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Rating: 
Summary: A terrific read
Review: I found Stephen Baxter quite by accident in an airport bookstore. I picked up 'Titan' and thoroughly enjoyed it. So I decided to get all his books and start reading them from the beginning. I was fascinated by the Xeelee Sequence thread through his early works. Raft was very interesting and Baxter's immense imagination caught me by surprise. I've just finished 'Timelike Infinity' and could not put the book down. It is hard SF with some deep descriptions of black holes, event horizons et al but it is a superb read. While this is hard SF, I think Michael Poole's character was well developed without giving away some secrets about how he knows all the astro-physics stuff (that comes later I hope). All in all, a terrific read for SF'ers who want a good story, a quick read, threads to future books, and an imagination that is difficult to find nowadays. Oh, by the way, I've read accounts of other Baxter books and there are references to the fact that the Xeelee Sequence books are standalone books. Perhaps, but my advice is to start at the beginning and work your way through the 5 books beginning with Raft. While the stories are definitely set in different era's, there are plenty of references made in each of the books I've read so far that the chronology is necessary
Rating:
Summary: Travelling in time...
Review: This large book caught my eyes! I love a time-travel story. The characters go through wormholes. These are tunnels in space-time connecting different times ans places. This book was written by someone with enough experience to do the job very well. The way the time machine is formed by moving appart the ends of wormholes is almost easy to believe. We travel to other times and one character worries about a time paradox. People from the future should not tell anyone in the past anything... Suppose the design of the time-travel device is explained to a scientist by the older version of himself. Then he didn't really work it out. He just copied himself. Noone would have been the genius who came up with the amazing idea... Then if really noone worked it out how did it come into existance? There is also the constant worry of preventing your own existance while you are in the past! This is known as the grandfather/mother paradox. Suppose you go back in time and kill you grandmother when she was a baby. You could not have been born making it impossible for you to go back in time or do anything at all... If you were not able to kill her you would have been born allowing you to commit the deed! A paradox is logicly inconsistance. In other words it does not make sense. If you could do these things without breaking physical laws there would be no paradox... I won't spoil the story for you but pay attention to what the writer is showing you. It is a useful book as it goes into theoretical physics in great detail. It suggests pulling a microscopic wormhole out of quantum foam. Some scientists consider seriously doing this. Physicists like Kip Thorne have suggested ways in which a wormhole could be used for time-travel both to the past and to the future! Clever physics is used in Timelike Infinity to great effect in allowing a time machine. It's amazing what Einstein's general theory of relativity implies. If we could travel faster than the speed of light we could travel back in time...
Rating:
Summary: Travelling in time...
Review: This large book caught my eyes! I love a time-travel story. The characters go through wormholes. These are tunnels in space-time connecting different times ans places. This book was written by someone with enough experience to do the job very well. The way the time machine is formed by moving appart the ends of wormholes is almost easy to believe. We travel to other times and one character worries about a time paradox. People from the future should not tell anyone in the past anything... Suppose the design of the time-travel device is explained to a scientist by the older version of himself. Then he didn't really work it out. He just copied himself. Noone would have been the genius who came up with the amazing idea... Then if really noone worked it out how did it come into existance? There is also the constant worry of preventing your own existance while you are in the past! This is known as the grandfather/mother paradox. Suppose you go back in time and kill you grandmother when she was a baby. You could not have been born making it impossible for you to go back in time or do anything at all... If you were not able to kill her you would have been born allowing you to commit the deed! A paradox is logicly inconsistance. In other words it does not make sense. If you could do these things without breaking physical laws there would be no paradox... I won't spoil the story for you but pay attention to what the writer is showing you. It is a useful book as it goes into theoretical physics in great detail. It suggests pulling a microscopic wormhole out of quantum foam. Some scientists consider seriously doing this. Physicists like Kip Thorne have suggested ways in which a wormhole could be used for time-travel both to the past and to the future! Clever physics is used in Timelike Infinity to great effect in allowing a time machine. It's amazing what Einstein's general theory of relativity implies. If we could travel faster than the speed of light we could travel back in time...
