From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Mar 19 13:14:46 1992 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!kth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!bloom-beacon!bloom-picayune.mit.edu!mintaka.lcs.mit.edu!yale!yale.edu!jvnc.net!darwin.sura.net!wupost!usc!rpi!usenet.coe.montana.edu!news.u.washington.edu!raven.alaska.edu!never-reply-to-path-lines From: ecl@mtgzy.att.com (Evelyn C Leeper +1 908 957 2070) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: RAFT by Stephen Baxter Message-ID: <1992Mar16.232040.23203@raven.alaska.edu> Date: 16 Mar 92 23:20:40 GMT Sender: wisner@raven.alaska.edu (Bill Wisner) Organization: University of Alaska Computer Network Lines: 71 Approved: wisner@ims.alaska.edu RAFT by Stephen Baxter A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1992 Evelyn C. Leeper Sunday, 10 AM, Boskone, talking to Mark's college roommate: "So what have you read that you liked lately?" "Oh, [some books and] I really liked RAFT by Stephen Baxter." Sunday, 11 AM, Boskone panel on nominating for the Hugos: "Yes, you over there?" "I recommend RAFT by Stephen Baxter." Sunday, 11 PM, logging into Usenet, Chuq Von Rospach talks about: "... a fine first novel like RAFT (by Stephen Baxter, ROC. If you're a hard SF junkie, grab it, especially if you liked RINGWORLD)" Thursday, 3 PM, chatting with a friend about books, he says: "You know what I really enjoyed recently? RAFT ...." "... by Stephen Baxter, right?" By this point, of course, I was convinced that RAFT had not only a perfectly constructed plot, marvelous multi-dimensional characters, and more ideas than Plato, Kant, and Olaf Stapledon combined, but also the cure for AIDS and the Mrs. Fields cookie recipe. It doesn't have the cookie recipe. Well, okay, it doesn't have the cure either, and it's not the greatest British novel since DAVID COPPERFIELD, but it is a very competently done hard science story a la Clarke and Niven (both of whom are quoted on the cover) and Clement and Heinlein (who aren't). The back blurb gives you the premise in its first sentence: "Imagine a universe whose force of gravity is one billion times stronger than today's." (Though clearly that last word should have been "ours," and is this an American billion or a British billion?) Somehow a spaceship from our universe crossed into this one and got stranded many generations ago, and at the time of the story we have three distinct societies: the Raft, the Miners, and the Boneys. The plot is not all that original. There is a menace. The three groups, each of which hates and/or distrusts the other two, will have to learn to cooperate. Forgotten knowledge will have to be relearned. Our hero, a seventeen-year-old boy, will have many adventures. Odd physical effects in this universe will amaze the reader, and so on. There are some intriguing ideas, but all have to do with weird physics or biology. As far as sociology, psychology, or philosophy go, no new ideas are put forth. The values are Heinleinian, as are the characters. In fact, I would probably describe RAFT as what we would have gotten had Hal Clement and Robert Heinlein ever collaborated. (The scenes with Rees carrying books of logarithm tables had me practically yelling, "STARMAN JONES!") It also suffers from a section seemingly heavily inspired by George Pal's WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE, which was at times painful to read. A derivation needs to vary from its source or it reads as a stock piece at best, or plagiarism at worst. In this case, it is the former, since the original is far to well known for anyone to think it would be unfamiliar to the readers. Is this damning with faint praise? I don't think so. Okay, so RAFT won't win the Pulitzer Prize this year. But I think it a not unworthy choice for a Hugo nomination. Even with its flaws--and it is, after all, a first novel--it is far better than most of what I've seen from the past year. %T Raft %A Stephen Baxter %C New York %D January 1992 %I ROC %O paperback, US$4.99 [1991] %G ISBN 0-451-45130-9 %P 303pp Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | att!mtgzy!ecl or ecl@mtgzy.att.com From /tmp/sf.17355 Fri Jun 4 00:02:36 1993 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written Path: lysator.liu.se!isy!liuida!sunic!uunet!wupost!csus.edu!netcom.com!dani From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig) Subject: Baxter: Timelike Infinity Message-ID: Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest) Date: Mon, 17 May 1993 01:45:39 GMT Lines: 39 Stephen Baxter's "Timelike Infinity" is a member in good standing of one of the older sf traditions -- the book-length physics lecture interrupted or connected by bits of story. A great deal of modern physical theory is waved before the reader (though most of it is just evoked, rather than explored in any detail), including wormholes, exotic matter, grand unification theory, and singularities -- naked and otherwise. The story, what there is of it, is just an excuse for the lectures. A group of refugees flee the conquered Earth of the future and travel through time to their past (still our future). There are theories which could allow them to change history without triggering any paradoxes, and we get to hear about them at some length. That's about it. The author manufactures some tension and some time pressure by having them inexplicably delay a year before acting on their plan, until the one they're fleeing can follow. And the author makes the pursuer act like an idiot, so the story won't end swiftly and anticlimactically. And the writing is poor. The author's earlier book, "Raft", was better. "Raft" took one small slice of physics (a universe with a much higher gravitational constant), explored it in depth, and actually told a story in the process. People who value hard sf for its science-content may appreciate "Timelike Infinity", but I don't recommend it for readers who are looking for good story-telling. ----- Dani Zweig dani@netcom.com If you're going to write, don't pretend to write down. It's going to be the best you can do, and it's the fact that it's the best you can do that kills you! -- Dorothy Parker From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Jun 12 13:38:50 1995 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!liuida!sunic!sunic.sunet.se!trane.uninett.no!nac.no!Norway.EU.net!EU.net!news.sprintlink.net!simtel!news.kei.com!