Customer Reviews

Manifold: Time

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(29)
3 star:		(19)
2 star:		(15)
1 star:		(22)

 

 

(***1/2)
This first volume of Baxter's "Manifold" triad is a tour de force of exposition masquerading as fiction. The writing is plenty lively enough, but this is the kind of hard s-f (one of the more satisfying kinds, for my money) in which the plot consists less in what happens to our heroes than in what dawns on them.

The characters themselves are two dimensional figures, stolen from old Heinlein stock, elitist and tiresomely self-confident and too crammed with genius to be believed. But that's okay. They are only there as screens onto which Baxter can project his dazzling tutorials on topology, time travel via retarded waves, paradoxical consequences of Bayesian statistics, sound ethical justifications for destroying the universe, and cosmology as a branch of genetics, among other perfectly serious loopy ideas. Who cares if the screen is two dimensional, if the movie succeeds in adding dimensions to your mind (almost painlessly) just for the price of admission?

The scale of Baxter's imagination is so large that I often couldn't settle on whether what I was reading was comical or awe-inspiring. And from chapter to chapter the scale keeps expanding. Think Olaf Stapledon on speed, and you'll hit near the mark.

Happily, volume one is completely self contained. So much so that it's not possible to conceive of a "sequel." The remaining two "Manifold" books take place in alternate universes that merely happen to include the same characters. So if you share my phobia of trilogies and tetralogies ("Do I dare crack this book, knowing that if I even half like it I'll have to read the rest to see how it comes out?"), fear no more. By the time this one volume is over, it has *all* come out, in spades. You can wait a decade or two to pick up the "next" volume, if you like, without dropping any threads.

If you like hard science fiction, you owe it to yourself to sample Baxter, and this is a fine place to start.

For some reason, the current theories about just how our universe came to be and what its ultimate fate will be seems to have captivated many hard SF practitioners in the last few years. This book is certainly a member of that group (to the extreme!), but it also throws in backward quantum waves, quantum nuggets, Bayesian statistics, and an impending catastrophe that will literally wipe out humanity.

So there is certainly enough of the `hard stuff' to satisfy any science enthusiast. But what of the story? This, perhaps, is just as wild as the science, imagining a single individual, Reid Malenfant, trying to propel the world into true space travel, real exploitation of the resources available there, who is just rich enough, and brilliant enough, to possibly bring it off, in the face of the by now de rigor opposition by environmentalists, NASA, EPA, FBI, Congress, and all the rest of the alphabet soup. But Reid becomes sidetracked when he is led to see what he believes is a message from the far future, causing a change of target to a small asteroid with an unusual orbit locked to Earth's. The initial probe is manned by an enhanced squid, whose development and behaviors from a significant sub-plot. But discovered on the asteroid is an obvious `artifact', (clearly a crib from Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey), a glowing blue ring that apparently leads to other times and universes.

In the meantime, on Earth there has been a sudden appearance of `Blue Children', fantastically intelligent, semi-autistic, who quickly gain the abhorrence of almost all `normal' people as different, a threat to humanity as homo sapiens. Gathered together, these children apparently invent a machine to capture a quantum nugget, with perhaps dire consequences for the world.

How these separate threads get folded together into a truly gorgeous trip through the history and future of not just our universe, but many others, (a near biological spawning of universe from universe, each growing towards conditions that might spawn intelligent life), becomes complicated, and the vision itself has to carry the story, reminiscent of Olaf Stapledon in his wilder moments. Baxter almost brings this off, as the vision truly is grand, but in presenting this he seems to lose sight of the story of his characters, and the ultimate message of the book is either extremely depressing or seemingly irrelevant to people of today.

The science is real, the complications of the story worthy of something by A. E. van Vogt, but plot and science alone cannot carry the full weight of this story. His characters are introduced well, and I could easily believe in someone like Reid or his former wife and even Cornelius, but their growth (or lack of it) through the later parts of the story did not quite ring true. Neither did the portrayed world reaction to the Blue Children, the message of impending calamity, or the message from the future. A good attempt, but not fully successful.

--- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)

This is one of the better sci-fi books I've read in some time. It's only problems is that it presents a lot of information to the reader in the form of scientific theories. The author tries to present them in forms the average reader can understand, but I was still overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information coming at me. You could easily read this book with a modern physics book next to you so you could learn more about all of the different theories that are presented. I also still don't know if I believe in the Carter Catastrophe, but this is a work of fiction so anything could happen.

Other than the aforementioned problem this book was excellent. Other than the main characters name of Reid I enjoyed all the characters immensly. They behaved like real people who have the real problem of deciding what to do with the information they have discovered. I don't like the idea of the squid however and thought that was a bit strange, but like I said before this is a book of fiction and alot can happen.

The pacing is excellent and every time I thought I knew what was going to happen I was shocked by what was around the corner. This book goes into the deep idea of how humanity is going to survive in the long term, not just a few hundered years, but a few hundered millenia. It tackles the ideas of what our role in the universe is and what we as a species are capable of doing. At the end of the book after reading an ending I was totally suprised by I just sat there in amazement. This book made me think about things I had never thought about before. A really great book if you can get over the deluge of theories it throws at the reader.

