Rating: 
Summary: One of Baxters' best to date.
Review: Absolutley loved this novel. The shear depth of Baxters' ideas and his firm grasp of the latest cutting edge physics, is a joy to read. I loved Mainifold: Time, but this one I couldn't put down. What I love most about this novel is that you realise your learning something while enjoying every page. Personally, I have no problems with Baxters' characterizations and writing style, I think he's one of the best in hard SF ( generally better than Egan or Bear, in my opinion). To summarize what this novel is about, while not giving too much away- imagine a thought experiment concerning the Fermi Paradox, e.g if aliens exist, why aren't they here? This paradox could have lots of solutions, e.g life is very,very rare, or perhaps life is common but it gets wiped out or wipes itself out in a relatively short time scale... This novel seems to take the latter angle, space is brimming with life, yet none of it every really gets the chance to advance beyond a certain point. What's behind all this is the crux of the story. Loved the ending as well.Highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: awful
Review: awful, awful, awful. One of the three unfinished books in my reading career, and I am actually proud of that fact.
Rating:
Summary: awful
Review: awful, awful, awful. One of the three unfinished books in my reading career, and I am actually proud of that fact.
Rating:
Summary: a bleak Gulliver's Travels for the 3rd millennium
Review: Baxter's Space is the Gulliver's Travels of modern science fiction. I mean this not only in terms of narrative convention (hapless traveler is propelled from one tableaux to the next to showcase the author's agenda, in this case, a grab-bag of the myriad forms life might take in various environments), but of repute, as well: with Time as his launching point, Baxter takes cyclopean strides, earning the hallmark "classic" and instantly vaulting into my Top Ten Greatest Sci-Fi Novels of All Time. Baxter has come a long way from what I label the "pajama sci-fi" of his Xeelee sequence: cheeseball crews running around in their jammy-jams like something from Star Trek: the Motion Picture or Invaders from Plan 9. Baxter's ideas were always there, but his Michael Crichton School of bland prose was a great detraction. No more - he's battened down the hatches on sloppy writing, his characters have distinct voices, and the greatest improvement of all, his dialogue has gone from Vaudevillian melodrama to the downright profound. Baxter refreshingly skips hashing out the trials of his characters and gets to the nitty gritty: one sentence, Malefant is reasoning out how he can get to a deep space "Saddle Point," the next sentence, he's there, and who cares how he swung it? All this, and the ideas are still there; each chapter bursts with an astonishing new Big Idea that forces one to pause and give a Keanu Reeves "whoah." The final onslaught of the Cracker fleet and Nemoto's soliloquy is the most deliciously bleak scene I have read in sci-fi since the end of Orwell's 1984. Here's hoping Baxter's Darwinian vision of space colonization is totally wrong. I, for one, am still waiting for enlightened beings to descend from the heavens and help us save us from ourselves. Space is not perfect - the micronized space-ship with no plausible explanation from a race that Baxter repeatedly stresses has comparatively primitive technology is particularly irksome, and Baxter can sometimes hit you over the head to make his point (there's no need to use "Darwinian" as an adjective twice on the same page - I get it already), but these are minor annoyances. It's the power to make you cower like an insignificant mote against the howling void, to go slack-jawed with wonder and awe as you gaze out over alien vistas, to make you still ask after witnessing 10,000 years of human evolution, "Is that all there is?" Baxter dishes it up in droves and he's unlikely to pull it off again, so if you're going to read only one, this is it. Finally, my glib answer to the Fermi Paradox: we exist, but we're not there... Fudo Myo
Geneva, Switzerland
Rating:
Summary: a bleak Gulliver's Travels for the 3rd millennium
