- Hardcover: 512 pages
- Publisher: Del Rey Books (Feb 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0345430778
- ISBN-13: 978-0345430779
- Product Dimensions: 20.8 x 13.7 x 3.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 392,066 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
Few writers can combine mind bending scientific speculation with breathtaking adventure like award-winning author Stephen Baxter. In Manifold: Time, Baxter told a thrilling story in which the fate of the universe hung in the balance. It followed visionary Reid Malenfant, a man who willed humankind to explore space, and ultimately was faced with a harrowing choice between a past that never was and a future that must never be. Now, in Manifold: Space, Reid Malenfant is back. But this is a different Malenfant. And a different universe.
Fueled by an insatiable curiosity, Malenfant ventures to the far edge of the solar system, where he discovers a strange artifact left behind by an alien civilization: A gateway that functions as a kind of quantum transporter, allowing virtually instantaneous travel over the vast distances of interstellar space. What lies on the other side of the gateway? Malenfant decides to find out.
Yet as Malenfant embarks on a grand tour of the universe, back on Earth the Japanese scientist Nemoto fears her worst nightmares are coming true. Startling and chilling discoveries reveal that the Moon, Mars, Venus, even the Jovian moons, once thrived with life . . . life that was snuffed out in the distant past by starfaring races. Snuffed out not just once but many times, in cycles of birth and destruction as plain as they are inexplicable.
One fact is clear. The recent, Earthbound arrival of the Gaijin portend the first alien visitors in a new cycle. And behind them, looms another--a species with an ominous predilection for blowing up suns. In desperation, Nemoto searches for a means of survival. Or failing that, revenge.
Meanwhile Malenfant, having traveled millions of light years, is once more faced with a choice both impossible and necessary--a choice that will push him beyond terror, beyond sanity, beyond humanity itself.
Fueled by an insatiable curiosity, Malenfant ventures to the far edge of the solar system, where he discovers a strange artifact left behind by an alien civilization: A gateway that functions as a kind of quantum transporter, allowing virtually instantaneous travel over the vast distances of interstellar space. What lies on the other side of the gateway? Malenfant decides to find out.
Yet as Malenfant embarks on a grand tour of the universe, back on Earth the Japanese scientist Nemoto fears her worst nightmares are coming true. Startling and chilling discoveries reveal that the Moon, Mars, Venus, even the Jovian moons, once thrived with life . . . life that was snuffed out in the distant past by starfaring races. Snuffed out not just once but many times, in cycles of birth and destruction as plain as they are inexplicable.
One fact is clear. The recent, Earthbound arrival of the Gaijin portend the first alien visitors in a new cycle. And behind them, looms another--a species with an ominous predilection for blowing up suns. In desperation, Nemoto searches for a means of survival. Or failing that, revenge.
Meanwhile Malenfant, having traveled millions of light years, is once more faced with a choice both impossible and necessary--a choice that will push him beyond terror, beyond sanity, beyond humanity itself.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Stunning,
By A Customer
This review is from: Space (Manifold) (Hardcover)
This is truly one of Baxters greatest novels. It has a brilliant time-jump sequence in it. The thing that stands out most about Baxters writings is the technological and scientific side. I'm not sure if everything that Baxter writes in his books is true but it is very well put across and sounds extremely realistic. Especially the Gaijin. I don't think that that would work in real life but it sure soundsa like it should.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.4 out of 5 stars (17 customer reviews) 12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of Baxters' best to date.,
By Jason N. Gultjaeff "jayg99" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Space (Manifold) (Hardcover)
Absolutley loved this novel. The shear depth of Baxters' ideas and his firm grasp of the latest cutting edge physics, is a joy to read. I loved Mainifold: Time, but this one I couldn't put down. What I love most about this novel is that you realise your learning something while enjoying every page. Personally, I have no problems with Baxters' characterizations and writing style, I think he's one of the best in hard SF ( generally better than Egan or Bear, in my opinion). To summarize what this novel is about, while not giving too much away- imagine a thought experiment concerning the Fermi Paradox, e.g if aliens exist, why aren't they here? This paradox could have lots of solutions, e.g life is very,very rare, or perhaps life is common but it gets wiped out or wipes itself out in a relatively short time scale... This novel seems to take the latter angle, space is brimming with life, yet none of it every really gets the chance to advance beyond a certain point. What's behind all this is the crux of the story. Loved the ending as well.Highly recommended. 12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
