Titan

Rating:
Summary: Amazingly depressing
Review: That was not entertaining. Some of the science was interesting, but it wasn't worth it.

Rating:
Summary: A REAL DOG
Review: I don't think I have ever read a more depressing story. The characters are barely hashed out and the ending is really hackneyed. Baxter seems obsessed with using Venus in all his books. If this guy writes another book on space we sound the death knell on the space program as we know it.

Rating:
Summary: Good 1st half, excellent 2nd half
Review: Good 1st half, excellent 2nd half. I now feel like I've actually been to Titan.

Rating:
Summary: Kinda of like Stephen King: great book except the end.
Review: I picked up this book without reading any other titles of his and totally enjoyed the book. He had a great amount of detail and the science was completely enjoying. He handled alot of the aspects of traveling in outerspace for a very prolonged period of time, very well which enthralling. Except that I found the end less the compelling, yet it wasn't the easiest story to wrap up. All in all I completely recommend this book and also his Voyage title.

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic
Review: I'm a little confused by the negative reviews. I found this book to be wonderful and it happens to be my favorite of Baxter's works. Baxter (along with Robert Charles Wilson) is currently one of the top 5 science fiction writers working today. "Voyage" is as good an alternate-history novel as you'd ever want to find, and "Anti-Ice" is a steam-punk masterpiece. Yet some seem to want to dismiss his work as "slow" or "pessimistic." That may be the opinion of some, but I contend that no one writes about the space program as it was, is, or could be better than Baxter. Let's face it -- most of us will never leave the orbit of the Earth. Therefore, Baxter's book are the next best things -- he'll put you right there with realism that's second to none. This is the main reason Baxter is one of the few SF writers whose works I'll gladly pre-order sight unseen. Sure, his work may contain death, unsolvable problems, and a heavy dose of physics. However, anyone remotely intersted in SF or the space program owes it to themselves to at least sample his work. Because along with the stuff I mentioned above, you'll also find humanity, a sense of wonder, and a real respect for the visions of the Golden Age of science fiction ("Titan" contains two neat little homages to Bradbury -- but I'm not telling you what they are!). So be bold and try one of Baxter's books. You might not like it, but on the other hand you might just discover a fantastic writer whose works are truly unlike anything else out there today.

Rating:
Summary: Powerful and moving despite some flaws
Review: If you've read any of the other customer comments, you can tell that people either love this book or hate it. My copy's getting sufficiently well-thumbed that I guess I fall in the former camp. It's true, the manuscript could use some editing, and there are some difficult suspensions of disbelief. (Why didn't the USAF just shoot down the orbiting <fuel>? Also, the ability of a political demagogue to refashion the country, and the Chinese doomsday gambit...) Despite this, I found the bleak portrayal of the astronauts' isolation to be remarkably powerful. I guess it was the theme of loneliness that was so gripping. I wish that the author had cut back on the "society falling to pieces" vignettes and given us more of the astronauts' struggles, and their feelings as they coped with their isolation. Some of the time-delayed dialogue with Houston could have been very effective. For me, certain scenes were worth the flaws, particularly Paula's anguish during the Earth swingby and the Scott-of-the-Antarctic-like treks across Titan. I find that I've gone back and read these scenes over and over again. Admittedly, I've read very little SF, but this is by far my favorite book from this genre. I think that its dark tone makes a nice counterpoint to Voyage.

Rating:
Summary: An Obvious Rush to Publish Job
Review: This is the first and only book I've read by this author. This book had so much promise but Baxter ruined it with poor character development and a hasty plot. Did anybody really care about Paula?

The beginning third of the book was excellent. Great commentary on the socio-political landscape that we live in. Baxter pushed the politics of today to its extreme but logic conclusion. But then it seemed that Baxter started rushing - was he on a tight deadline? The pace went so fast that I was wondering "how did we get here?"

The only reason that I give this book 2 stars, is the imagination that the author has. The ending was bizarre but imaginative. This book is such as obvious sloppy rush job, I don't how anyone can rate it above 3 stars let alone the highest rating of 5 stars. A 5 star rating is a classic such as Dune, not this hastily written book.

