Subject: Review: "Space" by Stephen Baxter

From: [email-masked] (Alex McLintock)
Date: 28 Aug 2000 17:36:17 -0400

Space, Stephen Baxter
	Review Copyright 2000 Alex McLintock

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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
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