Rating: 
Summary: Slow Pace and Flat Characters; Try the Sequel Instead
Review: This novel describes a future operation to open wormholes through time. The operation is successful, but aliens from the future travel through the wormholes to invade Earth. One of the author's earlier works, Timelike Infinity has both Stephen Baxter's usual flair for the original and the inspired, and his talent for writing extremely hard science fiction. However, I would hesitate to recommend this novel for either the casual or the discerning reader. In this early book the characters are flat and unsymphathetic, the plot wanders seemingly without reason, and the science, marvelous as it may be, is allowed to interfere with the telling of the story. The theme is not evident until the end, and the point of the story is left unclear for the first two hundred pages. By then the suspense has long since declined to mere tedium, and the reader has lost all interest in both the underdeveloped characters and their predicament. Readers interested in Stephen Baxter or in hard SF should read Ring, his sequel to Timelike Infinity. Ring provides ample synopsis, and is a definite stand-alone novel. The characters in Ring are more vivid than they are in Timelike Infinity, and the plot moves at a fast and logical clip, culminating in an explosion of ideology and hypothesis certain to expand the horizons of any reader
Rating: 
Summary: An excellent second novel for Baxter
Review: This novel is a step up from Baxter's well done first novel, Raft. In this case, his writing is much more tight and clear.
As for plot, this one is fascinating. I don't think that the topic of time-travel will ever lose its interest for me; in this case, Baxter was able to maintain my interest consistently throughout the book. Moreover, he adds other oft-used, but always interesting topics such as alien opressive rule and interplanetary communication. I have learned that there are more books about the Xeelee and now I want to find out more about these mysterious creatures who have such advanced technology. Baxter is indeed a master of "hard" sci-fi.
On the negative side, I was disappointed with the ending that in some ways was predictable and awkward. Nonetheless, he kept the theme provocative and thoughtful
Rating:
Summary: An excellent second novel for Baxter
Review: This novel is a step up from Baxter's well done first novel, Raft. In this case, his writing is much more tight and clear.
As for plot, this one is fascinating. I don't think that the topic of time-travel will ever lose its interest for me; in this case, Baxter was able to maintain my interest consistently throughout the book. Moreover, he adds other oft-used, but always interesting topics such as alien opressive rule and interplanetary communication. I have learned that there are more books about the Xeelee and now I want to find out more about these mysterious creatures who have such advanced technology. Baxter is indeed a master of "hard" sci-fi.
On the negative side, I was disappointed with the ending that in some ways was predictable and awkward. Nonetheless, he kept the theme provocative and thoughtful
Rating:
Summary: This is a very good book
Review: While it moves somewhat slow, "Timelike Infinity" is still very good. This book is about Michael Poole, a brilliant scientist who wants to build gates to link up the galaxy. Using this gates, it is possible to travel from Earth to Pluto nearly instantaneusly. Once he pulls this of, Poole decides to try to make a gate to connect to the future. This works all to well, because Poole connects to an Earth that is occupied by an alien species called the Qax. The humans in this time are desparate to end the occupation and journey back in time to stop it from happening. Poole then finds himself fighting to preserve history. "Timelike Infinity" is a wonderful book about the consequences of innovation and a very good read.
Rating:
Summary: This is a very good book
Review: While it moves somewhat slow, "Timelike Infinity" is still very good. This book is about Michael Poole, a brilliant scientist who wants to build gates to link up the galaxy. Using this gates, it is possible to travel from Earth to Pluto nearly instantaneusly. Once he pulls this of, Poole decides to try to make a gate to connect to the future. This works all to well, because Poole connects to an Earth that is occupied by an alien species called the Qax. The humans in this time are desparate to end the occupation and journey back in time to stop it from happening. Poole then finds himself fighting to preserve history. "Timelike Infinity" is a wonderful book about the consequences of innovation and a very good read.
Rating:
Summary: This is a very good book
Review: While it moves somewhat slow, "Timelike Infinity" is still very good. This book is about Michael Poole, a brilliant scientist who wants to build gates to link up the galaxy. Using this gates, it is possible to travel from Earth to Pluto nearly instantaneusly. Once he pulls this of, Poole decides to try to make a gate to connect to the future. This works all to well, because Poole connects to an Earth that is occupied by an alien species called the Qax. The humans in this time are desparate to end the occupation and journey back in time to stop it from happening. Poole then finds himself fighting to preserve history. "Timelike Infinity" is a wonderful book about the consequences of innovation and a very good read.
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