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!uhog.mit.edu!news!nobody From: "Evelyn C Leeper" Subject: Review of ANTI-ICE by Stephen Baxter Message-ID: <9506081358.ZM1831@mtgpfs1.mt.att.com> Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.books.reviews,alt.history.what-if,soc.history.what-if Sender: news@media.mit.edu (USENET News System) Organization: Date: Thu, 8 Jun 1995 20:56:33 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu (Alan Wexelblat) Lines: 61 ANTI-ICE by Stephen Baxter Harper Prism, ISBN 0-06-105421-6, 1994 (1993c), 289pp, US$5.50 A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1995 Evelyn C. Leeper Three-quarters mechanical whiz-bang science fiction, one quarter political philosophy, this book is extremely reminiscent of the science fiction writings of Jules Verne (particularly 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA) and H. G. Wells (particularly FIRST MEN IN THE MOON). And I suppose it is fitting that it pays homage to both an Englishman and a Frenchman, because the political part is about the conflicts between the English and the French, or rather among the English, the French, and the Germans. Of course, although in the novel it is British foreign policy toward Europe in general vis-a-vis Britain's semi-permanent conflict with Prussia that comes under criticism, this is really an extremely thinly veiled description of American foreign policy towards Europe and our semi-permanent conflict with the Soviet Union. The descriptions of the use of, and attitudes toward, the super-weapons used in the book are clear references to our use of the atomic bomb in Japan, particularly the characters' discussion of whether the weapons were necessary or whether the enemy was about to surrender anyway. I have to say that all this, along with the discussion of anarchists such as Proudhon, was far more interesting to me (if a bit heavy-handed) than the loving detail in which the mechanics of the various mechanical and transportation devices were described. I suppose somewhere in here I should mention the basic premise: in 1720 a comet crashed into Antarctica. This comet was made of "anti-ice," which is stable when at the cold temperatures of that region, but releases terrific energy in a matter/anti-matter reaction when heated about freezing. So this is also an alternate history novel a la steampunk, with a bit of Treknobabble thrown in. There's something for everyone here. Anyway, the British figure out how to harness the energy in anti-ice and use it to produce amazing technical marvels (monorails over the Channel, rocketships, and so on). But it also has potential as a weapon and that is much of the underlying motivation of the story. As I said, to me the political ramifications and the alternate history aspect were more interesting than the technical details, but this novel works well on many levels and would certainly appeal to fans of "nuts-and-bolts" science fiction as well. %T Anti-Ice %A Stephen Baxter %C New York %D November 1994 %I Harper Prism %O paperback, US$5.50 [1993] %G ISBN 0-06-105421-6 %P 289pp -- Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | Evelyn.Leeper@att.com "I don't care what may be his politics. I don't care what may be his religion. I don't care what may be his color. I don't care who he is. So long as he is honest, he shall be served by me." --Theodore Roosevelt -- --Alan Wexelblat, Reality Hacker, Author, and Cyberspace Bard MIT Media Lab - Intelligent Agents Group finger(1) for PGP key Voice: 617-253-9833 Pager: 617-945-1842 wex@media.mit.edu http://wex.www.media.mit.edu/people/wex/ "When did similarity become a prerequisite for compassion?" From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Jun 15 10:33:20 1995 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!liuida!sunic!sunic.sunet.se!trane.uninett.no!due.unit.no!nac.no!Norway.EU.net!EU.net!news.sprintlink.net!simtel!news.kei.com!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!news!nobody From: Scott Drellishak Subject: REVIEW: _Flux_, by Stephen Baxter Message-ID: <199506131024.DAA23398@netcom22.netcom.com> Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Sender: news@media.mit.edu (USENET News System) Organization: Date: Tue, 13 Jun 1995 16:08:42 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu (Alan Wexelblat) Lines: 91 _Flux_, by Stephen Baxter reviewed by Scott Drellishak Rating: 7 (out of 10) High-concept summary: _The Integral Trees_ meets _Dragon's Egg_ OR _Raft_ meets _Timelike Infinity_ (!) Warning: Mild spoilers. For the last few years, Stephen Baxter has been writing hard SF of a kind that keeps reminding me of early Larry Niven. The settings are exotic and spectacular, the science is intriguing, and the characters are, well, not the primary focus of the story. His 1993 novel _Flux_ continues and improves upon these promising trends. The novel takes place in the mantle a neutron star, and follows a group of tiny, engineered human colonists on a journey through the physical and social structures of the star, and beyond. Like other novels of the "hard SF travelogue" sub-genre (such as Clement's _Mission of Gravity_ or Baxter's own _Raft_), _Flux_'s main character is really the exotic setting. The story provides an excuse to explore this alien world, and the human cultures which have developed in new directions to adapt to the surroundings. I found myself turning pages not so much to find out how the plot worked out in the end, but to discover more about Baxter's imaginary world. As is common in very-hard SF, Baxter does not waste much time on characterization or motivation. We receive few insights into the thoughts and feelings of Dura, the primary viewpoint character, and some of her choices, although necessary for the advancement of the plot, seemed arbitrary to me. Although Baxter has a talent for giving his readers a sense of the three-dimensional nature of life within the star, there are a couple of sub-plots, like the surfing contest, which seem irrelevant except to provide some neat action along the way. He also drops broad hints which he fails to pay off on later. For example, about a third of the way through the book, Dura, the leader of a band of primitive outcasts, has encountered a group of people who worship a Wheel-symbol, in defiance of orthodox religious authority. We are treated to the following line, which seems like ham-fisted foreshadowing: If these Wheel cultists ever found a leader, they could be formidable opponents for the mysterious Committee which ran the City. This thread of the story, however, never develops. I sense a faint whiff of "sequel" in the air. The other, more minor, problem I had with _Flux_ was the quantity of exposition in the story. Baxter has a tendency (which completely overwhelmed his earlier novel, _Timelike Infinity_) to insert physics lectures at odd moments in the story. Certainly, given the type of novel he was writing, the whiz-bang physics had to get explained somehow -- I found my suspenders of disbelief stretching uncomfortably when hunter-gatherer characters gave mini-lectures on quantized circulation in superfluids. Unlike _Timelike Infinity_, however, the story in _Flux_ doesn't get lost in the exposition. So, mild griping aside, if you're like me, and can accept a hearty helping of science and sense-of-wonder in place of fully fleshed-out characters, I recommend picking up a copy of _Flux_. I'll be keeping an eye out for Baxter's next book. (Aside: I suspect _Flux_ will be enjoyed more by those folks lucky enough to have read the