Rating: 
Summary: Whew! Felt like I was part of the action!
Review: Not having read Stephen Baxter's novels before, I took this one up by chance. The book grabbed my attention from the start and kept my attention throughout the book...none of the usual 'setting the stage'. A must read for hardcore science fiction fans of any genre!
Rating: 
Summary: Worse than a text book
Review: This is a very deceptive book. It starts with no fanfare: I was immediately sucked into what appeared to be a great setup for a plot. However, I soon realized that the plot does not so much develop as advance jerkily and unpredictably. The reader is dropped into implausible situations that exist only to give his "scientific evangelist" characters a framework from which to lecture, Ayn Rand style, on some aspect of physics. In fact, the constant introduction of new physics seems to substitute for actual plot.As soon as Baxter kills off the physicist responsible for most of the lecturing, the book degrades rapidly. Without physics to substitute for plot, the book drags on for a few hundred pages until it ends abruptly. The idea of this book has merit. I was initially excited to see where Baxter would go with the ideas he proposes in the first chapter. But on many occasions, just when I thought the next physics lecture would tie everything together, he threw in something completely out of the blue. The plot (what there is of it) does not resolve at the end. We are left with an great explosion, and a physics lecture to justify killing off every major character in the book. Don't waste your time on this book.
Rating:
Summary: Original, mind blowing.
Review: Quite a piece of work. The most creative work I've read in a long time. The ability of Baxter to not only touch on the pure physical side of science but also weave in sociology, philosophy, theology, political science and even biology. A great read. (that's alot of 'ologies)
Rating:
Summary: Manifold: Perfection!...
Review: This is on of the best SF books I've read recently. I didn't even know who Mr. Baxter was until I read one Arthur C. Clarks novel.
Manifold:Time was recommended to me and I recommend it to everyone. Entertaining science fiction even though the writing is not great. Then again Mr. Baxter got his degrees in Science not Creative Writing. Characters and Plot blend well to create a beautiful book!...
Olaf Johnson, NYC
Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating Stuff
Review: There's a lot in this book to both engross and frustrate a reader, but I think the plusses significantly outweigh the minuses. "Manifold: Time" is full of fascinating ideas and richly imagined scenarios. I don't know if this is because of the limitations of my thinking or of Baxter's writing, but I often found myself unable to understand his quantum physics for dummies sections. No matter: his weaving together the complexities of time and space utterly fascinating, and if I don't understand how things work, I feel confident that he understands it and is giving us good scientific theory. The book centers on the idea of doom. Is the earth doomed within the next two hundred years? If the universe itself is doomed to destruction with the next multi-trillion of years, what does it all matter anyhow, since we have no future if the universe has no future? Baxter does an amazing job of making the ultimate end of the universe seem both poignant and sad. He spices his story with lots of inviting threads, such as the mysterious, super smart "blue" children, and the increasing intelligent genetically engineered squids, and, of course, the fate of everything. His human characters, by comparison, suffer. I never really care about the people in this book nor completely believe and/or understand their motivations. When the theory, based entirely on statistics, that the earth is doomed in the next two centuries, is released, people turn to rioting in the streets. I found that unlikely. On the other hand, all of this is window dressing for Baxter's big ideas, and I found myself turning the pages and staying up late to see where it was all going. Not a perfect book, but a good one and a worthwhile one. It has left me wanting to read the sequels, but perhaps not right away.
Rating:
Summary: Best SF book I have ever read!
Review: When I found this book at my local library, it was sitting there on the new releases section looking all lonely. I read the backing, and found it sufficient to sustain my spare time reading for a week. I got home that night and started reading it. After I was done, my mind was blown. This book TOTALLY redefined the way I look at life. Why am I here? Why arn't I bouncing around in zero G on a space station orbiting Jupiter? The entire next day I felt like I was walking around in a surreal environment, as if I was looking at it for the first time (this may have been due to the fact that I spent the whole night reading the book and finished 30min before school). This book is one of the best ive ever read and I would recommend it to anyone who knows how to read.
Rating:
Summary: good, but a bit overwhelming
Review: This is one of the better sci-fi books I've read in some time. It's only problems is that it presents a lot of information to the reader in the form of scientific theories. The author tries to present them in forms the average reader can understand, but I was still overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information coming at me. You could easily read this book with a modern physics book next to you so you could learn more about all of the different theories that are presented. I also still don't know if I believe in the Carter Catastrophe, but this is a work of fiction so anything could happen. Other than the aforementioned problem this book was excellent. Other than the main characters name of Reid I enjoyed all the characters immensly. They behaved like real people who have the real problem of deciding what to do with the information they have discovered. I don't like the idea of the squid however and thought that was a bit strange, but like I said before this is a book of fiction and alot can happen. The pacing is excellent and every time I thought I knew what was going to happen I was shocked by what was around the corner. This book goes into the deep idea of how humanity is going to survive in the long term, not just a few hundered years, but a few hundered millenia. It tackles the ideas of what our role in the universe is and what we as a species are capable of doing. At the end of the book after reading an ending I was totally suprised by I just sat there in amazement. This book made me think about things I had never thought about before. A really great book if you can get over the deluge of theories it throws at the reader.
