- Hardcover: 464 pages
- Publisher: Voyager; First Edition edition (7 Aug 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0002257718
- ISBN-13: 978-0002257718
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16.2 x 4.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,084,870 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
‘Time has one of the best time-jump sequences ever attempted, during which the protagonists witness the entire future of the universe… Highly intelligent, with original ideas in almost every sentence’
GUARDIAN
‘Pacy, visionary, extravagantly imagined, Time places Baxter firmly in the tradition of Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov. How reassuring to know that while so many authors are lying in the gutter of the information superhighway, someone at least is still looking at the stars’
The Times
‘Time is a big ambitious book… science fiction at its best’
FHM
Product Description
‘If they existed, they would be here’ ENRICO FERMI. In the second volume in Stephen Baxter’s epic Manifold Series Reid Malenfant inhabits the universe Malenfant kick-started in TIME (‘science fiction at its best’ FHM) – and ‘they’ are here.
’If they existed, they would be here’ – this is the Fermi paradox concerning the existence of extrarrestrials. Once it confirmed Malenfant’s opinion that humanity was alone in the universe. But when Nemoto, a Japanese researcher on the Moon, discovers evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence in the solar system, the same paradox provokes both Malenfant and Nemoto to question why now? Because, suddenly, there are signs of intelligent life in deep space in all directions. Deeper layers of Fermi’s paradox unravel as robot-like aliens, the Gaijin, seem to be e-mailing themselves from star to star, and wherever telescopes point, far away, other alien races are destroying worlds…
In the face of this onslaught from the stars, Malenfant sets out alone in a salvaged antique spacecraft to make contact with the Gaijin. In response the Gaijin come to Earth – but not to save mankind. Curious but aloof, incomprehensible, the Gaijin seem unhappy with what they find here and set about recreating from existing DNA some of the marvels of prehistory, including those hominids driven to extinction by man.
As other aliens approach in a blaze of destruction there is no comfort in recalling Nemoto’s certainty that this has all happened before, over and over. But in the soul of Malenfant, in the dreams of the new Neandertals, and in Nemoto’s obsessive loathing of all aliens there are glimmers of hope that the cycle can be broken…
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
It is difficult to review a book that spans almost 9000 years of future history. Baxter has revived Malenfant, the old NASA astronaut, and has placed him next to a strange Japanese woman who cant seem to die.
Baxter's ideas are phenomenal though and the book is evenly paced with action to give an excellent read for a space buff but not for a romantic novel reader. His scientific knowledge is great and this book seriously makes you think about the future and what would happen if there were alien contact. He also tries to answer the question of why there has not been contact as yet.
Some parts of the book seem to have been added in order to make a story out of a string of pseudo-facts but it is a good attempt and quite readable. You do sometimes wonder after reading a few tens of pages - now what was that for?
I could not put the book down and enjoyed it right up to the final page which reveals and excellent twist to the whole tale.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
"Space" is the second book in Stephen Baxter's Manifold trilogy, and a sequel of sorts to "Time", although it can also be read independently. Once again the central character is Reid Malenfant, an ex-NASA astronaut and failed entrepreneur. Obsessed with the search for extraterrestrial life, Malenfant seeks a solution to the Fermi paradox: given that the universe is billions of years old, if life exists out in the cosmos, why don't we see the evidence of it all about us? Thus when alien intelligence is detected out in the asteroid belt, Malenfant takes it upon himself to investigate, to make contact and ultimately to follow them back to the stars, through the mysterious blue portals through which they came.
The action unfolds over no less than 1,800 years, from the present day up to the thirty-eighth century, with the final, epic conclusion set another 5,000 years after that. In this way Baxter lays out a compelling vision of the possible long-term effects of Earth's contact with aliens. Unlike in "Time", where he employs an interesting mix of faux newspaper articles, blogs and journal entries to tell his story, in "Space" he sticks to a more conventional third-person narrative. The story is related through the perspective of four or five main characters, all of whom use the portals to travel to the stars and see life beyond Earth, and who, over the course of many years, become witnesses to the gradual decline of human civilisation.
The story is episodic in nature, and has the impression of a number of short stories loosely linked together. This can be frustrating for the reader, as there are enough intriguing ideas packed in this book to sustain half a dozen different novels. Each successive world is imaginatively drawn - from Earth, Io, Triton and Mercury to Alpha Centauri and far beyond - but Baxter tends to pass over them all very quickly, which does become tiresome. There comes a point about two-thirds of the way in when one wonders what the ultimate point is. Another result of the disjointed nature of the novel is that is difficult to feel fully engaged with the characters or get a sense of their development in these extraordinary circumstances. It is disappointing, too, that Malenfant - in principle a fascinating character - does not feature more, despite his centrality to the story. However, it is clear that this is not meant to be a character-driven novel so much as one based around ideas. Indeed "Space" has at its heart themes of human ambition and determination, consciousness and identity, self and soul, and the will to survive in a hostile universe, all of which are explored in depth.
