22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hard SF on the grand scale, November 17, 1998
This review is from: Ring (Mass Market Paperback)
Hard SF the way it can and should be written. Baxter creates well-drawn and interesting characters and sets them loose on an adventure of truly mind-boggling scale. I haven't read any of his stuff before, but that's gonna change, now! "Ring" reminds me most of Kim Stanley Robinson's "Red Mars," which won a well-deserved Hugo Award. It's positively bursting with well-thought-out and captivating speculation and extrapolation, and most of the time I was reading, I just kept shaking my head in amazement at the scope of the ideas. You may learn more about stellar physics or superstring theory than you'd like to, but hey, that's hard SF, and Baxter does a good job of keeping the science understandable. "Ring" occasionally drags a bit, but not for long, and I guarantee it will expand your mental horizons.
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The REAL Lord of The Ring, January 24, 2006
This review is from: Ring (Mass Market Paperback)
is not Frodo, not even Sauron, but... the Xeelee?
I must admit that this books is more "The Silmarillion" than the LOTR trilogy: a lot of plain and descriptive narrative and lecutures-disguised-as-dialogue, not much engaging drama and action. Very tasty, in a super crunchy and chewy way, if you are into that stuff (like me); if not, well... But then again, I ask myself: for a book with a plot on such a scale, is any human drama viable? To give just one example: two factions are fighting a war in the universe. One of them hurls projectiles at the other as weapons of war. Their projectile of choice? Galaxies.
Yeah, it's THAT kind of big.
On such a scale, I think nobody, not Tolkien, not Shakespear, not even Homer can possibly write an effective human drama. We are simply too puny and utterly irrelevant. Everything that constitutes "normal" human drama -- ambition, betrayal, religion, politics, sex, power, romance, murder, conspriacy, utopia and dystopia, even life and death -- appears so insignificant that they are almost preposterous.
"Ring" may not be the finest science fiction, but it surely is scientific speculation on the grandest possible scale. There is just nothing else like it. Its "flaws," I believe, are unavoidable simply because our literature has not evolved beyond a time when 70 years is a pretty long life, and a transcontinental plane flight counts as distant travel. If and when, one day, our descendants can actually hop along the faultlines of spacetime at a pace of thousands of years and/or light-years a second, we may have an effective literature for this stuff. For now, Ring is as good as it gets.
P.S.: My admiration for this book notwithstanding, I'm still not sure why the photino birds want to turn out the lights; and just exactly what's up with Michael Poole? Strings and loose ends just shouldn't go together, you know? =)
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Depressing and Beautiful, December 11, 2002
This review is from: Ring (Mass Market Paperback)
Science Fiction has fallen into a woeful state in recent years. A quick glance at the local bookstore will see the shelves chuck full of unimaginative fantasy noveles and long sections of Star Trek, Star Wars, BattleTech books. I have begun to stray away from this side of the bookstore, simply because I have begun to find is depressing.
And yet, all hope is not lost! Upon a recent trip to the store I found a novel by Stephen Baxter entitled "The Ring". I had heard good things mentioned about him in the past and figured I might as well check the author out.
I bought the book and, several days alter, was finaly able to peel myself away from it. "Ring" is hard-science fiction at its best, tons of theoretical science mixed with characters who we can truly care about as well as descriptive language which still makes the hair on the back of my arm stand up. Baxter's description of the dying solar system still haunts me when I think about it.
Buy this book! At the very least its better than "Star Trek: The Mystery of Kirk's Hair".
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