Rating: 
Summary: Slow start with strong ending
Review: A bit too much time is spent on building characters. The solutions at the end of the book make up for the slow start, and I think the author could have expanded some more on his solutions. Overall a good story.
Rating: 
Summary: Very Very Good Sci-Fiction
Review: A very good sci-ficton novel based on The end of the world. It has the most in my mind scientific closest to the real thing. It is thrilling. I would give it five stars
Rating:
Summary: Pretty good, but not great
Review: After reading and really enjoying Voyage I wanted to give Baxter another try. I found Moonseed less satisfying, but still enjoyable. Moonseed is hard science fiction, yet some of this novel seems to have been put together by Plot Convenience Playhouse. There's resolution at the end but very little revelation. If you've read most of the other recent hard science books and are looking for another (as I was) this is still a good read, but make sure you check out Voyage first.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Book, Great Author
Review: After reading this book i discoverd a new wolrd of enlightenmant. It has many new ideas embeded in its storyline, with a few old ones to boot. Stephen Bxter is well known for his high quality science fiction and this is no exception. Although the start may be a bit boring, as most books are, as I progress inte the storey I became more and more engrossed. I believe that Stephaen is one of THE best Sci-Fi writers of our time and i would highly reccomend you read this story for yourself.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent yarn, a bit familiar if you read after manifolds
Review: An excellent yarn and susprisingly good point of view narrative that doesn't jump so much, and sticks to the main chap pretty well. If you read the later Manifold Time/Space books this will seem a little familiar in places, with ongoing Baxter themes (the world uniting to get into space to avert disaster, terraforming the moon, earth travelogue, weird stuff going on in the solar system, big alien stuff that 'might not be evil'). Still, if you like hard SF, mixed with the geo-political intrigue, conflict, and will he/won't she ... along with all that quantum what's up ... it's great stuff. Baxter is really doing some great stuff, but his next hard SF books are going to have to come up with some new plot devices :)
Rating:
Summary: He even makes the geology interesting
Review: As a kid in the sixties, I was in love with space and dreamed of being a pilot and an astronaut (too bad you needed 20/20 vision for a shot at this). This book brought back those dreams for me. Once you accept the "moonseed" premise (the nano-tech robots of an ancient interstellar probe, programmed to build solar sails out of any material they find, unfortunately including the earth!), the rest of the book feels just right: realistic, gritty, and believable. The geology, the physics, the space flight engineering -- all are carefully researched and folded skillfully into the story. Even the geology seemed interesting (I learned a lot!). The characters are well-drawn, believable, complex people with plenty of faults (BTW, a key character, a volcanologist, is Japanese -- there really is no racism in this book -- though the Irish child-molestor living as a monk in Japan is a random and rather pointless element, IMO -- women have many important roles in this book, and it just seems natural, people doing their jobs). There is a LOT of stuff in this book, from nanotechnology to terra-forming, in addition to the geology and high-energy physics and space flight. I was totally immersed in this world, caring about the characters and worrying about the fate of mankind. Baxter even describes the smells and the sounds of space flight -- as well as eating, toilet procedures, and yes, even microgravity sex.I'm only an occasional SF reader these days, and this was my first by Baxter. If Voyage and Titan are even better than this, I'll be reading those soon. This is an excellent book.
Rating:
Summary: You will never look at the Moon the same again!
Review: Baxter hits the jackpot ! Moonseed has it all. Detailed science fact combined with realistic character development gives Baxter's plot legitimacy and it was the legitimacy that pulled me into Moonseed. For me, great science fiction results from the author convincing the reader that his story could really happen. Baxter overwhelmingly convinced me of Moonseed's reality. That is why I say that after reading Moonseed, you will never look at the Moon the same again.
Rating:
Summary: treading familiar ground
Review: Baxter writes a good yarn even if he's a bit too straight-laced and traditional here to suit my tastes. We've seen all this before, under various titles and guises, from the cosy catastrophes of the 50's to the current boom which has been going on for a while. If you've read one, you've almost read them all: there's a large cast of characters and they're nicely handled here, with some surprises and interesting situations and whatnot. There are also some nice ideas - far-fetched for reality, but personally I wouldn't have minded had he made a much larger leap to the unknown. That would have given it some edge over the competition. But in the end, none of that really matters as the big problem in my case (this may not be true of you) is that it treads too familiar ground. It's all stuff that's been written about in hundreds of books during the past 50 odd years, and that's more than one too many. Unless you write the perfect one, that is. And this isn't it.
Rating:
Summary: Builds slowly, then accelerates rapidly
Review: By page fifty I was considering putting this book down out of frustration at waiting for something to happen. But I decided to skim for a bit, give it another 25 pages, and I am very glad I did. The first portion of the book builds slowly, emphasizing character development, and starting around page 74, the whole thing takes off (ahem) like a rocket: the next 580 pages or so flew by. I was surprised into laughter when I saw that some recent reviews here complain about the book's "fantasy," unsympathetic characters, and "hard science nihilism." None of those accusations have any connection with this novel. The science is detailed and constant without being tedious, the characters are sympathetic without being sappy, and in retrospect the overall tone of the book is remarkably hopeful. Read this book. If you like hard, human science fiction, you'll enjoy it.
Rating:
Summary: The destruction of Earth told in loving detail ...
Review: For some reason I've always enjoyed reading "end of the world" scenarios. Novels such as "Lucifer's Hammer" (Niven & Pournelle), "Mother of Storms" (John Barnes), and "The Forge of God" (Greg Bear) come to mind. In "Moonseed" (which I think is a somewhat cheesy title, perhaps befitting an old episode of Star Trek), Stephen Baxter envisions a "10-dimensional superstring nanovirus" gradually reducing Earth to molten rock before taking the planet apart completely. The first year or so of this 40-year process is told in exquisite, realistic and often horrifying detail ... and in this respect I was very satisfied with the book. Characters that you genuinely care about are well-developed, but there are some rather annoying lapses in the storyline (such as "Whatever became of that oil rig guy?" and "What about that volcano in Japan?" and "How exactly DID Jane get from Scotland to the U.S.?"). As for the remarkable exodus to the Moon, I guess when the chips are down and the future of the global economy is pretty much moot, you can accomplish anything. The very end of the book, in which the attitudes of the new Lunar generation toward the demolished Earth are considered, is provocative and a bit depressing. But overall I'm quite glad to have stumbled across "Moonseed."
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