Rating: 
Summary: A rare gem in hard SF
Review: Stephen Baxter, with Ring, has quickly become my most favoured SF author to date. With Ring, he brought forth conecpts not often seen in many SF books these days, forcing the reader to change how they view things across great spans of time and physics. A delight to read, as it fits in with most of his other books in the Xelee cycle
Rating:
Summary: Mind-Boggling Scope
Review: The End of the Universe: a last clash between baryonic life and dark matter. Entire galaxies are launched as weapons. The victor takes the entire universe. The fallen must flee to another.
With this novel Stephen Baxter comes into artistic maturity. He manages to pull the reader into an epic operating on the universal scale, while still writing about very human characters performing very human deeds. This book does what SF is meant to do: it makes you think.
Rating: 
Summary: Knock out ideas, shame about the story
Review: The main reason for reading this is to go "Wow" at Baxter's ideas. The scope of his imagination is just incredible. And its all justified by Baxter's detailed knowledge of Physics. However some of the time I felt he was showing off how much he knew about Physics and it felt like the characters were lecturing to you. The plot drags in several places (especially in the long journeys in the Xeelee nightfighter), and characters are 2 dimensional at best. I would describe this book as the Terminator 2 of Sci Fi books. The best latest big budget ideas and special effects but strip them away and there is next to nothing left.
Rating: 
Summary: HARDCORE SCI-FI
Review: This book pulled me out of a thinking dry spell and got my imagination working again...however, as far as a story goes the book is somewhat weak, but don't let that stop you from reading it. It would be reaally interesting if Mr. Baxter would write a book called "Some Cool Ideas I Have and How They Might Work" and just cut the storyline altogether. All in all a book I'll remember ( i forget more books than i remember)
Rating: 
Summary: If I'd wanted a lecture, I'll go to a lecture!
Review: This book seemed more of a brain dump of theoretical physics than a novel. Take away the technobabble, the book would make for a much less painful reading. Even though the timeline spans 5 million years, it totally lacks the feel of an epic. If the author had intended to share his enthusiasm for stellar evolution and string theory, a better medium would have been an illustrated book with diagrams and explanations (or, it would have helped if the book had such a section). Reading this book made me feel that the characters were there as mouthpieces (or, if we were unfortunate enough to view a screen adapated version, talking heads) for a 512 page lecture on stellar evolution and subatomic physics. The scientist-engineer folks in the story would always be volunteering lectures to other characters in the story. A typical template for a "conversation" is as follows: "Q: Do you know what's ? // A: No... // Q: ". An alternate template is a to-and-fro technobabble between two or three characters about some phenomenon that is altogether not too painful, but just extremely dry. This book is almost like a melding of "The Zen of Physics" and "A Brief History of Time" updated with String Theory, then letting flat, uninteresting characters act out a stage play delivering the lines from the resultant product. A very miserable read, if you're looking for a book with a captivating story line. Speaking as a biologist who is also an amateur astronomer and a physics buff, this is the first hard scifi book that I've seriously considered dumping into the trash, as much as I hate the idea of throwing any book away.
Rating:
Summary: Truly Wonderful Reading...Top Of My List.
Review: This book was great to say the least. Finally someone decided to write a decent peice of hard sci-fi. Clark is right, Baxter is a major talent. I thought that the "hard" parts of the book (the technical parts that make it "hard sci-fi") were not only fresh and original but they were explained throughly and in a way so that they could be easily understood. I have read other authors who have literally given the mathmatical equations to explain their theorys. Another aspect that makes this book so wonderful and enjoyable is the interesting character involvement and the character conflict which takes place on the ship. I am truly baffled at the claims of some of the other reviewers that the characters and plot were poor. Baxter mixes in superb hard sci-fi ideas, in an understandable format with interesting characters and plenty of internal and external conflict that they taught you about in English (man vs. man, man vs. himself, etc.) In all, Ring is a masterwork of literature I would reccomend to anyone along with anything else Baxter's written. Especially Raft.
Rating:
Summary: Solar Activity
Review: This is an excellent read! I've read hard sci-fi before, but Mr. Baxter uses the most up-to-date theories available. If you like to read New Scientist, you'll love all of his books. Thermal dynamics, quantum singularities, photinos, inter-galactic travel...its got it all!
Rating:
Summary: First rate Sci-Fi
Review: This is my favorite book. I have read it 5 times so far. From the first time I read it, I was hooked. This novel spans millions of years in time and millions of light years. Baxter has created an impressive story threaded together with amazing sci-fiction based on science fact. Definitely a good read if you are a devout Sci-Fi fan.
E.
Rating:
Summary: One of the hardest SF-novels I've ever read!!
Review: While reading Baxter's novel "Ring", one will more than quickly realize why this kind of fiction is named 'hard science fiction'! There's an incredeble amount of physics, astrophysics and whatever other physics there is in that novel. Baxter tries to explain his highly sophisticated ideas as plain as possible--and still fails. That is not to say that "Ring" is a bad novel. Even though "Ring" lacks real characters and emotion (as most SF novels do), the plot is superbly innovative and because of its gigantic scales more than impressive. This is a tough book with a lot of boring passages that are due to the scientific explanations, but I still recomend this novel to any experienced SF-reader who is used to the modern authors of this genre.
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