Subject: Review: Time by Stephen Baxter

From: [email-masked] (Alex McLintock)
Date: 28 Aug 2000 17:40:08 -0400

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