Titan

Rating:
Summary: Incredibly, unrelentingly, poundingly bleak
Review: Titan portrays an incredibly bleak and depressing view of the future. Except for one scene on Titan, the entire novel is bereft of the hope or wonder possible in SF. Unrelenting gloom-and-doom. Aldous Huxley was more uplifting. The characters are unworthy of compassion, and are without depth or humanity. The Earth politics are overwrought and highly implausible.

The ending feels entirely out of place and incredibly improbable. For such a seemingly well researched, scientifically possible SF novel, the hand waving here incredible. And the sex scene here defies all reason. Baxter should have stopped before the epilogue.

The novel is also uneven in terms of detail. Baxter chooses to highly detail some scenes, then gloss over other portions. I could have lived without the in-depth bodily function reports on Titan, for example, yet the double Venus flybys were never described at all.

The NASA / USAF / military industrial complex portion seems a pathetically transparent plot device. Baxter should leave the conspiracy theories to Oliver Stone.

Why did I finish this book? Because I was on a 6-hour flight from Boston to Seattle and I couldn't toss it out the window.

Rating:
Summary: If you liked Chem 101, you'll love this book
Review: If you liked Chem 101 in college, and want it reborn as fiction, you'll love this book. Otherwise ...

I avoided Chem 101, and this is the first Stephen Baxter book I read, so that gives you some background. Development of characters is horribly thin. Even the main character is more of a narrator than a personality. Physics and chemistry, though, are explained to the point of monotony. Bodily functions in zero-gravity or on an alien planet get more than their due, also. To his credit, Baxter takes the plot to a bold conclusion and then one step beyond, which surprised and pleased me. Unfortunately, the reincarnation segue to get past the apparent ending will disappoint even his most avid fans with its pure illogic. Novel ending; if only he could have gotten there reasonably...

Rating:
Summary: Fast out of the gate, breaks leg in the stretch
Review: "Titan" is one of those rare books which rivets your attention through the first 100 pages, loses steam, and ultimately disapppoints. One cannot fault the author's bleak predictions for the future of the space program and NASA, most of which is unfortunately proving to be factually accurate, but there is absolutely nothing inspirational or uplifting about the book at all, even though the last astronauts survive a six year trip to Titan in believable fashion! No character is developed beyond the most negative aspect of his or her personality, and the hyperspace jump from sound scientific and technical discussion into utter fantasy (when, in the space of about ten pages,two of the characters are resurrected billions of years after they die on Titan---whoa!)provides only a jarring discord and fatally injures the credibility of the book. Baxter had the makings of a very good book, some wonderful concepts, but failed to deliver. I want a refund.

Rating:
Summary: Starts well, falters, recovers, then dies horribly
Review:

Baxter's Titan is just about half of a good book.

It starts well, with an all-too believeable crash of the space shuttle Columbia leading to a total shutdown of the manned space program. It then quickly falters, with an incredibly sketchy buildup to the launch of the Titan mission and an utterly ridiculous plot line where the Air Force decides to shoot down the mission(!?).

Luckily, Baxter recovers and the actual mission details are both interesting and poigniant. Somehow, the thought that the mission really is going to be one way adds a nice pathos to an otherwise stock plot.

The end, frankly, is awful. Stupid and implausable, the book should have ended with the end of the Titan mission.

Baxter can write interesting, believeable SF when he wants. Too bad he only wanted to do so for half the book.

Rating:
Summary: Close, but no cigar
Review: I found this book disturbing on a basic level, thanks to Baxter's morbid vision of humanity's possible future. Although I'd like to believe we're traveling forwards, much of what goes on is highly possible, perhaps even probable.

The space side of the story, though thought -provoking and at times brilliant, to be occasionally tedious, sometimes grisly, and marred by an awful wannabe-Niven ending. Still, a good enough read.

Rating:
Summary: Great genesis, disjointed and "fairytale" ending
Review: A great beginning with emphasis on combining history, science, and a plausible near future. However there are too many elements that appear disjointed, particularly the Chinese involvement with the asteroid, and the out of control conservative religious right changes in the USA. This could all be acceptable in such a work of fiction, except that the hastliy "crayoned" ending is unnecessary. A more realistic ending might have presented a glimpse of evolving life on Titan.

Rating:
Summary: Overall, an absorbing, spine tingling story with a weak and improbable conclusion.
Review: I've always loved realistic science fiction stories about deep space exploration, but these plots are a surprising rarity in this genre. I'm also partial to well-researched stories that take place in our solar system rather than some fictional planet. What we know about our universe is intensely more exciting than what we can make-up.

