- Mass Market Paperback: 512 pages
- Publisher: HarperCollins; Reissue edition (22 Dec 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0061056944
- ISBN-13: 978-0061056949
- Product Dimensions: 17.4 x 10.8 x 3.5 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 314,423 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Michael Poole's "wormholes" constructed in the orbit of Jupiter had opened the galaxy to humankind. Then Poole tried looping a wormhole back on itself, tying a knot in space and ripping a hole in time. It worked. Too well. Poole was never seen again. Then from far in the future, from a time so distant that the stars themselves were dying embers, came an urgent SOS--and a promise. The universe was doomed, but humankind was not. Poole had stumbled upon an immense artifact, light-years across, fabricated from the very "string" of the cosmos. The universe had a door. And it was open...
From the Back Cover
The sun is dying! Funded by the wealthy cult known as Superet – a religion based on the worship of nuclear weapons – an expedition is sent 5,000,000 years into the future to investigate the end of the world. The travellers must confront the mysterious force known as the Great Attractor: the Ring, the greatest engineering marvel of the Great Xeelee, owners of the Universe. In the eerie blue light of its exotic matter, a few frail humans discover their greatest peril, and their greatest hope.
"'Ring' is a rare triumph. The book sends into free-fall the most awesome ideas in science fiction today … What makes these ideas assimilable is the prism of people through which they are refracted … good SF reveals the mortal host in the machine"
THE TIMES
"'Ring' recalls the most visionary moments of Wells and Clarke … constructs a human scale drama out of the most far reaching implications of current cosmological theory … makes E.E. Doc Smith look like a minimalist"
LOCUS
"'The Xeelee Sequence 'and 'Ring' are cosmic perspective science fiction of originality, high quality and great interest. Baxter will be one of the major science fiction writers of the turn of the century."
NEW YORK REVIEW OF SCIENCE FICTION
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First Sentence
Even at the moment she was born she knew something was wrong. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Even at the moment she was born she knew something was wrong. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Stephen Baxter is a fascinating teller of tales, although, for me, his highbrow scientific monologues rarely blend well with the plot. In Ring - the last of the Xeelee sequence - his ensemble cast includes several characters who regularly pause the action to make turgid lectures to their colleagues. Some of this science is integral to the story - of the ultimate fate of the Universe - but the interludes are like blocks of concrete around the feet of something of otherwise mercurial pace and, for the average reader (i.e. one without a PhD in astrophysics), they are a hindrance.
Baxter has big ideas and a brilliant imagination, which makes up for the fact that his characters are inclined to be a little unbelievable and repetitive. In Ring, as in his other books, he throws together a disparate group of individuals and explores their adjustments to each other and to dramatic challenges and events, It doesn't quite come off, because, beneath the surface, it seems they weren't really that dissimilar.
Those criticisms aside, Ring stands alone as a work of vision and innovation, which left this human reader feeling very appreciative of the solidity of planet earth. There are some neat links to earlier Xeelee stories, such as Flux and Raft, and, overall, it is gripping stuff on a cosmic scale. Skim the science lessons and you won't be able to put it down.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I was a little dubious at first, as I was given the book as a present. Didn't know Stephen Baxter beforehand. It is apparently the last book of a cyle - which wasn't apparent to me until I read the author's notes at the end - as the book really does stand on its own. I very much enjoyed this book! Some really interesting ideas and "real sounding" physics and what a scale for the story! Wow! Pass me his next book please .....
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The fourth (and, chronologically at least) final novel in Baxter's Xeelee sequence contains some wonderful sf invention at its heart, but is unfortunately let down by the presentation. Every other page we go into needlessly extended (and repetitious) textbook science lectures, primarily on the life cycles of stars, and this slows the book down to a snails pace and ultimately becomes frustrating for the reader.
Essentially a sequel to Timelike Infinity, for readers who've been following the series this book will still be required reading, as it ties up the sequence, but for any novice readers I'd recommend either Raft or Flux, both of which are solid sf novels in their own right and only touch obliquely on the Xeelee continuity.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Great ending of a saga
For a few months I have endured the three huge volumes of Xeelee Sequence, good books buried in the workings of hard sci-fi, very interesting stories divided and separated by pages... Read more
Published 17 months ago by ManInsideTheHelm
Science Fiction the way it's meant to be
Steven Baxter has a very good knowledge of the physics he writes about and being able to incorporate these into a good story, he captures the essence of Science Fiction. Read more
Published on 19 Mar 2006 by Sondre K. Jacobsen
The sheer scope of this novel is breathtaking
I discovered Baxter through an earlier book in his Xeelee Sequence, but this one is the absolute best. Read more
Published on 10 Jan 2000
Painfully Bad.
Baxter proves that he is a text book writer and not one of SF. His characters are arbitrary; there is no attempt at making any one of them remotely likeable. Read more
Published on 16 Dec 1999 by Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer
A great, hard Sf book.
This was the first book I read by Stephen Baxter and I thought it was great. There was lots of really hard SF and it had some good twists to it. Read more
Published on 15 Nov 1999
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