I found Manifold Time quite an enjoyable read. The story was replete with unexpected (and sometimes expected) twists and turns. I found a few of the main characters in the story to be quite engaging and likeable, although the heroine's character seemed a little silly at times. Stephen Baxter does an absolutely amazing job at surprising his readers. As the story unfolds you find yourself being taken down one seemingly tangent path after another, all the while coming closer and closer to the realization that what Stephen Baxter is weaving around you is not a plot, but rather a web of time. Once I clearly saw the picture that Baxter had been painting in Manifold, I was both devastated and amazed. Perhaps the reason this story is so powerful his science (aside from the genetic engineering) is impeccably rooted in the various fields of science to which he appeals. A couple of the ideas in the book have been combined improperly, but they weren't critical to the story's message. Then again, we have to remember that this science fiction, albeit science fiction at it's very best. The story that Baxter successfully conveys has direct relevance to the title of the book: Manifold Time. And once you find out what that is, you will want to thank the author for taking science and making it human.

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.

There's a lot in this book to both engross and frustrate a reader, but I think the plusses significantly outweigh the minuses. "Manifold: Time" is full of fascinating ideas and richly imagined scenarios. I don't know if this is because of the limitations of my thinking or of Baxter's writing, but I often found myself unable to understand his quantum physics for dummies sections. No matter: his weaving together the complexities of time and space utterly fascinating, and if I don't understand how things work, I feel confident that he understands it and is giving us good scientific theory.

The book centers on the idea of doom. Is the earth doomed within the next two hundred years? If the universe itself is doomed to destruction with the next multi-trillion of years, what does it all matter anyhow, since we have no future if the universe has no future? Baxter does an amazing job of making the ultimate end of the universe seem both poignant and sad. He spices his story with lots of inviting threads, such as the mysterious, super smart "blue" children, and the increasing intelligent genetically engineered squids, and, of course, the fate of everything.

His human characters, by comparison, suffer. I never really care about the people in this book nor completely believe and/or understand their motivations. When the theory, based entirely on statistics, that the earth is doomed in the next two centuries, is released, people turn to rioting in the streets. I found that unlikely. On the other hand, all of this is window dressing for Baxter's big ideas, and I found myself turning the pages and staying up late to see where it was all going.

Not a perfect book, but a good one and a worthwhile one. It has left me wanting to read the sequels, but perhaps not right away.

Stephen Baxter's Manifold: Time, the first novel of his Manifold series, is a reading experience which has filled me with perfect wonder & curiosity. Mr. Baxter has skillfully drawn the galactic course of book 1 with spell-binding treats: an ambitious theme of galactic urgency in which ALL the right questions regarding the cosmic destiny of all living things are asked; a "doomsday" plot that begins with a dying planet Earth & an unaware human population of the year 2010; current issues in theoretical physics which will help the human race answer these Big Questions & ponder a vast space-time Challenge from which all Life arises.

There's more. Sheena generation ships - smart squid forced by human Mind to meet this Cosmic Challenge - reproductively gains more Mind through the multigenerations & leaves a beloved ocean planet behind forever; humanity's globally - oppressive attempts to control the inevitability of Change; the brilliant - and feared - Blue Children. Like Sheena 5, the enhanced squid, these genius youngsters must pay dearly - with possibly their lives - for the rebirth of the Cosmos.

On to the main human characters: Reid Malenfant, roguish daredevil ex-astronaut. Man of wealth & founder of Bootstrap. He will take mankind to the stars...and beyond... despite very powerful enemies in government & industry.

Along with Malenfant travels his former wife Emma Stoney as the level-headed voice of reason & conscience. A third party will be the mysterious, obsessive, mad-genius physicist/businessman Cornelius Taine. He, too, will journey with Malenfant to the planet Earth's second moon to decipher the future: to seek out mankind's true destiny. Another of the human spacefarers is Michael, an African blue child...despised...a child of remarkable genius who is destined to help Malenfant meet the Challenge. Maura Della is the unwitting politician who is drawn into Malenfant's "crazy" schemes.

Read this book for yourself to partake in the Glory of Ideas that is Manifold:Time. Space-time will become for you, as it has for me, a wholly odd & vast cosmic tool. Reid Malenfant, along with the help of an intriguing supporting cast, studies it; uses it. And travels forever to the Stars.

For too long Squid have been neglected in Science Fiction circles. This book partially redresses this unfortunate imbalance by featuring genetically enhanced squid, and their journey into space, as one of its story lines. The book bounds along on its scientific roller-coaster ride of ideas. For me this was the main pleasure of the book, but also its ultimate downfall. The breadth of ideas was astounding, as was the pace with which they were delivered. However, with so many ideas present, and some of them being very speculative, (and, on accasion flawed), I felt the fictional `house of cards' eventually collapsed under its own weight. Yes, the characters were one-dimensional, but this is hard sci-fi so it seems churlish to complain. If you want speculative science, you'll find it here in droves. If you remember to take a deep breath as you enter, engage your sense of wonder, and leave your reality check at the door, then I suspect you will enjoy the ride. In summary, not a great book, but one that was packed with interesting ideas and speculation. It was sufficiently enjoyable that I shall try another of the author's works, but this time I will look for something shorter, in the hope that it will have slightly fewer ideas which will therefore be given more time to breathe.

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".

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.