Subject: Review: Time Ships

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 23 Nov 1995 04:04:34 GMT

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
					[email-masked]
-- 
Mark R. Leeper <[email-masked]>, (908) 957-5619  Fax: (908) 957-5627
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