Review: Baxter's Space is the Gulliver's Travels of modern science fiction. I mean this not only in terms of narrative convention (hapless traveler is propelled from one tableaux to the next to showcase the author's agenda, in this case, a grab-bag of the myriad forms life might take in various environments), but of repute, as well: with Time as his launching point, Baxter takes cyclopean strides, earning the hallmark "classic" and instantly vaulting into my Top Ten Greatest Sci-Fi Novels of All Time. Baxter has come a long way from what I label the "pajama sci-fi" of his Xeelee sequence: cheeseball crews running around in their jammy-jams like something from Star Trek: the Motion Picture or Invaders from Plan 9. Baxter's ideas were always there, but his Michael Crichton School of bland prose was a great detraction. No more - he's battened down the hatches on sloppy writing, his characters have distinct voices, and the greatest improvement of all, his dialogue has gone from Vaudevillian melodrama to the downright profound. Baxter refreshingly skips hashing out the trials of his characters and gets to the nitty gritty: one sentence, Malefant is reasoning out how he can get to a deep space "Saddle Point," the next sentence, he's there, and who cares how he swung it? All this, and the ideas are still there; each chapter bursts with an astonishing new Big Idea that forces one to pause and give a Keanu Reeves "whoah." The final onslaught of the Cracker fleet and Nemoto's soliloquy is the most deliciously bleak scene I have read in sci-fi since the end of Orwell's 1984. Here's hoping Baxter's Darwinian vision of space colonization is totally wrong. I, for one, am still waiting for enlightened beings to descend from the heavens and help us save us from ourselves. Space is not perfect - the micronized space-ship with no plausible explanation from a race that Baxter repeatedly stresses has comparatively primitive technology is particularly irksome, and Baxter can sometimes hit you over the head to make his point (there's no need to use "Darwinian" as an adjective twice on the same page - I get it already), but these are minor annoyances. It's the power to make you cower like an insignificant mote against the howling void, to go slack-jawed with wonder and awe as you gaze out over alien vistas, to make you still ask after witnessing 10,000 years of human evolution, "Is that all there is?" Baxter dishes it up in droves and he's unlikely to pull it off again, so if you're going to read only one, this is it. Finally, my glib answer to the Fermi Paradox: we exist, but we're not there... Fudo Myo
Geneva, Switzerland
Rating:
Summary: Hard science fiction worth waiting for
Review: Better than the prior Manifold Time, and a classic hard sci-fi novel. If you liked books like Eon (Bear), and you're into "real" scientific theory woven into the fabric of a ripping yarn, you'll dig this book! Quantum physics, space objects, aliens, and vaulting concepts. Nicely structured to open the door for a third book featuring the character since each iteration seems to adjust the nature of reality somewhat, with the birth and death of "everything as we know it." I couldn't put it down! :)
Rating:
Summary: You're planning something, aren't you Nemoto?
Review: Fascinating, unputdownable space opera yarn. Certainly has its weaknesses, characterisation is maybe not so strong, and the much vaunted "hard science" still relies on "deus ex machina" plot devices such as stargates (!) and miracle anti-ageing treatments not seen since the old testament. However, the "idea density" is so high that you would expect some duffers. Also, since I stayed up til 340am to finish it, I have to give it 5 stars! Author's misanthropic, Malthusian outlook does become a bit tedious at times but overall great speculative fiction. Incidentally, I have not read part 1 (Manifold: Time) and as far as I can see Manifold: Space is self-contained, however other readers who have read both may like to comment on this.
Rating: 
Summary: Amateurish
Review: Having read all of the hullabaloo on the back cover, I was suprised by the amateurish writing within. The main redeeming qualities of this book are in the scientific ideas it contains, which are pretty interesting. The story itself is poorly written.
Rating: 
Summary: Nihilism with a tacked-on ending
Review: I disagree with reviewers who say that Manifold: Space is too complex -- the universe is complex! -- but strongly agree that the characters are flat, the plot has gaping holes (was this originally a collection of short stories?), and by the end you're left wondering what's the point of it all. In addition, while I wouldn't deny that humanity *could* slip back into a dark ages, or become insular in the face of alien races, Baxter's portrayal of 21st century humans as 100% uninterested in the Gaijin goes too far to be believed. Then there's the ending... I won't give anything away, but let's just say it's feel-good Hollywood at its fuzziest.
Rating:
Summary: truly bad
Review: I don't understand the glowing reviews of other readers. bad characterizations, stupid names, no discernable plot and depressing. oh, and once in a while a clever idea. after 200 pages I couldn't take it any more and threw it out. read Benford or Brin or Vinge if you want to see what *good* sci-fi written by a physicist is like.
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