One of Baxter's weaker ones,
By O-St - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Space (Manifold) (Hardcover)
Not that I'll be misunderstood: I'm one of Mr Baxters biggest fans and most loyal readers, but "Manifold:Space" lacks a very important quality of a book: a coherent story that keeps the reader interested. Characters and their achievements light up for a few chapters and then disappear again in the vast maw of time. "The most awesome ideas in science fiction today" rates "The Times" on the cover of my UK edition. That is not untrue - but unlike in "Manifold:Time", here Mr Baxter fails to weave those ideas into a gripping story - I repeatedly had to force myself to continue reading. Of course it is way more difficult to tell a story that spans centuries and millenia than one that only stretches the protagonist's lifetime and maybe it is the problem of us "mayfly humans" (compared to those mechanical aliens described in the book that "live" for millenia) that we find it hard to follow such eternal-like periods of time - but hey: we're the only life-form yet that can read (his) books ! And in "Time" Mr Baxters'ideas about the future of the universe and mankind as a part of it were at least as awesome as in "Space" - and nonetheless it was a thrilling, page-turning story. I hope that the proposed third one in this sequence, "Manifold:Origin", will take up the quality of "Time" and - although hardly possible, since its his best - "The Time Ships". 5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a bleak Gulliver's Travels for the 3rd millennium,
By Fudo Myo "fudomyo" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Space (Manifold) (Hardcover)
Baxter's Space is the Gulliver's Travels of modern science fiction. I mean this not only in terms of narrative convention (hapless traveler is propelled from one tableaux to the next to showcase the author's agenda, in this case, a grab-bag of the myriad forms life might take in various environments), but of repute, as well: with Time as his launching point, Baxter takes cyclopean strides, earning the hallmark "classic" and instantly vaulting into my Top Ten Greatest Sci-Fi Novels of All Time. Baxter has come a long way from what I label the "pajama sci-fi" of his Xeelee sequence: cheeseball crews running around in their jammy-jams like something from Star Trek: the Motion Picture or Invaders from Plan 9. Baxter's ideas were always there, but his Michael Crichton School of bland prose was a great detraction. No more - he's battened down the hatches on sloppy writing, his characters have distinct voices, and the greatest improvement of all, his dialogue has gone from Vaudevillian melodrama to the downright profound. Baxter refreshingly skips hashing out the trials of his characters and gets to the nitty gritty: one sentence, Malefant is reasoning out how he can get to a deep space "Saddle Point," the next sentence, he's there, and who cares how he swung it?All this, and the ideas are still there; each chapter bursts with an astonishing new Big Idea that forces one to pause and give a Keanu Reeves "whoah." The final onslaught of the Cracker fleet and Nemoto's soliloquy is the most deliciously bleak scene I have read in sci-fi since the end of Orwell's 1984. Here's hoping Baxter's Darwinian vision of space colonization is totally wrong. I, for one, am still waiting for enlightened beings to descend from the heavens and help us save us from ourselves. Space is not perfect - the micronized space-ship with no plausible explanation from a race that Baxter repeatedly stresses has comparatively primitive technology is particularly irksome, and Baxter can sometimes hit you over the head to make his point (there's no need to use "Darwinian" as an adjective twice on the same page - I get it already), but these are minor annoyances. It's the power to make you cower like an insignificant mote against the howling void, to go slack-jawed with wonder and awe as you gaze out over alien vistas, to make you still ask after witnessing 10,000 years of human evolution, "Is that all there is?" Baxter dishes it up in droves and he's unlikely to pull it off again, so if you're going to read only one, this is it. Finally, my glib answer to the Fermi Paradox: we exist, but we're not there... Fudo Myo |
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