other stories in Baxter's future history about the super-powerful Heechee (er, no, make that cheela (whoops, my mistake, that should read *Xeelee*)). Unfortunately, the shorter works in the series, many of which were written before _Raft_, _Timelike Infinity_, and _Flux_ and (I assume, not having access to them) provide a little more background for the series, are not available in book form in the US. A hearty "hint, hint" to SF publishers.) %A Baxter, Stephen %T Flux %I HarperCollins HarperPrism Science Fiction %C New York %D April 1995 %G 0-06-100837-0 %P 409 pp. %O paperback, US$5.50 -- / Scott Drellishak sfd@netcom.com \ | "He would see faces in movies, on TV, in magazines, and in books. | \ He thought that some of these faces might be right for him..." / -- --Alan Wexelblat, Reality Hacker, Author, and Cyberspace Bard MIT Media Lab - Intelligent Agents Group finger(1) for PGP key Voice: 617-253-9833 Pager: 617-945-1842 wex@media.mit.edu http://wex.www.media.mit.edu/people/wex/ "When did similarity become a prerequisite for compassion?" From ../rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Nov 14 14:32:16 1995 From rec.arts.sf.reviews Wed Oct 4 10:05:13 1995 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,rec.arts.books.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!liuida!sunic!sunic.sunet.se!news.uni-c.dk!dkuug!icl.icl.dk!sw0198!news.icl.fi!news.eunet.fi!news.funet.fi!news.kolumbus.fi!news.sprintlink.net!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!swrinde!sgigate.sgi.com!uhog.mit.edu!news!nobody From: "Evelyn C Leeper" Subject: THE TIME SHIPS by Stephen Baxter Message-ID: <9509281111.ZM9351@mtgppc04> Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Keywords: author= Evelyn C Leeper Sender: news@media.mit.edu (USENET News System) Organization: Date: Sat, 30 Sep 1995 08:03:57 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu (Alan Wexelblat) Lines: 86 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:842 rec.arts.books.reviews:894 THE TIME SHIPS by Stephen Baxter Voyager, ISBN 0-00-648012-8, 1995, 630pp, L4.99 A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1995 Evelyn C. Leeper This is the first authorized sequel to H. G. Wells's TIME MACHINE, though there have been many unauthorized sequels. (See my Intersection convention report for a summary of Baxter's talk on these.) The problem that British authors have is that if their books are published in Great Britain before they come out in the United States, they end up missing out on the Hugo nominations, since the voters are overwhelmingly North American. So listen up: NOMINATE THIS BOOK. (Actually, it used to be the kiss of death for me to recommend a book for a Hugo, but after I pushed for Michael Bishop's BRITTLE INNINGS and James Morrow's TOWING JEHOVAH and both made the ballot, I figure that maybe the voters are coming to realize my wisdom.) But back to THE TIME SHIPS. It begins where THE TIME MACHINE leaves off, right after the Time Traveller has told his story to his friends. They are skeptical, and he is feeling guilty about abandoning Weena to the fire and the Morlocks, so he packs a bag, hops into his time machine and heads back to 802,701 to rescue Weena, help the Eloi, and get proof of his travels. But things don't go as planned. I don't want to reveal too much. One of joys I had in reading this book was that, because it hadn't been released in the United States, I hadn't read much information about it. (I must have read enough in LOCUS to know I wanted to get it, but not much more than that.) But I can say that Baxter does a good job of writing in the style of Wells. After all, his story is still being told in the first person, by the Time Traveller, and so needs to retain the Victorian language that Wells used. Baxter does this, leavening it just a bit to avoid sounding obviously archaic. The result is something that readers familiar with Wells can "flow" into, but newer readers won't see as strange-sounding. Baxter said at Intersection that there were some things Wells didn't do that he (Baxter) wanted to, and he does that here. Other speakers at Intersection--held this 100th anniversary of the original novel--point out that Wells ignored time paradoxes, and Baxter takes a stab at some of those, as well as introduced some ideas about time travel formulated since Wells's time. Yet he doesn't do this in a "pasted-on" fashion, and it works. The reader might even start to think that Baxter is trying to cover too much and too wide a range, and certainly there have been authors who attempted similar and failed, but Baxter ties it all together so well that in the end he cannot be faulted in this regard. One minor complaint I had was the use of post-Wells historical figures (which at times *did* seem awkward). But Baxter's use was not, on the whole, gratuitous, and my objection may be just a side-effect of my seeing this done so often in alternate histories. I have studiously avoided telling you more than the bare minimum of the plot so that you can discover the story as it unfolds. Go read this book. (HarperPrism will be publishing this book in January 1996, which means it will probably be in the stores in December 1995. This is good news for United States fans, and also for Baxter, who may get the Hugo nomination he deserves.) %T The Time Ships %A Stephen Baxter %C London %D 1995 %I HarperCollins Voyager %O paperback, L4.99 %G ISBN 0-00-648012-8 %P 630pp %S Time Machine %V 2 -- Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | Evelyn.Leeper@att.com A good world needs knowledge, kindliness and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past, or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. -- Bertrand Russell From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Nov 30 17:04:19 1995 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!fizban.solace.mh.se!paladin.american.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!uwm.edu!lll-winken.llnl.gov!simtel!news.kei.com!uhog.mit.edu!news!nobody From: leeper@mtgbcs.mt.att.com Subject: Review: Time Ships Message-ID: <9511221414.ZM11724@mtdfcs03.att.com> Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Keywords: author= Mark R. Leeper Sender: news@media.mit.edu (USENET News System) Organization: Date: Thu, 23 Nov 1995 04:04:34 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu (Alan Wexelblat) Lines: 72 TIME SHIPS by Stephen Baxter Voyager, ISBN 0-00-648012-8, 1995, 630pp, L4.99 A book review by Mark R. Leeper Copyright 1995 Mark R. Leeper TIME SHIPS is a remarkable novel if not a great one. It reminds me of the reasons I first got interested in reading science fiction in the first place back when I discovered the early masters. There have been several sequels written to H. G. Wells' TIME MACHINE--Baxter even did a panel to this effect at the last World Science Fiction Convention--but this one is unique in multiple ways. It is the first one of this length, about five hundred pages. This is not a virtue in