Rating: 
Summary: Just didn't get there for me ...
Review: After reading the excellent Moonseed the first sci-fi book to get my attention for a long time - I was really looking forward to this book. But my hopes were dashed I'm afraid. This book is manifestly dull and depressing from the get-go.The overall story - the need to discover the true nature of humanities future in order to avoid the "Carter Catastrophe" - a self-fulfilling portent of doom - results in a book that at once expands into the broadest of scales (the future of the Universe) while getting stuck in the merest details of the characters involved. Baxter proved that he can write page-turning midnight-oil-burning sci-fi with Moonseed which combined science, science-fiction and Tom Clancy. It's a pity that this performance wasn't reproduced in this book.
Rating:
Summary: Man is the center of all things - not!
Review: This is an amazingly depressing novel which denies the existence of God and finds Christians to blame for virtually every bad thing that happens. There is a disturbing assumption through out this novel that we know exactly how everything works in the physical universe and that man is the most important thing to come along in this happenstance we call life.
Rating: 
Summary: Some neat ideas but got too strange for me
Review: This was my first Baxter novel and I don't think it was good enough to get me to read another. It wasn't horrible or anything, but it was too far out there for my tastes. I want my sci-fi to be somewhat believable for me. I need to buy into the innovations and concepts to truly enjoy it. Yeah, it might never happen, but I need to think that maybe it could. I could not buy into the squids in this book and although the "universe views" were interesting, I couldn't accept the resolution of the book. I don't want to say more without wrecking it. I enjoyed the characters and Baxter's style and parts I found humorous. And there was certainly enough good here to get me through the novel. It started wonderfully and then got weird, and I thought it might redeem itself, but in the end, I was shaking my head and wondering where this thing had gone. Manifold:Time is the first part of a trilogy, but I don't see myself coming back for the last two segments. It's just not my brand of sci-fi.
Rating:
Summary: Mediocre writing + showy premise
Review: Usually a fan, but a somewhat tedious book unless you really enjoy quasi-hard SciFi. Science and physics appear showy and construed, writing is stilted. Malenfant emerges fully-formed as a foil and rapscalion, without any character development. I keep on thinking "who cares" whenever the plot involves him. I think I felt most connected to the squid. But, the book wasn't terrible either, and amusing most of the time.
Rating:
Summary: Bait and switch... then stumble and fall flat
Review: Stephen Baxter does indeed turn a hoary asteroid-mining tale into a cosmological epic sprinkled with (seemingly) esoteric mathematics, but he does it BADLY. First, Bayesian statistic does not apply to evolving growing systems of indetemined lifetime, such as human species - especially if you take into account its possible descendants who no longer look human but trace their lineage back to us. In fact, explanation why that is so is present deeply buried in the book, but since that would destroy a major plot point, the faulty use of Bayesian statistic continues on. The second fault is much worse, but is not manifest until the last few pages. Basically, a group of cosmically aware individuals (I won't reveal here who they are) realizes that the heat death of the Universe is inevitable, and that descendant of human race are eventually doomed no matter what. I won't reveal thair solution to this conundrum, but the problem is - their solution (bought at the cost of sacrificing human race *now*) DOES NOT SOLVE ANYTHING. Instead of one Universe doomed to eternal cold, they create many Universes doomed to eternal cold. When I read the last page, I was terribly disappointed. Either Baxter did not think his own idea through, or he figured most readers won't. Judging by the glowing reviews below, he may have been right.
Rating: 
Summary: This book is terrible.
Review: There are so many really good science fiction books out there. Read them. This is one of the worst books, SF or otherwise, I've ever read. The characters are not believable and don't act like real people.
Rating: 
Summary: Thoughtful Sci-Fi
Review: When I read the Time Ships by Baxter, I was impressed by his ability to tell a story and even more impressed by his ability to explain the science behind it. This book, while being lighter on the story end than Time Ships, impressed me by going above and beyond the call of duty explaining the theoretical science involved here. It challenged me as a reader and as a science fiction fan. I found myself actually stopping at points to think about what I just read, and the implications of it all if it were true. I love both hard sci-fi and space opera...this had elements of both....a great read...but not as good as Time Ships....
Rating:
Summary: Bad rehash of his earlier novels
Review: Up front, let me confess I am a complete and utter fan of Sephen Baxter and his brilliant manipulation of the constants in our Universe. But. This would have to be THE most disappointing book I have ever read by Stephen Baxter (and I thought Titan was pretty bad with no loveable characters and a gruesome plot...). In Time, Baxter starts off Ok - bit of a mixture of Voyage and some of Xeelee stuff and then suddenly, half way through the book - BAM! Total Deja Vu as it degenerates into a basic rehash of some of his previous books from the Xeelee series (although he does take into account advances in our knowledge of the universe). If you are a first time reader of Stephen Baxter, read some of his earlier stuff like Moonseed, Flux, Ring, Raft, Voyage etc!
Rating: 
Summary: You won't forget this book
Review: You've got to admire Stephen Baxter for undertaking such a difficult project: an adventure across the slopes of time, evolution and the universe to find humanity's place. I think he pulls it off. Some of the concepts were difficult, but the characters are there searching for understanding as well. It's a fun and wondrous read. This book stands with 2001, Fantastic Voyage and even Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Rating:
Summary: Not as bad as Titan
Review: Stephen Baxter is an extremely frustrating author. He has good "sense of wonder" ideas with erratic execution. Manifold: Time continues this tradition. Other reviews on Amazon have described the story, so I will just look at the other aspect of the book: the execution. I won't mention character names,either, since they're all the same, male or female, young or old. They exist solely to move the story along. There's no involvement with them since there is nothing to be involved with. This is Baxter's chief failing in my opinion, and when he learns to flesh out his characters his books will finally get the emotional framework they deserve. I suspect my enjoyment of books like Manifold: Time was ruined when I learned critial reading skills in college. Certainly, much of the Science Fiction I enjoyed as a high schooler did not hold up to second readings. The concepts were still there but I now realized that the delivery was faulty. To that extent, knowledge removed some non-critial joy from my life. And that's why I have such a problem with Baxter's novels. Perhaps I'm just being too critical, but when I pay hardcover prices I expect to receive hardcover enjoyment. Manifold: Time is more a paperback novel, to be read on a long trip and then discarded with no regret. Having said that, if you hate NASA, like the idea of multiple universes, and wonder whether humans are the first intelligent life to hit this cosmos, then you'll like the book. Baxter is very good in describing the physical universe, and at times the "sense of wonder" I enjoy bursts through. I think most readers will like some aspect of he book, enough at least to plow through to the ending. And many people don't care about characterization - they're more interested in the author's speculations on the fringes of scientific thought. So don't take this review as totally negative but be prepared for what you'll find within the covers. And be careful. Don't cut yourself on the paper-thin characters.
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