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Amazon.co.uk Review
Review
‘Stephen Baxter really does stand on the shoulders of giants in order to see further than they did … The Time Ships is a brilliant piece of work. It is a sequel in the best possible sense.’ Interzone
‘The most outstanding work of imaginative fiction since Stapleton’s Last and First Men … I’m almost tempted to say (I know this is blasphemy) that the sequel is better than the original …’ Arthur C. Clark
‘Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein succeeded in doing it, but very few others. Now Stephen Baxter joins their exclusive ranks. The reaction is that which C. S. Lewis referred to when he described science fiction as the only genuine consciousness-expanding drug.’ New Scientist
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
The Time Ships stands on its own as an SF classic, and is as good as anything that Clarke or Bear or Silverberg have ever written. Baxter is quite simply in the SF Premier League with the best of them, in my humble opinion.
Picking up neatly where Wells left off, Baxter's tale ranges far into the future and back to the beginning of Time itself, encountering realities profoundly affected by the invention of time travel. Accompanying the Traveler is Nebogipfel, a Morlock unlike any invented by Wells. Nebogipfel is a sensitive character who supplies the modern scientific explanations to what the 19th century narrator encounters, and the friendship that emerges between the two of them is one of the highlights of this book,
Nebogipfel also serves to answer many of the traditional paradoxes of time travel that appear in the course of their travels in time. Though many will find the explanations unsatisfactory, Baxter should be commended for confronting them head-on and creating a much richer novel in the process. Fans of the original novel will also respect his homage to Wells and the respect that Baxter pays to many of the Wells's ideas, though in the end this is a must-read for any fan of brilliantly imagined, well-written science fiction.
Stephen Baxter takes up the tale in this mindbending, timewarping sequel, using scientific concepts that were not available to Wells. This allows for some rather knowing jokes at the expense of the narrator -- the Time Traveller himself -- who has to confront the Big Bang, radioactivity, quantum mechanics and so on from his own 1891 perspective. Baxter even writes in a fairly convincing Wellsian style although some of his tics get irritating in a book of this length, such as his habit of ending paragraphs with exclamation points! (Oh look, here's another one!) but at least he doesn't have Clarke's irritating and lazy habit of ending poorly constructed sentences with lines of dots...
You can enjoy this story on its own, but it probably helps if you're familiar with the original story, and there are lots of explicit and submerged references to other Wellsian stories such as The Shape Of Things To Come, The Land Ironclads, Empire of the Ants and Aepyornis Island. But Baxter maintains the Wellsian spirit of goggle-eyed adventure (more exclamation!!) without lapsing into Wells' habit, especially in later and longer works, of preaching about social reform and world government (indeed, Baxter sends this up in one episode set in war-torn London in an alternative 1938.)
The story ranges from the comic to the cosmic, and during episodes of the latter, Baxter surpasses Wells in his evocation of the grandeur of space and time, coming closer to that less-well-known genius of early British SF, Olaf Stapledon (Star Maker, First and Last Men).
Give yourself a thorough mental workout with this story that is at the same time exciting in its own right and an expert tribute to all that is best in the classic science fiction of a steam-driven age!
If you're a time-travel enthusiast then this book is an absolute must. Read more
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