itself, I tend to think that science fiction novels are getting too long, but this one was enough fun that I never felt it dragged. It also is unique in that Baxter got this one authorized by the heirs of Wells. This probably was considerably easier for him than it might have been for other authors of sequels since the subject of this piece is not just the idea of time travel. That is a road that has been heavily traveled by other authors and Baxter was unlikely to add any unexpected turns. Instead the subject is at least in part H. G. Wells and his writing. In fact, if you are one of those people who have read only THE TIME MACHINE and THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (or perhaps not even that) of Wells' science fiction you will likely miss or at least not appreciate much of what is going on or why Baxter is doing what he is doing. The novel has more than a seasoning of other Wells science fiction writing and even some references to some very obscure works. An example of this is in the spoiler at the end of the review. Of almost equal interest to his references to Wells is the writing in the style of Wells. One tends to think of the writing of a century ago as being perhaps more flowery and less readable. It was not until I read Stephen Baxter's recreation of Wells' style that I remembered how comfortable and concrete was Wells' prose. Wells let the ideas and the plot create the mood and seems to put more effort into communication than into artistry. Still, in some cases Wells' writing is better than Baxter's. Where our 19th Century time traveler might not understand scientific theory that came along after his time (though usually before ours), he has his scientific Morlock along to explain things. (Yes, there is a likable Morlock in the story.) Baxter ends each chapter with a cliff-hanger; Wells did not. That and some contrived coincidence damages the book, but overall this is the most enjoyable piece of science fictionI have read this year, I would like to see it spark a revival of interest in Wells but even if it doesn't, it is a fun read. (Minor spoiler: I wanted to give an example of how Baxter uses Wells' minor works. In THE WORLD SET FREE, Wells wrote in 1914 about the effect on warfare of bombs powerful enough that one could destroy an entire city. He called them "atomic bombs" and the name that he coined was applied to an invention thirty years later. An atomic bomb does show up in the story, not surprisingly though Baxter can be much more accurate on the effects of the bomb. He could be more accurate, but I am disappointed that he was since surprisingly Wells' concept of an atomic bomb is in some ways more horrifying than what atomic bombs turned out to be.) %T The Time Ships %A Stephen Baxter %C London %D 1995 %I HarperCollins Voyager %O paperback, L4.99 %G ISBN 0-00-648012-8 %P 630pp %S Time Machine %V 2 Mark R. Leeper mark.leeper@att.com -- Mark R. Leeper , (908) 957-5619 Fax: (908) 957-5627 AT&T Bell Laboratories - MT 3F-434, 200 Laurel Ave, Middletown, NJ 07748 Homepage (AT&T only): http://www-gbcs.mt.att.com/~leeper/index.html From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu May 2 17:35:08 1996 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!solace!nntp.uio.no!news.cais.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.kei.com!uhog.mit.edu!news!news From: "Stevens R. Miller" Subject: Review: "Raft" by Stephen Baxter Message-ID: Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Keywords: author=Stevens R. Miller Lines: 172 Sender: wex@tinbergen.media.mit.edu (Graystreak) Organization: Law Office of Stevens R. Miller X-Newsreader: (ding) Gnus v0.94 Date: Tue, 30 Apr 1996 20:00:30 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Lines: 172 "Raft" by Stephen Baxter Review by Stevens R. Miller This review is in the public domain. Judge: The clerk will read the indictment. Clerk: Defendant is charged with world-building. Judge: Stephen Baxter, you stand accused of Science Fiction's second highest crime. How do you plead? Defendant: [sotto voce, to Counsel] Uh, is this a capital offense? Counsel: Nah, not anymore. For death you have to be convicted of cluelessness about the Internet. Defendant: [to Judge] Your Honor, I would like to plead "guilty," but with an excuse. You see, I- Judge: The defendant's plea is accepted. As sentence, you are to be trivialized for seven hundred years, or until people stop arguing over whether or not Heinlein was a libertarian, whichever comes first. On what has always seemed to me to be the strength of one book, "Mission of Gravity", author Hal Clement is known widely as the Master of the art of world-building. Loosely, this is the business of concocting a thought experiment to determine what would happen if certain far-ranging assumptions were made. For Clement, the assumption was that a monstrous planet would spin so fast as to acquire the shape of an oblate spheroid, with centrifugal force offsetting gravity's pull, the more so as one moved from pole to equator (whew!). From that one idea, Clement gave birth to a novel, and to a sub-genre. Of course, Clement has had followers. Lots of them. So many that, in the "been there, done that" style of SF fandom, contemporary world-builders have to do more than build worlds; they have to climb over the worlds that others have built before them. Those who overcome this obstacle earn places in our hearts. Larry Niven (who we'll talk about more, shortly), standing squarely on Clement's shoulders, built the Ringworld, which took the sub-genre to its most literal conclusion. And everybody loved "Ringworld," so world-building wasn't always a crime. But, roughly around the time "Ringworld" embraced us, the notion of world- building seemed to lose its inherent appeal. In the passing years, it has become more of an obstacle than an objective. As with other of SF's staples, the mere fact of devising a new physical system ceased to be enough to hold our interest. Fandom, perhaps as it ages, yearns less to say, "gee whiz," and more to whisper, "ah so." Hence it is that we now compare our senses of the poetry of Simmons, rather than the rocketry of Smith. Shoot, people are even reading Silverberg in public now. Years after "Ringworld," Niven tried again, with "The Integral Trees" -- and *again* with "The Smoke Ring" -- set in a stable breathable gas torus in orbit around a small star. Gravity in the torus was nil (Clement didn't build them all, you know), so the characters could float off and be lost. Some lived on huge trees that survived by colliding with airborne flora, fauna, and water. Humans, descended from a failed space mission, populated the torus and gave Niven the cast he needed to make a world into a story. It was a clever and thoughtful exercise. But, unlike "Ringworld," cynical fans wrote the book off. "Niven's just world-building" summed up a widespread view. It seemed as though the sub-genre was exhausted. But keep the gas torus in mind. Onto this tired stage