Manifold
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Manifold
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Manifold: Time
by
Stephen Baxter
Leave it to the consistently clever Stephen Baxter to pull the old bait and switch. A story that begins as a hoary asteroid-mining tale, set in 2010 against the by-now familiar spiel of fulfilling humanity's pan-galactic Manifest Destiny, instead takes a bold, delightful ascent into a trajectory far more ambitious. To ensure its survival, humankind need not merely master the galaxy but also the flow of time itself. Manifold: Time's would-be asteroid-miner-in-chief is bootstrap space entrepreneur Reid Malenfant, a media-savvy firebrand who's showed those crotchety NASA folks what's what with his ready-to-fly Big Dumb Booster, piloted by a genetically enhanced super-squid. But Malenfant's near-term plans to exploit the asteroids get diverted when he crosses paths with creepy mathematician and eschatologist Cornelius Taine. Applying Bayes's theorem and a series of other statistical do-si-dos, Taine convinces Malenfant that an inescapable extinction event--the "Carter catastrophe"--is nigh, and that even working to colonize the galaxy might not be enough to save humanity. The answer: build a Feynman "radio" to listen to the future and, by detecting coded quantum waves traveling back through time, divine the fate of human "downstreamers" and find the key to their survival. Space flight, time travel, and even squid negotiations ensue, while Earth is gripped in Last Days madness. Once again, the award-spangled Baxter gives us sci-fi at its beard-stroking best, with an imaginative, audacious plot line that's firmly grounded in good science, reminiscent of Baxter's own excellent Vacuum Diagrams. |
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Manifold: Space
by
Stephen Baxter
Former NASA astronaut Reid Malenfant returns to lead the vanguard for humanity's future in space in this deeply thought-provoking sequel to Manifold: Time. In the year 2020, America's space program has disintegrated, and the Japanese have colonized the moon. A young Japanese lunar scientist invites Malenfant to the moon for a consultation over mysterious sources of infrared she's discovered in the asteroid belt. A couple of enterprising engineers send the first probe to the asteroids to find out just what's there, only to have their probe swallowed up by a huge, artificial ship. Years later Malenfant mounts his own expedition to the solar focus of Alpha Centauri, where he finds a teleport gateway leading to a race of self-duplicating robots that humans eventually call the Gaijin. Centuries pass before Malenfant begins to understand the realities that underlie the existence of all life in the universe. Philip K. Dick Award-winner Baxter packs his gigantic odyssey with innovative hypotheses, fascinating explanations of complex scientific phenomena and gorgeous descriptions of spaceships. That the novel covers far more territory, both in time and distance, than any one person could ever absorb is both a strength and a weakness; suspense is difficult to maintain over the course of centuries. While a large cast of characters helps generate this unwieldy scenario, only their scientific motivations are explored. Science itself is very clearly the star player on this stage. Nonetheless, this focus allows for an exceptionally intricate and original view of the future that both scientists and lay enthusiasts will enjoy. |
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Manifold: Origin
by
Stephen Baxter
Award-winning author Stephen Baxter turns to the origin of species in this final novel of the Manifold trilogy. Reid Malenfant and Emma Stoney are flying over Africa when a new moon appears in the sky--and Emma disappears. She finds herself on the Red Moon with people resembling human evolutionary ancestors, with whom she must learn to live in order to survive. On Earth, Malenfant teams with Japanese scientist Nemoto on a desperate rescue mission that leads to greater questions about the origin of the alien moon, and ultimately of humankind. Because the Manifold novels take place in alternate universes, Origin works well as a stand-alone read. Baxter effectively explores how modern humans and their ancestors might be thoroughly alien to one another, but the book is more focused on thoughtful scientific speculation than in-depth characterization. However, readers who are swept away by novels of cosmic scope and compelling imagination will find Big Idea science fiction at its best. |
