Rating: 
Summary: Excellent sequel to Wells' masterpiece
Review: As a life-long fan of H.G. Wells, I must say that I avoided picking up Baxter's book for several years. I doubted that anyone could seriously improve upon the original novel. When I came across a relatively undamaged copy of "The Time Ships" in a used bookstore, though, I finally decided to give it a try. Needless to say, I became so engrossed in the story that I finished the five hundred plus page book in three days. Although Stephen Baxter appears to be a scientist by training, he is much better at seizing and maintaining the reader's attention than many authors I have recently read. While continuing the narrative voice of Wells' Victorian Time Traveller, Baxter radically expands the scope and depth of the original universe, incorporating many modern ideas about causality, parallel worlds, and quantum mechanics. The fact he does so without overwhelming the reader but instead inspiring a genuine sense of wonder and awe is an achievement in and of itself. Baxter also makes a number of allusions to Wells' other fiction, including the use of Plattnerite, land ironclads, and a vision of nuclear and conventional warfare between Britain and Germany in the first half of the twentieth century, all of which are amusing to those of us who recognize them as the story progresses. In the end Baxter doesn't so much surpass Wells as simply take the original tale to a whole new level, extending and reinterpreting it for a twenty-first century audience.
Rating:
Summary: Just one readers opinion
Review: This is one of the best books I've ever read in my life. I'm very much interested in science fiction books and time travelling and "The Time Ships" was in my opinion a very real conception of the time travelling theme. Baxter's way of describing it made me believe every word of it though I don't actually think that any person will ever be able to travel through time. I identified myself with the main character and enjoyed every moment of the adventure. For me Baxter is a genius who gave me a very interesting reading experience and much inspiration for my own literary purposes or studies about time (I'm working on one at the moment). H.G.Wells would have liked it! Thanks to Stephen Baxter for writing the book!
Rating:
Summary: Did Not Want This Book To End!
Review: Only recently did I learn of Stephen Baxter's authorized sequel to Wells' "The Time Machine", one of my favorite books. This is without a doubt the best sci-fi story I have ever read. Baxter's beginning blends beautifully with the ending of Wells' story and explains why the Time Traveller never returned to his home in 1897.Baxter's creativity brings a sense of wonder to the reader that is pure joy and adventure. (While reading it, I even listened to the sound track from the original "Time Machine" movie and the Russell Garcia score just made the entire experience even better). The story's ending was very emotional and showed that, for all the Time Traveller had seen and experienced - from the beginning of time to the end of the world - it was his human feelings toward another that mattered the most. One last observation - It was my thinking that Baxter left the story open ended for another possible sequel involving the Time Traveller's adventures with the Morlocks. I can only hope that is true, for he has all the time in the world...
Rating:
Summary: Did Not Want This Book To End!
Review: Only recently did I learn of Stephen Baxter's authorized sequel to Wells' "The Time Machine", one of my favorite books. This is without a doubt the best sci-fi story I have ever read. Baxter's beginning blends beautifully with the ending of Wells' story and explains why the Time Traveller never returned to his home in 1897. Baxter's creativity brings a sense of wonder to the reader that is pure joy and adventure. (While reading it, I even listened to the sound track from the original "Time Machine" movie and the Russell Garcia score just made the entire experience even better). The story's ending was very emotional and showed that, for all the Time Traveller had seen and experienced - from the beginning of time to the end of the world - it was his human feelings toward another that mattered the most. One last observation - It was my thinking that Baxter left the story open ended for another possible sequel involving the Time Traveller's adventures with the Morlocks. I can only hope that is true, for he has all the time in the world...
Rating:
Summary: Imaginative
Review: I had a great time reading this book. Steven Baxter tries to keep some of the characters (Weena, Morlocks, the narrator) and some of the plot, I guess maybe not to (upset) a lot of people, but his imagination is so vast that, by the end, the book sprirals off into a tale of cosmic proportions. I love time travel stories, and this is one of the best, imaginative and far-reaching in the tradition of the original novel. Baxter's concept of the gigantic world-ring around the sun is spectacular. His alternate-earth timeline is fascinating, as well as being a message to us all. I simply could not put this book down when I read it a few years ago. It remains on my shelf in a place of prominence so I can get to it again!
Baxter has a way of explaining the concepts of quantum physics and effortlessly weaving these concepts into his stories.
This is a very well-written book that holds together from start to finish, with clever plot-twists and imaginative scenes; I liked it better than the original.
Rating: 
Summary: Good story, though it's rather overlong
Review: Could have done with some tightening up. Others have commented that this story is overlong. It is. But, that's a tolerable flaw in an otherwise excellent story. It reminds me somewhat of Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men and The Starmaker. He has the cadence and language of that era down pat. It really seems like the same author could have written both this and the original, which is remarkable in itself. That era also had a tendency to be a bit longwinded too, but not quite this longwinded. The wind does fill out the sails though, making the characters more dimensional. Pulling in an alternate future morlock though, as a main character, that was brilliant. The ending seems a bit silly though. Here's this guy who has gone past the end of the universe. And after all that, he really wants to go back to this empty-headed Weena? Then he seems to have lost the sense god gave celery, thinking that he can go talk to the morlocks after killing so many of them and setting fire to their forest? I suppose the former is defensible as necessary for the plot. The latter is only explainable by senility.
Rating:
Summary: Fairly Good
Review: Overall I thought this was a fairly good book. Very entertaining and interesting to get back to original story. Not bad.
Rating: 
Summary: Tolerable But Long
Review: The first part of this book (up through about page 119) is pretty good. It starts out where Wells leaves off and puts the Traveller into a different Trouser Leg of Time (TLoT) from what he first went down. However, after that Baxter becomes internally inconsistent. The Traveller goes back to where he first gets involved in his Time Machine. Then someone from a different TLoT comes back and rips that leg of the pants right off. Yet, everyone moves into that now missing TLoT and is bored to death in it by Londonian details for a hundred pages or so. Then, we go WAAAAAY back and mess with various things that ought to have smashed that same TLoT for sure. Instead, things come back from it yet again. Really, the book would have been better with the whole middle two-thirds missing. This is especially true since an awful lot of it (well, actually, an awful lot of the whole book) involves bashing humans as the worst thing ever developed. I'm really not all that enamoured of the book. However, the cleverness of extending Wells' "Time Machine" the way he did let me bring my rating up from two stars to three stars. Somewhat boring, but interesting.
Rating:
Summary: Great read
Review: Honest to a fault with the original, this book is still an outstanding work in it own right. Once underway, it is quite literally a "can't put down book", as the narrator becomes involved in numerous entanglements that offer much excitement. Of great value is the Morlock that comes to serve as the "explainer" of the many complex concepts that they experience. Highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Changing the Future?
Review: I haven't read this book, but how could the telling of the tale of the Time Traveler after he went back to the 1890s change the future after that to a future different than that the Time Traveler visited, for the telling of the tale would already have been there.
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