strides, in 1991, Stephen Baxter, with "Raft." Actually, he'd appeared there in 1989, when a portion of "Raft" appeared in Interzone. "Raft" has Larry Niven all over it. To begin, read the back cover blurb: Imagine a universe whose force of gravity is one billion times stronger than today's. Human beings have detectable gravity fields. Stars are only a mile across and burn out within a year of their formation. Centuries before these events, a spaceship accidentally crossed into this universe and promptly collapsed upon itself. Somehow the crew survived. They emerged into a cloud of breathable atmosphere. Five centuries later their descendants are still struggling to survive... Ignoring the bad grammar, this seems to have rather a lot in common with Niven's ring of gas. Moreover, the cover art shows, floating free in the "cloud of breathable atmosphere," enormous *trees*. The characters use them as a means of transportation, living on either the raft made from the remnants of the first ship, a ring of shacks in orbit around a dead star, or a bizarre planetoid of dead bodies (yes, fleshy ones). Niven's characters sometimes fought off "mobies," giant air-whales. Baxter's, calling them just "whales," eat them. But, before you think Niven is some kind of victim here, go back and read what I said. Niven's name is *all over* this book. On the back, he's quoted as saying, "He writes like I used to" -- and what a backhanded compliment that is, eh? At the head of the acknowledgments, Baxter begins by thanking none other than Larry Niven for reading drafts. So, clearly, Niven approves of what Baxter's done. That leaves only the reader to have his say. "Raft" is about Rees, an awkward and unpopular teenaged boy with an above- average intelligence and an aptitude for science (well, some mainstays of SF will never die, I guess). He lives on the ring of shacks in orbit mere miles above the rusty iron core of a dead star. The shack-dwellers mine the star and trade its iron with the raft-dwellers, who have superior -- and indispensable -- technology. Everyone knows they live in "the Nebula." Rees is one of the few shack-dwellers who suspects the nebula is dying. He stows away on a flying tree, to the Raft. There, he becomes a science student in its caste-based social system. Tensions mount as the shack-dwellers and the raft-dwellers factionalize internally, with civil war looming. The story develops along familiar lines, but Rees has chances to experience most of the Nebula's wonders and that's what's fun about the book. And here's my review in a few words: the book is fun. It happens to be world-building in its most undisguised form, but so what? It has a weird connection to the built worlds of Larry Niven, but so what? The first hundred pages might be impossible to comprehend if it weren't for that dreadfully written blurb, but so what? I say so because the physics of the Nebula derive entirely from the "billion times stronger" force of gravity, which isn't directly explained for a long time, but should have been right up front. The book is *fun*, and Baxter should be proud of having built an interesting world. Which brings us to the charges against him. One of Baxter's more recent works is "Flux." This one has microscopic humans living on a neutron star. Leonard Rysdyk reviewed it for the July, 1995, issue of "The New York Review of Science Fiction." He, like other reviewers, did not ignore what a complex foundation Baxter had chosen for himself. But he, like other reviewers, could only bring himself to offer qualified praise. "As a premise and as an exercise in 'world-building'," Rysdyk wrote, "Flux is a mind- blower." Note the restriction: "as an exercise in 'world-building.'" Just when and why did this form of literary exertion become a restricted class of explosive? Baxter himself seems reluctant to accept passage of Niven's (or Clement's) crown. In the Fall, 1995, issue of the SFFWA "Bulletin," he wrote defensively about, "those of my stories which might be described as 'world-building,' in the Hal Clement tradition." Talking mostly about perceived similarity to James Blish's "Surface Tension," Baxter tries hard to say he isn't following anyone's lead. "Parallels with 'Surface Tension' are, I guess, easy to draw." Later: "I would argue that [my] works have converged on 'Surface Tension,' rather than derived from it in any direct way." And after that: "a mark of success is a world-building story being reviewed without reference to the nature of the physical scenario itself." In other words, being reviewed without being detected as a world-building story. I don't know if I agree, but it's a sign of the times that Baxter thinks so. So you have a difficult decision to make, before you start to hunt for a copy of "Raft." If you loved Clement's and Niven's worlds, and can stand to be sent to Triveria if seen reading yet-another-world-building story, you should commence hunting at dawn. If, on the other hand, exploring an unknown universe just one more time seems too dreary, you can sleep late, though I'll ask you why you even read science fiction, after you wake up. I found "Raft" fascinating and compelling, both in and out of the context of a world-building story. Three stars out of four. %A Baxter, Stephen %D 1991 %G ISBN 0-451-45130-9 %I Penguin Books %T Raft Stevens R. Miller http://www.interport.net/~lex/ From rec.arts.sf.reviews Wed May 22 17:45:37 1996 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!solace!nntp.uio.no!news.cais.net!bofh.dot!world1.bawave.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!news!news From: silverag@ix.netcom.com (Steven H Silver) Subject: Review of Stephen Baxter's The Time Ships Message-ID: Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Keywords: author=Steven H Silver Lines: 64 Sender: wex@tinbergen.media.mit.edu (Graystreak) Organization: Netcom X-Newsreader: (ding) Gnus v0.94 Date: Tue, 21 May 1996 20:46:54 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Lines: 64 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.written:153307 rec.arts.sf.reviews:955 THE TIME SHIPS by Stephen Baxter Copyright 1996 Steven H Silver A few years ago, the term "Steampunk" began to appear as a means of denoting science fiction in which the Victorians managed to develop computers. By expanding its use, steampunk could be taken to mean any Victorian tale which included aspects of technology which were not readily available to the Victorians. A few years ago, Stephen Baxter wrote his paean to Jules Verne when he published _Anti-Ice_, in which a Vernesian character manages to build a spaceship in the late nineteenth century. Baxter's new book pays tribute to the other great nineteenth-century SF author, H.G. Wells. _The Time Ships_ is a direct sequel to Wells's _The Time Machine_ (1895). Before attacking the Baxter work, I decided to re-read the Wells original. Upon beginning Baxter's sequel, I discovered that Baxter had managed to faithfully capture Wells's style. Moreover, while