- Paperback: 500 pages
- Publisher: Voyager (3 Nov 1997)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0002246740
- ISBN-13: 978-0002246743
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 5,655,989 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Review
‘If you liked The Right Stuff you’ll like this too’
Interzone
‘There is real suspense here… Voyage is a splendid nostalgia trip to times when astronauts were still the Right Stuff’
New Scientist
‘Rigorously researched, but Baxter concentrates on the people involved, and the result is a compulsive and intelligent page-turner’
Focus
‘Voyage is, quite simply, a brilliant book… essential reading for anybody interested in space exploration, and for non-SF fans, it’s a damn fine adventure story, too, skilfully constructed and enthrallingly told’
SFX
Product Description
NASA’s Cassini probe will reach Titan in 2004: Titan is the amazing story of a visionary’s response to the discovery of life on Saturn’s moon. Another BIG space novel from the acclaimed successor to Arthur C. Clarke and Robert Heinlein: the conquest of space as it could still happen.
Titan is the epic saga of one woman’s will to succeed and the triumph of a dream over bureaucracy and fear. Paula Benacerraf, grandmother and astronaut, is appointed to oversee the dismantling of the Shuttle fleet after another Challenger-type disaster. Instead, she listens to the oddball JPL scientist Rosenberg, who is determined to explore the ammonia-based life Cassini discovers on Titan.
Using NASA’s rusting Saturn rockets, mothballed Apollos and remaining Shuttles, frail humans are hurled, in the face of violent opposition from the military, to the edge of the Solar System. To the edge, also, of sanity.
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First Sentence
After seven years of flight, after traveling a billion miles from Earth, the human spacecraft Cassini reached Saturn. Read the first page
Front Cover | Excerpt | Back Cover
After seven years of flight, after traveling a billion miles from Earth, the human spacecraft Cassini reached Saturn. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A shuttle crash, disquiet about spending money on space exploration, a right-wing fundamentalist president, China set to launch its first manned mission ....
Sound familiar? All in here - and a great story tacked on too. Baxter on top form - how did he guess it all?
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
‘Titan’ shares a lot of similar ground with Baxter’s previous novel ‘Voyage’, in fact in many ways it can be seen as a variation on a theme, being another alternate history novel transforming the post-Cold War decline of the Space Age into a last ditch attempt to land human’s on another world, only this time with Saturn’s moon Titan being the destination rather than Mars. Where ‘Voyage’ was a fairly restrained and believable alternate history however, ‘Titan’ is far more ambitious, taking in a war between the West and China and ultimately climaxing with such exotic fare as alien life billions of years in the future. Unfortunately however the novel is not entirely convincing: Baxter’s true love is in the technical details of the astronauts mission to Titan, and correspondingly this aspect of the novel is the most richly developed, but Baxter’s near-future Earth never receives the same level of attention, with the result that such massive events as the USA regressing into a new anti-scientific Middle Ages and the subsequent war with China seem exaggerated and unbelievable. There are plenty of great moments in ‘Titan’ to keep the reader interested - particular highlights include the opening sequence where a standard shuttle re-entry turns into a disaster; the rivalry between NASA and the US airforce breaking out into outright violence with the attempted destruction of the Titan mission; and the sad fate of the last of the Moon-walkers as their senility confuses a nursing home with a space mission – but these are evened out by Baxter’s often very dry hard SF sequences which will only really be enjoyed by tech-heads or NASA employee’s.
‘Titan’ is a good book, but with a little change of emphasis I felt it could have been a great one. As it is, despite the more exotic SF trappings, I found this slightly less compelling than the very similar ‘Voyage’.
‘Titan’ is a good book, but with a little change of emphasis I felt it could have been a great one. As it is, despite the more exotic SF trappings, I found this slightly less compelling than the very similar ‘Voyage’.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is truely amazing. It provides an extraordinary view of a future.
Like in all his other books, Baxter covers a huge array of subjects all of great importance in the modern world; from distrust of science, the economic and foreign policy of the United States, the danger presented by a conservative domination of politics, the decline of the family, the destruction of the enviroment, the power of the military, the rise of China in the 21st century and most importantly the possiblities and necessities of space travel.
Overall Baxter presents his reader with a bleak and hugely detailed vision of the future, and the chnallenges and movements human beings will meet in the coming century. He is not optimistic for us, but right down in the core of the book there is a ray of hope, a vision reminding us that as long as we are still breathing, as long as the spark of life present on this planet still glows, there is still hope.
You could criticise the final chapters as sentimental and out of tone with the rest of the book, I would be inclined to disagree. I think instead that they reflect the hope present throughout the book, they show us the posibility of rebirth and a chance to start again. They also highlight the idea that Steven Baxter seems to hold most dearest, that all that is important is life, the continued existance of living things through colonisation of the stars.
Thus this book provides a lengthy, deep narative, with believeable well written characters. It discusses issues important to the modern world, but deep down it is a thesis, a guide, a set of instructions suggesting what must shorely be the right course for the future of the species.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Not What I Expected....
Having never read a Stephen Baxter novel before, I was advised that "Titan" was a very good read. I had recently read Dale Brown's "Silver Tower" and was hungry for more NASA... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Mr. D. J. Walford
Requiem For A Space Programme
Reading this novel, thirteen years after it was written and about halfway into the period in which it is set, Baxter's jaundiced view of the immediate future of manned space flight... Read more
Published on 16 Feb 2010 by Plausible Denial
Thought-provoking
The first time I read Titan it took me 3 days pretty solid effort, which is a long time for me. It could be hard work: sometimes the technical detail is overwhelming and can... Read more
Published on 19 Aug 2008 by ChezzyD
There's something missing
I love Baxter's writing when I want to immerse myself in a technical-type novel like Voyage. The combination of the messiness of politics and vested interests, the technological... Read more
Published on 25 Mar 2007 by A. Gordon
Dull, but gets better
A group of five humans are sent on a one way trip to Titan, a moon of Saturn. Their ship is patched together from remnants of fifty years of space flight, and they leave Earth in... Read more
Published on 29 July 2006 by P. van Midden
Doom and Gloom
Titan is well written and certainly the first half of the book was gripping, however, I had to really battle to pick up this novel and finish it as the content slipped inexorably... Read more
Published on 14 July 2006 by Mr. N. Cartwright
So you want to go to Titan ?
Well I've read a fair bit of SF in the last 30 years and seriously rate this one as truly excellent. Read more
Published on 10 April 2006 by Chris
contra mundum
"Titan" is really a depressing near-future novel about a desparate attempt by NASA to stop a disillusioned USA vanishing up its own back-side. Read more
Published on 4 July 2004 by Mr A. Crowl
Dark scary and boring
Except from being a textbook which must be an obligatory read for every NASA employee, it offers a very scary and freighting future for mankind. Read more
Published on 11 May 2004 by Christoph Strizik
Awful
The process of reading this book is far more painful than the characters' journey to Titan, and that is saying something !
Stay away !
Published on 21 Jan 2004 by "toby02"
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