In "Space", the author shows an imagination and consideration of the big questions of existence which is not often seen in most modern SF. It is true that there is less hard science and more scientifically-informed speculation than there was in "Time", but Baxter delivers it with such confidence that it hardly matters. This is truly a novel for the twenty-first century.
The action unfolds over no less than 1,800 years, from the present day up to the thirty-eighth century, with the final, epic conclusion set another 5,000 years after that. In this way Baxter lays out a compelling vision of the possible long-term effects of Earth's contact with aliens. Unlike in "Time", where he employs an interesting mix of faux newspaper articles, blogs and journal entries to tell his story, in "Space" he sticks to a more conventional third-person narrative. The story is related through the perspective of four or five main characters, all of whom use the portals to travel to the stars and see life beyond Earth, and who, over the course of many years, become witnesses to the gradual decline of human civilisation.
The story is episodic in nature, and has the impression of a number of short stories loosely linked together. This can be frustrating for the reader, as there are enough intriguing ideas packed in this book to sustain half a dozen different novels. Each successive world is imaginatively drawn - from Earth, Io, Triton and Mercury to Alpha Centauri and far beyond - but Baxter tends to pass over them all very quickly, which does become tiresome. There comes a point about two-thirds of the way in when one wonders what the ultimate point is. Another result of the disjointed nature of the novel is that is difficult to feel fully engaged with the characters or get a sense of their development in these extraordinary circumstances. It is disappointing, too, that Malenfant - in principle a fascinating character - does not feature more, despite his centrality to the story. However, it is clear that this is not meant to be a character-driven novel so much as one based around ideas. Indeed "Space" has at its heart themes of human ambition and determination, consciousness and identity, self and soul, and the will to survive in a hostile universe, all of which are explored in depth.
In "Space", the author shows an imagination and consideration of the big questions of existence which is not often seen in most modern SF. It is true that there is less hard science and more scientifically-informed speculation than there was in "Time", but Baxter delivers it with such confidence that it hardly matters. This is truly a novel for the twenty-first century.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
After 'Time' which I thought was superb, Space is a real curate's egg of a book.
The good bits are the explorations of 'big ideas' ie humanity needs to get its act together before it's steam rollered out of existence.
Unfortunately, in this extremely episodic book, the big ideas are often strung together with some confusing and often irrelevant sub plots (one of which I know has appeared as a standalone short story).
Mr Baxter also fails to resist a frequent school masterish tone as he steps in to describe the physics behind planet formation or the geology of the moon.
But don't be put off, its a rare book that has such grand aspirations and Space will at least make you think and should entertain you along the way.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Was this review helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Brilliant
Like the other books in this series, well written, well imagined and keeps you intreagued the whole way through.
Loved it
Loved it
Published 10 months ago by Mr. M. D. Higginbotham
Rambling garbage
I managed to survive to the end of the book. It started out with interesting potential, but by a quarter of the way through you wonder what he is rambling on about. Read more
Published 19 months ago by Peter Holgate
Space is a little cold...
I read Flood first, and although I enjoyed the apocolyptic vision, I found the characters unlikeable and generally poor excuses for humanity. Read more
Published 20 months ago by Mr. Marc Diamond
Awful drivel, has some points that just cause frustration
I've been appreciating sci fi books since the early offerings of Asimov and Clark to the excellent works of Hamilton but this rubbish from Baxter is truly awful. Read more
Published 20 months ago
I'v been on a fantastic journey!
Wow! I have been on a journey through the cosmos! I loved it so much I didn't want to come back. It was a shame that this book ended and I had to drop back into the 21st... Read more
Published 22 months ago by reidwest
too many ideas, not enough story
I find myself in agreement with all the more negative reviews of Space. Baxter certainly has plenty of ideas, in fact probably too many, and he can't resist packing them all in,... Read more
Published on 18 Feb 2010 by K. Thompson
A propable answer to the fermi paradox
This is the second book in Baxter's tetralogy "Manidold" the scope of which is to find answers to the Fermi paradox. Read more
Published on 28 Sep 2008 by Panagiotis Karatasios
Slow but good
Manifold is a series of books with big, visionary concepts, and Space is no different. This time the twist on the Fermi paradox has the aliens existing and actually quite near the... Read more
Published on 8 Aug 2007 by Mikko Saari
Great vision and ideas but wobbles a bit two thirds in
If you like hard science fiction then this is for you. If not then look away now. Hard science fiction means degree level physics and beyond, philosophy and free ranging... Read more
Published on 10 May 2007 by R. B. Moore
Small and fragile in a big, bad universe
For my money, this is the best of Baxter's highly variable output. My main grouch is that the title is wrong. This is the book in the manifold series that should be called 'Time'! Read more
Published on 26 July 2004 by Russell
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
