Rating: 
Summary: Science = acceptable, Story = pain
Review: Combining science and fiction well is a rare talent. Steven Baxter lacks this talent, and the result is horrific. I have (stupidly) read both 'Ring' and 'Titan' and despised both of them. The characters are useless scenery for science material ............. directly from an undergraduate astronomy textbook.
Rating: 
Summary: Finaly a real Hard SCI-FI
Review: Finaly i read a book where the author is not afraid to handle the difficult problems concerning Space-travel. It was also very refreshing to see so many of Stephen Hawkings theories were incorporated into this book. The best Hard Sci-Fi ever written
Rating: 
Summary: Almost a five star book, almost......
Review: Great story, great characters, just too much explaining. Baxter should have tried to be a bit less obvious in his physics lectures. A good read, worth my money.
Rating:
Summary: Hard SF on the grand scale
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: 4 stars for hard sci fi fans, 2 stars for others
Review: He doesn't develop characters, but then again neither do almost any "hard sci fi" authors who focus on the story and the science, not the characters. Like most hard sci fi fans, I tend to gloss over the character development paragraphs/pages, so I didn't mind their absence.Baxter's clumsiness as a writer goes beyond a lack of character development, though. His "science lectures" are worked into the narrative very clumsily, as out-of-place lectures from character A to character B (as some other reviewers point out); Benford, to name a comparable writer, does better at that. The ideas are great. My knee-jerk decision about whether I liked a book is whether the ideas and plot are sticking with me. Ring is definitely one that will stick; its musings about the fate of the universe are fantasic and fun food for thought. I think he could've tied up the "mystery of what the heck is happening" (a plot of just about any hard sci fi book) a bit better -- I was left not knowing as much as I wanted to know about, for example, the "bad guys" (I won't elaborate to avoid ruining it for others). Overall, I highly recommend the book to hard sci fi fans, though it's ujst short of being on par with the best works of the Gregs (Benford and Bear). Those who aren't fans of hard sci fi should stay far away; this isn't a "crossover" book with mass appeal, just a very good hard sci fi book with all of the genre's shortcomings.
Rating:
Summary: 4 stars for hard sci fi fans, 2 stars for others
Review: He doesn't develop characters, but then again neither do almost any "hard sci fi" authors who focus on the story and the science, not the characters. Like most hard sci fi fans, I tend to gloss over the character development paragraphs/pages, so I didn't mind their absence. Baxter's clumsiness as a writer goes beyond a lack of character development, though. His "science lectures" are worked into the narrative very clumsily, as out-of-place lectures from character A to character B (as some other reviewers point out); Benford, to name a comparable writer, does better at that. The ideas are great. My knee-jerk decision about whether I liked a book is whether the ideas and plot are sticking with me. Ring is definitely one that will stick; its musings about the fate of the universe are fantasic and fun food for thought. I think he could've tied up the "mystery of what the heck is happening" (a plot of just about any hard sci fi book) a bit better -- I was left not knowing as much as I wanted to know about, for example, the "bad guys" (I won't elaborate to avoid ruining it for others). Overall, I highly recommend the book to hard sci fi fans, though it's ujst short of being on par with the best works of the Gregs (Benford and Bear). Those who aren't fans of hard sci fi should stay far away; this isn't a "crossover" book with mass appeal, just a very good hard sci fi book with all of the genre's shortcomings.
Rating:
Summary: 4 stars for hard sci fi fans, 2 stars for others
Review: He doesn't develop characters, but then again neither do almost any "hard sci fi" authors who focus on the story and the science, not the characters. Like most hard sci fi fans, I tend to gloss over the character development paragraphs/pages, so I didn't mind their absence. Baxter's clumsiness as a writer goes beyond a lack of character development, though. His "science lectures" are worked into the narrative very clumsily, as out-of-place lectures from character A to character B (as some other reviewers point out); Benford, to name a comparable writer, does better at that. The ideas are great. My knee-jerk decision about whether I liked a book is whether the ideas and plot are sticking with me. Ring is definitely one that will stick; its musings about the fate of the universe are fantasic and fun food for thought. I think he could've tied up the "mystery of what the heck is happening" (a plot of just about any hard sci fi book) a bit better -- I was left not knowing as much as I wanted to know about, for example, the "bad guys" (I won't elaborate to avoid ruining it for others). Overall, I highly recommend the book to hard sci fi fans, though it's ujst short of being on par with the best works of the Gregs (Benford and Bear). Those who aren't fans of hard sci fi should stay far away; this isn't a "crossover" book with mass appeal, just a very good hard sci fi book with all of the genre's shortcomings.
Rating: 
Summary: more of a textbook than a novel
Review: I don't expect science fiction authors to focus on their characters, but at least make the characters more than a name on the page. Baxter's characters in Ring are so one-dimensional. Over a thousand years pass for the characters and they don't change a bit. The only character that had any depth at all was Uvarov, the grumpy one. At least Baxter gave some information about his true feelings and desires. Everyone else sounded like a computer spitting out packaged dialogue. The worst of it is that the characters never seem to be phased by any obstacle they had to overcome. The book is written like a modern physics text with a frame story and characters to tie together complex concepts. The science in Ring was extremely hard and it lost me completely on a number of occasions. You should seriously know a few things about stellar astronomy before picking up this book. I gave the book a second star because it did bring up a couple of interesting points about humanity and struggles with technology.
Rating:
Summary: more of a textbook than a novel
Review: I don't expect science fiction authors to focus on their characters, but at least make the characters more than a name on the page. Baxter's characters in Ring are so one-dimensional. Over a thousand years pass for the characters and they don't change a bit. The only character that had any depth at all was Uvarov, the grumpy one. At least Baxter gave some information about his true feelings and desires. Everyone else sounded like a computer spitting out packaged dialogue. The worst of it is that the characters never seem to be phased by any obstacle they had to overcome. The book is written like a modern physics text with a frame story and characters to tie together complex concepts. The science in Ring was extremely hard and it lost me completely on a number of occasions. You should seriously know a few things about stellar astronomy before picking up this book. I gave the book a second star because it did bring up a couple of interesting points about humanity and struggles with technology.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent SF novel, but a little far fetched.
Review: I found 'Ring' to be a highly enjoyable and well written work of SF. The thing that impresses me the most about Baxter is the attention and care he pays to scientific accuracy and detail. His descriptions of the physics, astrophysics and cosmology involved are highly detailed and whilst not for the faint-hearted , make his novels much more believable and convincing than other works of SF. As SF authors who write about space go, he is in my opinion, the best one since Clarke. Whilst 'Ring' is depressing in some places, his portrayal of the struggle of the pathetic remnants of humanity on the Northerner to come to terms with the destruction of the solar system, the death of the sun and the inescapable conclusion that they cannot remain in this universe is beautifully done. The scope of the novel in terms of time and space are mind boggling but at times the plot stagnates and pays perhaps too much detail to the development of the shallow characters. Another flaw is that the novel in general is somewhat far fetched, at least compared to his other novels (i.e. the Photino Birds and what they do to the stars) but the general ideas are as chilling as they are plausible. Although bleak, depressing and uncompromising at times, 'Ring' offers a dark vision of what humankind's stupidity and arrogance can lead to, but at the same time offers a hope as to what tremendous possibilites and wonders await our species if we accept our vulnerability and take the bold steps into the blackness and find out what the cosmos has to offer, for better or for worse.
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