Stephen Baxter's latest book weaves fact and fiction with breath-taking reality. If you wonder what it would be like to fly through the spectacular rings of Saturn before descending into a surreal, frozen Hell on Saturn's moon, Titan, this story will move and exhilarate you!

Baxter brings a sense of immediacy when he describes this moon's eerie environment. His characters must slog through a frozen wasteland of black, gray and purple sleet. During midday, the sky is an impenetrable orange haze with occasional wisps of white cirrus clouds high overhead. At night, the landscape is locked in jet-black darkness while low pitched, moaning winds lash against their flimsy habitat.

Baxter even describes what it might be like to sail a makeshift boat through a fog bank on a black, methane lake. Later, two astronauts climb a tall ice-covered mountain at the center of an ancient impact crater. If you relish stories about fantastic voyages, you'll love this book.

Meanwhile, the earth-bound events are morbidly funny. Baxter is a native Brit who scorns American conservative politics. In his vision of the future, a right-wing President allows states dominated by militia groups to secede from the Union. He also gives free rein to the religiously conservative Foundation for Thought and Ethics (a real-life organization in Richardson, Texas) to steer American science education towards its self-serving ideology. Amusingly, this organization must "reinterpret" the data coming from the Hubble Space Telescope so that it doesn't "reflect bias" (that is, contradict Bible-based creation science).

Baxter even has China divert a "dinosaur-killing" asteroid toward Earth for an apocalyptic smash. You have to laugh at his whole macabre melodrama.

But I was disappointed in the story's conclusion. The last chapter, "Titan Summer", felt rushed, tacked-on and just soooo improbable compared to the rest of the book. It's also inconsistent. Four astronauts die and are buried in the Titan ice, yet only two are later "resurrected." Why just those two? And Rosenberg's know-it-all revelations about what's really "happening" on Titan strains credulity. The story moves from hard-science to the paranormal with an abrupt jolt.

I'm just guessing, but I think Baxter decided upon a more "upbeat" conclusion. But he didn't need one. Without the last chapter, the book would've ended tragically but appropriately. And since Paula's last act was to try to seed Titan's lakes with earthly spores, it could've ended on a hopeful mystery. If Baxter felt that was inadequate, he could've added an epilogue that described Titan's glorious future from a detached third person observation (which he does throughout the book, anyway).

Overall, I loved this novel. I just wished Baxter had ended it differently.

Rating:
Summary: A fantasy for those who look for something to chew on.
Review: To say that Titan is not an upbeat book is an understatement. However, the trouble with much of today's real-world based fantasy is the inclusion of an "out", something to make us feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Titan looks at the realities of the universe. What if we turn our back on space? What if one of our prized shuttles crashed? What if humans just ceased. These prospects shake our homocentric mindsets, but in a good way. Titan is not a happy ending movie, but one that is talked about later over pie.

Rating:
Summary: A massive waste of time, paper, and money
Review: My first review simply read "Good start, sucky ending." That must not have met Amazon's criteria for length (it wasn't listed), so here's an amplification. The novel begins in a way to lighten the heart of every true space enthusiast (and NASA critic). After getting your hopes up the author lets the plot and the characters drift seemingly at random into chaos. Science is abandoned and something (fantasy? mysticism?) takes over. Titan wastes paper, wastes money, and more importantly, wastes your time. Neither fish nor fowl it is simply foul. If you want depressing, read Level Seven. If you want optimistic, read almost anything by Hogan. But if you read Titan, be prepared to read Freud as an apertif. It won't explain the novel but it might explain its author, and why he was prepared to print somehing this ill conceived under his own name. The novel is neither fish nor fowl, neither science fiction nor fantasy, but a hopeless mishmash that strangled my willing suspension of disbelief about half way through. In the end I felt only that I had been deprived of several hours of my life I could have spent better by reading Christmas catalogs. Bah! Humbug! to this novel. It certainly ruined the spirit of Christmas for me!

Rating:
Summary: What a disappointment!
Review: After "The Time Ships" and "Ring," I couldn't wait to read "Titan." And Stephen Baxter's new book sure gets off to a great start. I turned 50 this year and his treatment of the decline of general interest in the great adventure of space exploration struck a very responsive note. But what happened at the end of the book? It seems as if what should be a sequel has been compressed into a vague, hastily written last chapter. Please, Mr. Baxter, after the exhilarating, wondrous yarn that you weave until the death of the last character, why did you let us down? Your "resurrection" scenario had me saying, "Huh?" How does it happen? Where's the speculative science? How are they going to build that log cabin without a Home Depot nearby? In addition to the Truth, there has to be better writing out there to do justice to such a great story line. Shucks, what a letdown!