stories?), and by the end you're left wondering what's the point of it all. In addition, while I wouldn't deny that humanity *could* slip back into a dark ages, or become insular in the face of alien races, Baxter's portrayal of 21st century humans as 100% uninterested in the Gaijin goes too far to be believed.

Then there's the ending... I won't give anything away, but let's just say it's feel-good Hollywood at its fuzziest.

Stephen Baxter brings surprising, depressing, and frightening ideas about how we got here, why we don't think we've found anyone else in the universe, and what's in store for us when we do. Or it's a political and environmental commentary about what bad things countries are doing to each other while we're all doing it to the only planet we've got. How science will not save us, and in fact that there's no saving us at all. Just one big universal slog, from (cosmic) dust to dust. Yes, main characters, heroes, and adventures do keep you turning the pages to the next event. But there's no real story here, and the points have been made long before their repetition extends Space as much too long a book. Meanwhile, it's fair that Baxter brings religion and G-d into the equation, because that's our answer to the big questions. But again, the point can be made in a much shorter treatise -- try Ecclesiastes.

"Space" is the second book in Stephen Baxter's Manifold trilogy, and a sequel of sorts to "Time", although it can also be read independently. Once again the central character is Reid Malenfant, an ex-NASA astronaut and failed entrepreneur. Obsessed with the search for extraterrestrial life, Malenfant seeks a solution to the Fermi paradox: given that the universe is billions of years old, if life exists out in the cosmos, why don't we see the evidence of it all about us? Thus when alien intelligence is detected out in the asteroid belt, Malenfant takes it upon himself to investigate, to make contact and ultimately to follow them back to the stars, through the mysterious blue portals through which they came.

The action unfolds over no less than 1,800 years, from the present day up to the thirty-eighth century, with the final, epic conclusion set another 5,000 years after that. In this way Baxter lays out a compelling vision of the possible long-term effects of Earth's contact with aliens. Unlike in "Time", where he employs an interesting mix of faux newspaper articles, blogs and journal entries to tell his story, in "Space" he sticks to a more conventional third-person narrative. The story is related through the perspective of four or five main characters, all of whom use the portals to travel to the stars and see life beyond Earth, and who, over the course of many years, become witnesses to the gradual decline of human civilisation.

The story is episodic in nature, and has the impression of a number of short stories loosely linked together. This can be frustrating for the reader, as there are enough intriguing ideas packed in this book to sustain half a dozen different novels. Each successive world is imaginatively drawn - from Earth, Io, Triton and Mercury to Alpha Centauri and far beyond - but Baxter tends to pass over them all very quickly, which does become tiresome. There comes a point about two-thirds of the way in when one wonders what the ultimate point is. Another result of the disjointed nature of the novel is that is difficult to feel fully engaged with the characters or get a sense of their development in these extraordinary circumstances. It is disappointing, too, that Malenfant - in principle a fascinating character - does not feature more, despite his centrality to the story. However, it is clear that this is not meant to be a character-driven novel so much as one based around ideas. Indeed "Space" has at its heart themes of human ambition and determination, consciousness and identity, self and soul, and the will to survive in a hostile universe, all of which are explored in depth.

In "Space", the author shows an imagination and consideration of the big questions of existence which is not often seen in most modern SF. It is true that there is less hard science and more scientifically-informed speculation than there was in "Time", but Baxter delivers it with such confidence that it hardly matters. This is truly a novel for the twenty-first century.