Next time Baxter needs to spend more time on writing his books. I hate to see such talent go to waste.

Rating:
Summary: Slow at first, but leads to a good ending
Review: I think some of the reviewers who gave this book bad marks missed some of Baxter's intention: Sometimes you have to exaggerate things (make things better or worse than they likely will really be) in order to get a point across. Yes, the political situation (especially in the US) was very unrealistic, and I have a hard time believing the Chinese would really be so evil. The (lack of) extent of the internet was unrealistic, but maybe, writing this in 1996 or so, he decided to say, "What if the government decided to really clamp down on it, and it fizzled out?" Also, the way the Titan launch was thrown together, with little or no political input, was hard to believe. But, reading his previous works and enjoying them, I prefer to give him the benefit of the doubt. I think he just tried to put together a "worse case" scenario, no matter how unrealistic it might have been, and took off with it. The first 2/3 was a little drab (and yes, he could have used an editor to cut out the excessive # of times he had someone say "no one cares about the space program anymore" or things to that effect), but I somehow found it inspiring nevertheless. And it all leads to a great ending, with great science along the way.

Rating:
Summary: Dark, pessimistic, but ultimately gripping.
Review: Titan is a very dark science fiction novel, almost to the end, however I enjoyed it. To me, who came to Baxter's novels late and grew up on Arthur C Clarke, it reads like the pessimistic counterpoint to 2001, the plotline for which it superficially follows.

Where Clarke's 2001 portrayed an ordered and quietly optimistic Saturn voyage, Baxter sets out to deliberately shake your faith in the good side of human nature, in the value and certainty of scientific progress, in political democracy, in your hope for the young.

The main characters are fragmented, dysfunctional and hard to like or even empathise with. I suspect however that this is part of Baxter's overall plan for the book, to keep up a sense of gloom throughout, but at times this is just annoying.

Technically, I could not find fault with the book in the areas of my own knowledge. Baxter's research is thorough and his description of Titan, a freezing, twilight slush, is claustophobic and utterly realistic. Also realistic are his descriptions of the various space technologies that the reader encounters. The key events are well paced, exhilerating and kept me turning the pages to follow the nightmarish decay of the US Space Programme.

There are a few faults, the main one to me being the compressed timescale that Baxter uses. I find it hard to believe that the world and people can change as fast as his plot makes them do, that in less than fifteen years after the publication date of this book, a kind of isolationist hatred and anti-scientific trance has taken over the remains of the US - a world where today's graduates would not yet have turned 40?

The ending provided a marvellous escape finally into light, and was a delight to read.

A riveting novel, right to the end, but afterwards I found myself wanting to read something by Carl Sagan, to cheer myself up again!

Rating:
Summary: Gloomy and wonderless
Review: Titan is a frustrating book because it is obvious that Baxter could've spun a believable and moving tale. The science, as far as I can tell, is accurate, and the mission to Titan, cleverly orchestrated. Why is it so frustrating? Because the message is unrelentlessly negative and pessimistic, and there isn't a single likable character in his very very long tale. One wonders what motivates Stephen Baxter, because if this book is any indication, it appears that everything is dismal and worthless to him. In his world, no one has a sense of wonder, humor, or hope. He complains through one character after another, that the current generation no longer cares about science and space exploration. All they truly care about are themselves, and oh yeah, the internet. He's relentlessly negative about that, too. Even the heroes and heroines of the mission to Titan, spend page after page complaining and whining to one another, with no encouraging words, love, or friendship shared among them. They are on a mission to another world for heaven's sake, you'd think they'd be a little ~excited~ about it. Once they finally get to Titan (a ~7 year trip through space), it's described as a hostile and bitterly cold hell of little to no scientific value. They begin to ask themselves why they bothered to go at all. After reading this novel, an unencouraging, dreary, pessimistic, and humorless adventure, you'll ask yourself why you bothered to tag along.

As a side note, take a trip to SETI@home and check out the downloads (>700 000 at last count), or the keen interest in NASAs Pathfinder Project to Mars, and then tell me people don't care about the universe around them.