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Amazon.co.uk Review
Stephen Baxter, Britain's foremost author of "hard" SF rooted in real physics, is renowned for thinking big. Time begins with a US entrepreneur's deceptively low-key plans to reclaim space and exploit the asteroids, bypassing NASA's bureaucracy and safety regulations. One bizarre cost-cutting measure: the "Big Dumb Booster" pilot is a genetically enhanced, intelligent squid. Then the mission is redirected following a weird mathematical prediction that humanity hasn't long to live, and a "Feynman radio" transmission from the future that highlights a particular asteroid. Here a space-time gateway opens on unimaginably distant futures, stepping far beyond the dying sun of Wells's The Time Machine to visions of a galaxy reshaped by humanity to hoard its energy ... beyond stars, beyond black holes, beyond even mass. And the emerging message, seen most clearly by a new generation of persecuted, ultra-gifted children, is that this seeming triumph--this total exploitation of our universe's possibilities--isn't good enough. A better path awaits, via a cataclysm that dwarfs mere supernova explosions... Baxter pays homage to the transformations of Clarke's Childhood's End (there's also a nod to 2001), but without the mysticism: it's all respectable, if speculative, physics. His final, devastating payoff makes sequels seem impossible. Two are planned. Rousing stuff, on a cosmic scale. --David Langford
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
‘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
‘In Time Baxter manages to take the most esoteric cosmological ideas and mesh them into a fast-paced novel… Probably the most thought-provoking writing you’ll read this year, it’s time for Baxter to take his place alongside Asimov and Heinlein’
Edge
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
for those new to Baxter,
By
This review is from: Time (Paperback)
Having seen that the reviews are very mixed on here I thought I would add my opinion to the mix. The negative reviews seem to be the same in that they basically say "not as good as his other stuff", which actually says more about the strength of this guy's writing than its weakness!
This was the first Stephen Baxter book I read, picked up in an airport, never heard of him so I had no expectations. IT.BLEW.ME.AWAY! One of the best books I have ever read, Sci-Fi or otherwise. The scale of the ideas and the sheer sense of wonder and awe are something else. I would actually recommend this as the best one to read to start with. I have since read the rest of the Manifold trilogy, the 2nd (Space) I think is even better but I was expecting it to be good so it didn't blow me away as much as this. I have since bought several copies of this book to give to like minded friends to read.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Slow to get going, but as "hard" a sci-fi as you could ever want,
By
This review is from: Time (Paperback)
I'm a proper nerd when it comes to sci-fi - I'll take obscure and esoteric theories over plodding character development every time. Time, therefore, was very appealing.
A strange artifact is discovered on an asteroid near Earth, and is found by a remote probe to be a portal that allows jumps of billions of years into the future. Soon after, a kind of super-intelligence begins to manifest itself in a handful of children, who proceed to make astonishing scientific breakthroughs in the field of energy production. The two apparently unrelated stories close in on each other at the climax (far too mild a word for it). It does take a while to get going, with a lot of the first half being something of a cookie-cutter will they/won't they space launch saga, but there are sprinklings of some truly visionary science (particularly the breathtaking sequence where the probe is repeatedly pushed into the distant future - worth getting from the library on its own). The rapidly switching point of view character took me some getting used to, but it does offer a more rounded insight into the goings on. And the ENDING... ye gods, Baxter went all-out! So good was this book that it induced me to read Flood; if I'd read Flood first, though...
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating science and an OK story,
By zxyd@hotmail.com (London, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Time (Paperback)
I found the book got off to a slow start part, but by half-way I was hooked. As others have said, the time jump sequence to the end of the universe inspired a sense of awe. But I found it harder to suspend disbelief about the politics: like another reviewer, I thought it a little unlikely that a doom prediction would cause widespread panic - surely more likely it would simply be dismissed. And I found it hard to relate to the hostility towards the children.There were a couple of obvious errors (unless I missed something?) that I found a little distracting. Without wishing to give too much away: towards the end of the book two characters are watching an effect which is spreading at light speed - so how are they able to see it?! One of them even comments that the effect won't reach the sun for another 8 minutes - but they are out beyond Jupiter, so how has light from it reached them? And how is a blind person able to grapple with an assailant in space - there's no sound to tell him where his attacker is? Overall though, the plausible physics made for a good read.
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