usually this type of pastiche fails if carried on too long, Baxter's prose seems to flow naturally, as if he were writing in the current manner rather than a style which has been out of date for a century. While Baxter's prose is reminiscent of Wells', many of the social ideas which Baxter espouses would not have sat easily, I suspect, with Wells. In order to get around this, Baxter's author is the original time traveler (who Wells never named). One of his audience when he related his earlier adventure was a young journalist, who turns out to be H.G. Wells, although Baxter refrains from giving his name. This allows Baxter an increased versimilitude when the reader sees what "really happened" as opposed to the slant which the author of the previous work placed on the time traveler's adventures. Wells's book was under one hundred pages. Baxter's covers nearly six times that length. Nevertheless, he manages to maintain the pace of the original. Wells' time traveler made a single trip through time, beginning in 1894, journeying progressively into the future until he reached the end of the universe returning to 1894 and then leaving on another journey into the future. Baxter takes over at this point, introducing the first anachronism based on the time traveler's own motions. The Eloi and Morlocks he encountered on his first visit do not exist as such when he returns to the future and he must come to terms with a world in which his expectations were not met. As the time traveler continues through time, eventually gaining a Morlock scientist as a companion, the universe continues to splinter until the traveler seems completely lost from his own England. While Wells's traveler visited the end of the universe, Baxter's traveler seems intent on seeing the beginning of the universe. His leaps through time eventually land him in a prehistoric England in which a time war is being fought between twentieth-century Germans and British. Baxter's work builds admirably on _The Time Machine_ and, while he doesn't always share the political and social views which suffused Wells's original, he manages to interject his own ideas without breaking entirely from the world which Wells created a century ago. %E Stephen Baxter %T The Time Ships %I HarperPrism %C New York, NY %D January 1995 %G 0-06-105648-0 %O PB $5.99 %P 520 Steven H Silver Bibliographies on Jews in SF, Harry Turtledove, SF set in Chicago http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4208/sfbiblio.html HOMEPAGE: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4208/index.html Archived at: www.geocities.com/Athens/4208/review.html From /home/matoh/tmp/sf-rev Fri Aug 22 16:44:15 1997 From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Aug 18 15:23:22 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!news-stkh.gsl.net!news.gsl.net!sn.no!Norway.EU.net!EU.net!howland.erols.net!netnews.com!eecs-usenet-02.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!news!wex From: agapow@latcs1.cs.latrobe.edu.au (p-m agapow) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: "Flux" by Stephen Baxter Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 22 Jul 1997 17:20:27 GMT Organization: Calvin Coolidge Home for Dead Biologists Lines: 61 Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:1447 "Flux" by Stephen Baxter A Postview, copyright p-m agapow 1997 A tribe of micron-high humanoids (the "human beings") live in the mantle of a neutron star, their bodies constructed from dense conglomerates of atoms. A tribe of nomadic hunters is decimated by a brief but savage magnetic storm. Thrust into a position of leadership, Dura must lead her tribe to safety, a journey which leads her in conflict with the mysterious alien Xeelee and the ur-Humans who created her race. After the first few pages of "Flux," an uneasy sense of deja vu set in, one that some readers may have experienced while reading the above precis. You'd be right; this high concept SF novel ("Get this - a civilisation of tiny people living on a neutron star! Whadyathink?) has been done before by Robert Forward. But this is not a case of plagiarism, just the same idea rendered by two similarly minded authors. While Baxter does not share Forward's complete ineptitude with characterisation, there is a flatness to cast of "Flux." The setting is the star and the most anyone else can hope for a few speaking lines and a chance to appear in the sequel. Admittedly there is an improvement on his earlier "Raft," and Baxter's characters do not spout science textbooks. Instead we get an almost laidback exploration of a rather cute setting. The "human beings" actually live _in_ the star, in the outer layers between the crushing Quantum Sea and the ethereal Crust. Muscles powered by a pneumatic system, they chase the local wildlife along magnetic lines, swimming through the neutronic fluid. Farms where proton-rich plants are harvested hang from the roof of the Crust. A city hovering at one pole of the star sends down diving bells to mine the stellar core. True, as in "Raft" some of the details sit uneasily. The ecology of the star seems to consist of three different animals and one plant, for example. The plot is also a little forced, especially when it tries to put the minuscule human beings in a position of significance as regards the omnipotent Xeelee. (Xeelee, humans. Xeelee, humans. Phone book, cockroach. Splat. Xeelee, no humans.) A lot is made up for, I think, by Baxter's fairly direct writing style. Although the plot is almost an afterthought, the reader will speed through this book wanting to know what happens next. For those who have read Baxter before, "Flux" is neither as geeky and flat as "Raft," nor as sprightly as the admittedly extended and stylised "The Time Ships." Fans of Greg Bear, Greg Egan or any of the "gosh, it's so big" school of hard SF writers will find this an entertaining read. As an aside, "Flux" appears to be a sequel of sorts to "Ring," although this is noted nowhere on the book. However, despite some confusion in the early stages of the novel it can stand alone. [**/ok] and "Scientific American" on the Sid and Nancy scale. %A Stephen Baxter %T Flux %I HarperCollins %C London %D 1994 %G ISBN 0-00-647620-1 %P 366pp %O paperback, Aus$14.95 paul-michael agapow (agapow@latcs1.oz.au), La Trobe Uni, Infocalypse "There is no adventure, there is no romance, there is only trouble and desire." [archived at http://www.cs.latrobe.edu.au/~agapow/Postviews/] From rec.arts.sf.reviews Wed Jul 8 15:05:57 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!fu-berlin.de!news.idt.net!netnews.com!ai-lab!news.media.mit.edu!not-for-mail From: pj@willowsoft.compulink.co.uk (Paul S Jenkins) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Stephen Baxter's _Flux_ Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 07 Jul 1998 11:03:47 -0400 Organization: CIX - Compulink Information eXchange Lines: 56 Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: Reply-To: pj@willowsoft.compulink.co.uk NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:1980 _Flux_ by Stephen Baxter Review Copyright 1998 Paul S. Jenkins You know something's not normal as soon as you start the first chapter of this strange novel. The people in it are human -- it says so, right there on the page -- but you soon realize they're not the same kind of humans you meet on late twentieth century Earth. They seem to have the same feelings, desires, hopes and fears -- the same _character_ -- as present-day people, but they inhabit a world physically far different from our own. Baxter's achievement in _Flux_ is to have created a believable world out of a single extrapolated idea so bizarre that a lesser or, in SF terms 'softer,' novelist would have balked at: his characters inhabit the mantle of a star. They are genetically re-engineered, microscopic humans, designed to suit their almost unimaginable environment. It is to Baxter's credit that we do imagine it, even though the novel does, at times, have the feel of a medieval fantasy. Baxter's aliens, the Xeelee, also feature in the background of this story. The physics and biology appear to be well worked out from the initial science-fictional extrapolation, and readers who like their SF hard will have fun analyzing Baxter's world-building. His own essay on this -- with particular reference to _Flux_ -- is available at http://www.sfwa.org/bulletin/articles/baxter.htm (warning: the essay contains mild spoilers). The story is mainly that of Dura, a young woman who scrapes a living in the 'upflux' -- a kind of scavenging area away from civilization, crossed by lines of concentrated magnetism. One of the periodic 'glitches' in the 'magfield' leaves her homeless, and she and the few other survivors of the cataclysm have to find a way to live. A group of them decide to head for Parz City -- a place they've heard about but never visited. Dura and her younger brother have adventures on the way, as well as at the city itself -- an enormous wooden structure suspended at the pole of the star. We also see something of the life of the city-dwellers, and learn of the city's ultimate purpose. Baxter's writing style is robust but smooth, not unlike a less-honed version of Arthur C. Clarke, and is thus eminently readable. Although _Flux_ is a story of characters in a unique but consistently imagined world, the events that occur are derived directly from that strange world's peculiarities. This is hard SF of a rare kind. %A Baxter, Stephen %T Flux %I HarperCollins %C London %D 1994 %G ISBN 0 00 647620 1 %P 366 pp. %O paperback, GBP 4.99 Paul S. Jenkins Portsmouth UK From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue May 18 22:29:00 1999 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!newnews.hk-r.se!news-peer-europe.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!howland.erols.net!newshub.northeast.verio.net!logbridge.uoregon.edu!arclight.uoregon.edu!gatech!18.181.0.27.MISMATCH!sipb-server-1.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!usenet From: pj@willowsoft.compulink.co.uk (Paul S. Jenkins) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Baxter's _Voyage_ Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 18 May 1999 15:22:33 -0400 Organization: CIX - Compulink Information eXchange Lines: 71 Sender: wex@tinbergen.media.mit.edu Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: Reply-To: pj@willowsoft.compulink.co.uk NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu To: rec-arts-sf-reviews@moderators.uu.net X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2303 _ Voyage _ by Stephen Baxter Review Copyright (c) 1999 Paul S. Jenkins _Voyage_ is the story of a mission that never was. In this long and meticulously researched novel Baxter speculates that if John F. Kennedy had survived the assassination attempt in Dallas, he might have provided the political impetus to allow NASA to extend beyond the Moon-landings and initiate a manned mission to Mars. _Voyage_ is a very detailed, convincing portrayal of realistic characters with genuine human traits, striving towards a breathtaking technological and political goal. It's written like 'faction' -- a dramatic narrative of known facts -- except, this is fiction. Baxter himself applied to NASA to be an astronaut, went through various tests, and was eventually turned down. Writing this novel must have been the next best thing. Just occasionally the style displays a klunkiness that's possibly the result of hasty editing, but generally it's a smooth and engrossing read, despite the abundance of hard SF detail. The story of NASA's manned trip to Mars is told in converging threads: the outward flight itself, and the lead-up to the launch. It's cleverly done, so that although we know from the first few pages that Baxter's protagonist -- the American geologist Natalie York -- is going to Mars, we don't know exactly how. The narrative thread culminating in the launch gradually reveals her path into history. Watching the first three episodes of Tom Hanks' _From the Earth to the Moon_, being serialized now on the UK's Channel Four TV, I was struck by the number of events depicted in its presumably factual account of the Apollo programme, that have almost exact parallels in Baxter's fictional account of the Mars mission. Hanks' TV series is partly based on Andrew Chaikin's book _A Man on the Moon_ (Penguin 1995), which it seems likely Baxter has read, either incidentally or as specific research for _Voyage_. I haven't read Chaikin's book, nor do I know how much of it is in Hanks' TV series, but several of the telling events and conversations -- for example concerning the crew's opinion of the spacecraft ("a lemon"), the meeting to announce the crew assignments ("the men who are going to Mars/the Moon are in this room, looking at me now"), or the enforced retirement of the head of the engineering company that made the spacecraft -- all these appear in both Hanks' story of Apollo and Baxter's story of the Mars mission. Such parallels would be legitimate, it seems to me, if the Mars mission was an alternative to Apollo, but it is supposed to be subsequent to it, and so the parallels appear as a case of history repeating itself. I draw no conclusions from this, but it did make me wonder. (_Voyage_ has recently been serialized on BBC Radio Four, in five half-hour episodes. For me, reading the book in parallel with the radio-drama enhanced both.) On the whole I was impressed by _Voyage_. It reads like the dramatization of real events, which means that as fiction it succeeds. One proviso, however: Stephen Baxter is British, and he has written an American book. As a British reader I found it totally convincing; an American might take a different view. %A Baxter, Stephen %T Voyage %I HarperCollins Voyager %C London %D 1997 (copyright 1996) %G ISBN 0 00 648037 3 %P 591 pp. %O paperback GBP 6.99 Paul S. Jenkins | More reviews at: Portsmouth UK | http://www.cix.co.uk/~willowsoft/revup/ From rec.arts.sf.reviews Sun Sep 3 15:25:05 2000 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!news-peer-europe.