Manifold: Time 
asked by bigwinner on October 30, 2006 1:48 PM
Leave it to the consistently clever Stephen Baxter to pull the old bait and switch. A story that begins as a hoary asteroid-mining tale, set in 2010 against the by-now familiar spiel of fulfilling humanity's pan-galactic Manifest Destiny, instead takes a bold, delightful ascent into a trajectory far more ambitious. To ensure its survival, humankind need not merely master the galaxy but also the flow of time itself.
Manifold: Time's would-be asteroid-miner-in-chief is bootstrap space entrepreneur Reid Malenfant, a media-savvy firebrand who's showed those crotchety NASA folks what's what with his ready-to-fly Big Dumb Booster, piloted by a genetically enhanced super-squid. But Malenfant's near-term plans to exploit the asteroids get diverted when he crosses paths with creepy mathematician and eschatologist Cornelius Taine. Applying Bayes's theorem and a series of other statistical do-si-dos, Taine convinces Malenfant that an inescapable extinction event--the "Carter catastrophe"--is nigh, and that even working to colonize the galaxy might not be enough to save humanity. The answer: build a Feynman "radio" to listen to the future and, by detecting coded quantum waves traveling back through time, divine the fate of human "downstreamers" and find the key to their survival. Space flight, time travel, and even squid negotiations ensue, while Earth is gripped in Last Days madness.
Once again, the award-spangled Baxter gives us sci-fi at its beard-stroking best, with an imaginative, audacious plot line that's firmly grounded in good science, reminiscent of Baxter's own excellent Vacuum Diagrams. --Paul Hughes
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Manifold: Time is absolutely bursting with amazing science. Anyone interested in cosmology and the physics of time will love this book. Stephen Baxter early on provides a mind-blowing ride from the beginning of the universe through the end of time. After jangling our gray matter about with this whirlwind tour, he then zooms through ever deeper arguments about time and how it fits into our universe. The book encompasses cosmologically huge timescales (bigger than I imagined would be possible), and gives the reader at least a chance to comprehend the universe's huge extent in space and time.
Manifold: Time has some other very interesting scientifically based arguments to make concerning the short-term survivability of humanity on earth. A look at the bibliography at the end of the book demonstrates how strongly hard-science based this book really is. Less hard science, but a lot of fun, is Baxter's use of augmented squids to "man" space flights.
For all these positives, Manifold: Time unfortunately also has some major faults. Baxter asks a lot of big questions, and the various outcomes he envisions might be correct. But the people that populate Manifold: Time are not up to the task: they never have enough depth in character or in numbers to match the questions posed. And Baxter is too secular with the story; religion and faith might not have the answers, but humanity would force them to have a much bigger part (both positive and negative) than portrayed in this book. Baxter's presentation feels incomplete and somewhat sterile.
The key to Manifold: Time and whether you might enjoy it is cosmology and time. For many, the science may go overboard, and the flawed character development and negatively sterile view of humanity might disappoint. But if you are intrigued by scifi extrapolations about the beginning and end of the universe, and find time paradoxes fun to contemplate, then you will surely enjoy Manifold: Time.
Manifold: Time has some other very interesting scientifically based arguments to make concerning the short-term survivability of humanity on earth. A look at the bibliography at the end of the book demonstrates how strongly hard-science based this book really is. Less hard science, but a lot of fun, is Baxter's use of augmented squids to "man" space flights.
For all these positives, Manifold: Time unfortunately also has some major faults. Baxter asks a lot of big questions, and the various outcomes he envisions might be correct. But the people that populate Manifold: Time are not up to the task: they never have enough depth in character or in numbers to match the questions posed. And Baxter is too secular with the story; religion and faith might not have the answers, but humanity would force them to have a much bigger part (both positive and negative) than portrayed in this book. Baxter's presentation feels incomplete and somewhat sterile.
The key to Manifold: Time and whether you might enjoy it is cosmology and time. For many, the science may go overboard, and the flawed character development and negatively sterile view of humanity might disappoint. But if you are intrigued by scifi extrapolations about the beginning and end of the universe, and find time paradoxes fun to contemplate, then you will surely enjoy Manifold: Time.
reviewed by nutshell on November 3, 2006 2:57 AM
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I've read over 100 pages of this much-hyped book and I'm still waiting to get interested in it; nothing has happened, yet. Time travel paradoxes? Ho-hum. Animals trained to operate a space ship? WHo cares? Gifted children? What does that have to do with TIME, the main thrust of the book, and half the title?? I think people who do reviews of sci-fi ought to have read some before they get all excited and impressed with another one. If the two main characters hadn't been married/divorced, where would the conflict have come from, since there isn't any, and sparse character development or background. They simply aren't interesting, and they don't do anything. SO the guy launches a space shuttle on his own; so what? How does he plan to get these materials he plans to mine from a hunk of ice & mud, refined and back to Earth? Use a large parachute? Are metals somehow hard to locate on Earth? Last time I checked we're largely iron & nickel. I just don't get it and the book seems like a Waste of TIME; perhaps a better title?
reviewed by perfectstorm on November 9, 2006 2:38 AM
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Stephen Baxter and several other new writers are continuously compared to Arthur C. Clark, Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and other of the all-time greats. I will stick to the classics. Does one get compared to a legend by copying him? The inside cover reads: "Battling national sabotage and international outcry, Malefant's bootstrap company builds a spacecraft, plots its course, and trains the genetically enhanced Sheena 5 for her one-way journey (... b)ut Sheena has plans of her own."
What? Another sentient ship? No, it turns out to be a sentient squid! Her part of the story is interesting, but not as involving as HAL-9000. In "2001" a giant black monolith sparks intelligence in pre-humans. In "Time" a big blue cylinder sparks superintelligence in humans. Both function as portals, according to the programming. Although not necessarily in the same order, in each the main characters are taken by their respective portals, placed in a virtual motel rooms, turned into advanced programs, and given a grand tour of creation.
I would not discourage someone from borrowing this from the library, as I did, if they have the time, it has its merits, but you could read "2001," "2010" and "The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov in less time and get much more story.
What? Another sentient ship? No, it turns out to be a sentient squid! Her part of the story is interesting, but not as involving as HAL-9000. In "2001" a giant black monolith sparks intelligence in pre-humans. In "Time" a big blue cylinder sparks superintelligence in humans. Both function as portals, according to the programming. Although not necessarily in the same order, in each the main characters are taken by their respective portals, placed in a virtual motel rooms, turned into advanced programs, and given a grand tour of creation.
I would not discourage someone from borrowing this from the library, as I did, if they have the time, it has its merits, but you could read "2001," "2010" and "The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov in less time and get much more story.
reviewed by fazer on November 26, 2006 1:30 AM