Rating:
Summary: Amazingly intriguing
Review: I have just finished reading this amazing book, and I really can't sleep. It's not trully the science in it, even it being a "classical" "Hard" Sci-Fi book, so it has got lots of those not yet proven "weird" scientific theories, but it's the way this science is pushed to the limit, to mold society, to makes us understand transcendent roles of our selves. And making this fluidly, with a story that just keeps you turning pages and waiting to see what is coming next.
I can't say more without making this a spoiler, but it is really, according to my humble taste, a must read for everybody that wants to have your brains twisted a little. Ah, just to reiterate this, it is a "Hard" Sci-Fi book, so if you don't have a good scientific background, probably you could still enjoy it, but many things will just look too weird to make any sense.
Rating:
Summary: A Good "Ad Astra" Novel from Stephen Baxter
Review: Stephen Baxter's Manifold: Time, the first novel of his Manifold series, is a reading experience which has filled me with perfect wonder & curiosity. Mr. Baxter has skillfully drawn the galactic course of book 1 with spell-binding treats: an ambitious theme of galactic urgency in which ALL the right questions regarding the cosmic destiny of all living things are asked; a "doomsday" plot that begins with a dying planet Earth & an unaware human population of the year 2010; current issues in theoretical physics which will help the human race answer these Big Questions & ponder a vast space-time Challenge from which all Life arises. There's more. Sheena generation ships - smart squid forced by human Mind to meet this Cosmic Challenge - reproductively gains more Mind through the multigenerations & leaves a beloved ocean planet behind forever; humanity's globally - oppressive attempts to control the inevitability of Change; the brilliant - and feared - Blue Children. Like Sheena 5, the enhanced squid, these genius youngsters must pay dearly - with possibly their lives - for the rebirth of the Cosmos. On to the main human characters: Reid Malenfant, roguish daredevil ex-astronaut. Man of wealth & founder of Bootstrap. He will take mankind to the stars...and beyond... despite very powerful enemies in government & industry. Along with Malenfant travels his former wife Emma Stoney as the level-headed voice of reason & conscience. A third party will be the mysterious, obsessive, mad-genius physicist/businessman Cornelius Taine. He, too, will journey with Malenfant to the planet Earth's second moon to decipher the future: to seek out mankind's true destiny. Another of the human spacefarers is Michael, an African blue child...despised...a child of remarkable genius who is destined to help Malenfant meet the Challenge. Maura Della is the unwitting politician who is drawn into Malenfant's "crazy" schemes. Read this book for yourself to partake in the Glory of Ideas that is Manifold:Time. Space-time will become for you, as it has for me, a wholly odd & vast cosmic tool. Reid Malenfant, along with the help of an intriguing supporting cast, studies it; uses it. And travels forever to the Stars.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent start to a "hard" SF trilogy
Review: The tantamount question of "Manifold: Time"--and, in fact, the entire series--is known as "Fermi's paradox"--if there is intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe, why haven't we found it yet? [This question is tackled further in the remaining books of the series, "Space" and "Origin".] Setting the plot in motion is Cornelius Taine, who presents to ex-astronaut Reid Malenfant the (real) "Carter catastrophe"--the idea that humanity is likely to go extinct in the "near future" (200 years), *even if mankind colonizes space.* At first, Taine convinces Malenfant that it may be up to Malenfant to save the human race from the Carter catastrophe, and that salvation may come from a message that points to Cruithne, a satellite sharing Earth's orbit. But, as the plot progresses, Malenfant begins to question why he was brought to Cruithne. [I had the chance to speak to Baxter about the Carter hypothesis at a recent SF convention. He finds it intriguing, although he has his doubts, especially regarding Carter's analogy (a box with one special ball out of either 10 balls or 1000). In part, the "e-mail" containing ways to refute the Carter catastrophe represents his own doubts.] Moreover, Baxter intertwines this plot with the rise (and fall) of the "Blues," a group of preternaturally gifted children. In the end, Baxter provides a possible answer to Fermi's paradox--and it is an extremely startling one. If you look carefully, there *is* one medium-sized plot hole with the final part of the book, although it isn't immediately obvious (in fact, it was only on a second reading that I caught it myself). That gaffe aside, this book is a thought-provoking, challenging work, and I look forward eagerly to finishing the trilogy. Additional recommendations: I would recommend this book to fans of "Earth" by David Brin and "Mother of Storms" by John Barnes, and vice versa.
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