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!nycmny1-snh1.gtei.net!news.gtei.net!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!dreaderd!not-for-mail Sender: wex@deepspace.media.mit.edu From: alex@arcfan.demon.co.uk (Alex McLintock) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: Review: "Space" by Stephen Baxter Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Date: 28 Aug 2000 17:36:17 -0400 Message-ID: Organization: Software Agents Group X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 20.4 Lines: 56 NNTP-Posting-Host: deepspace.media.mit.edu X-Trace: dreaderd 967498579 9429 18.85.23.65 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2785 Space, Stephen Baxter Review Copyright 2000 Alex McLintock Permission is granted for usenet distribution and any archive of the newsgroup rec.arts.sf.review. For any other use contact the reviewer. Space is the second novel in the Manifold series - "Time" being the first one but you don't need to read one before the other. Space has some of the same characters as Time but it is a different story. The two universes are not the same. In Time we have a story about people communicating through time, and also doing a bit of time-exploration as well. Space, on the other hand, deals with the human race exploring its near universe and meeting extra terrestrials in the process. One of the things that struck me during the first parts of the novel was that "Time" actually covered a large distance in space, and "Space" covered quite a long time. But what the heck. Reid Malenfant is a astronaut and failed businessman. (Note the difference with Time - in which he is a very successful businessman). Reid is contacted by Nemoto, a reclusive Japanese scientist on the moon who is worried about the Fermi Paradox. To paraphrase: If Alien life is possible in the galaxy why isn't the evidence of it all around us. First contact: They are in the solar system! They are named Gaijin - the Japanese word for foreigner. Reid Malenfant gets to investigate and is one of the first humans to travel through the blue ring circle. It is pictured on the front cover - I'm not spoiling anything if I give away that they are "stargate" like teleportation devices. The drawback is that they only take you at lightspeed. The book tells the story of alot of people spread throughout the next twenty years, hundred years, thousand years. We meet a few more alien races, and the human race changes quite a bit. The characters are quite good but we never get to stick with any of them for long except for the blue ring travellers who don't age while they are travelling between the stars. They come back to Earth decades or more after they left and provide a counterpoint to the societies they find. This book gives a tremendous feeling of sensa-wonda with massive engineering projects, and stories spanning several planets and centuries. I think I preferred this book to Time. Time was ultimately a depressing novel whereas Space was much more positive. Well recommended. %A Stephen Baxter %T Space %G 0-00-225771-8 %I Harper Collins, Voyager Books %C London %O hardback, UKP 16.99 Alex McLintock use http://www.sflink.net/ to advertise your SF website From rec.arts.sf.reviews Sun Sep 3 15:25:51 2000 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.ida.liu.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!news.net.uni-c.dk!howland.erols.net!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!dreaderd!not-for-mail Sender: wex@deepspace.media.mit.edu From: alex@arcfan.demon.co.uk (Alex McLintock) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Time by Stephen Baxter Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Organization: none Date: 28 Aug 2000 17:40:08 -0400 Message-ID: X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 20.4 Lines: 63 NNTP-Posting-Host: deepspace.media.mit.edu X-Trace: dreaderd 967498809 9429 18.85.23.65 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2783 Time, Stephen Baxter Review Copyright 2000 Alex McLintock Permission is granted for usenet distribution and any archive of the newsgroup rec.arts.sf.review. For any other use contact the reviewer. Stephen Baxter has been quite famous for a while as the man who is maintaining the British hard sf tradition of Arthur C. Clarke, and Fred Hoyle. He deserved this reputation in two main ways: 1. He writes about space, physics, and space travel in a believable way 2. He was rubbish at characterisation. I am pleased to say that Time will totally change people's opinion of his abilities with the latter. Time is mostly set in the near future. We start off with an entrepreneur with space technology going against NASA and winning. Great. I know several serious space enthusists who have been bemoaning NASA's shortcomings for years so I dont have to use my imagination much there. Reid Malenfant (Bad Boy? for goodness sake) would be the hero of this book if it didn't jump around from character to character so much. He is the succesful business man, difficult to get on with because he has such a forceful personality. Yeah, sure he is using shuttle engines to incinerate hazardous waste. I believe him, sure I do. Michael is not so lucky. OK so he may be one of the blue children heralding the new species of man after Homo Sapiens, but hell, he starts life in proverty, and only escapes to a prison masquerading as a school. Frying pans and fires. Maura is our friendly politician. Remember what I said earlier about good characterisation? Well, she was the exception because I failed to believe in her actions. Cornelius is a burnt out mathematician. He has a message: the world is going to end in 200 years. Bummer. So do what he wants or else. Emma Stoney is the ex wife of Reid Malenfant. What a flake! She still works for Reid's company. She is something like a superpowered publicity agent but every other chapter she violently disagrees with Reid on some moral grounds. I spent half the book wondering why she doesn't just kick him and live her own life. There are many more characters who fit well into the story. We have the entire Tybee family playing different parts in the story: soldier, home maker and carer, super-intelligent child. You can measure the success of this story by the number of different characters you are interested in. The story starts off as a normal space adventure but gradually progresses into something a lot more metaphysical and unusual. Sometimes this irritates me when handled clumsily (Michael Marshall Smith's Only Forward comes to mind) but this book gradually leads you along. Hopefully you won't be inclined to start criticising his subatomic particle physics and you will get a blast out of this tale. %A Stephen Baxter %T Time %G 0-00-651182-1 %I Harper Collins, Voyager Books %C London %O paperback, UKP 6.99 Alex McLintock use http://www.sflink.net/ to advertise your SF website