Status
Available
Call number
Series
Collection
Publication
Del Rey (2000), Edition: Reprint, Mass Market Paperback, 480 pages
Description
"Reading Manifold: Time is like sending your mind to the gym for a brisk workout. If you don't feel both exhausted and exhilirated when you're done, you haven't been working hard enough."--The New York Times Book Review The year is 2010. More than a century of ecological damage, industrial and technological expansion, and unchecked population growth has left the Earth on the brink of devastation. As the world's governments turn inward, one man dares to envision a bolder, brighter future. That man, Reid Malenfant, has a very different solution to the problems plaguing the planet: the exploration and colonization of space. Now Malenfant gambles the very existence of time on a single desperate throw of the dice. Battling national sabotage and international outcry, as apocalyptic riots sweep the globe, he builds a spacecraft and launches it into deep space. The odds are a trillion to one against him. Or are they? "A staggering novel! If you ever thought you understood time, you'll be quickly disillusioned when you read Manifold: Time."--Sir Arthur C. Clarke… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member ChrisRiesbeck
A really solid "broad spectrum" hard SF novel. It begins much like an updated Heinlein "Man who sold the moon" story, as Elon Musk-like Reid Malenfant (quite the surname) launches his own program to return to space, after being rejected by a moribund NASA (much disparaged here). But then Baxter
Despite that, this is a book that promises big things, science fictionally, and delivers. Highly recommended for hard SF fans.
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mixes in large doses of Greg Egan, first on the biology side as Malenfant's astronauts are squids with genetically engineered brains, who begin to evolve rapidly once free of Earth. A message from the future redirects the mission and from there thing move into Stapledon territory, as we get not one, but two logarithmically scaled tours, in time and in space. Egan returns as the very nature of the physical universe is brought into play. As with Egan, things become pretty hard to follow, but for the most part, Baxter is far more successful at keeping the narrative flow moving and tracking the arcs for a handful of believable if not complex characters. There are the usual time loop paradoxes. The one part that did not work for me at all was the way in Baxter portrayed the world's responses to several events predicting humanity's ultimate outcome. I've never understood why SF authors are so fond of the scenes where the planet's population responds in some unified way to some semi-mystical discovery or message from beyond. When has that ever happened?Despite that, this is a book that promises big things, science fictionally, and delivers. Highly recommended for hard SF fans.
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LibraryThing member john257hopper
Wasn't very keen on this one. The initial premise, of future human beings sending a message back to the present day to warn them of catastrophe, is interesting, if hardly original. But the novel was stuffed full of technical stuff which slowed down reading and was saddled with an unlikeable central
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male character. Developments, technological and plotwise, seemed to happen with unrealistic rapidity. Not a satisfying experience for me and I was quite relieved to finish it. Show Less
LibraryThing member Black_samvara
Fun and dripping with particle physics and attempts to comprehend the universe. Reid Malenfant and his company Bootstrap set forth to launch humanity into space and simultaneously make a massive profit by mining asteroids. He is distracted along the way by a creepy mathematician and eschatologist
Malenfant will also have to negotiate with a genetically enhanced super-squid, NASA and his ex-wife if he is to succeed in the face of all odds. No, this is not a comedy.
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called Cornelius Taine who can 'prove' that humanity will suffer inescapable extinction within 200 years. The battle is on; to develop space flight; build a device capable of detecting messages from the future and save the future.Malenfant will also have to negotiate with a genetically enhanced super-squid, NASA and his ex-wife if he is to succeed in the face of all odds. No, this is not a comedy.
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LibraryThing member tjsjohanna
This series is so interesting because Baxter is thinking on such a grand scale. He's not just tweaking a little bit - he's conceiving of huge alternative realities. I liked the challenge of thought that these books put out there.
LibraryThing member Karlstar
This was a bit surprising and quite good. It starts out with a Burt Rutan-ish entrepreneur determined to build and launch a space ship, despite the best efforts of the government. He succeeds, and then things get even stranger.
LibraryThing member KAzevedo
The three books in the Manifold Trilogy were a mind stretching journey. While the characters are somewhat one-dimensional, they keep you grounded enough to enjoy the science which is presented on an immense scale. Why isn't there any evidence of other sentient life in the universe? What is the
Stimulating, entertaining, and ultimately satisfying.
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purpose of intelligent life at the end of billions of years of evolution. What would the "old ones" do to change things "downstream", to make life more meaningful? Baxter's characters search for the answers to these questions in unique and fascinating ways.Stimulating, entertaining, and ultimately satisfying.
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LibraryThing member closedmouth
(Reviewed November 10, 2009)
Started poorly, but slowly developed into something really compelling and thought-provoking. The near-future sci-fi stuff is not great, with some pretty laughable predictions, but if you ignore that, you will enjoy this a lot.
Started poorly, but slowly developed into something really compelling and thought-provoking. The near-future sci-fi stuff is not great, with some pretty laughable predictions, but if you ignore that, you will enjoy this a lot.
LibraryThing member djryan
What started off as a pretty dull, sub-Crichton, Space Cowboy type story turned into something much more compelling half way through. You need to persist past the near future 2010 and initially clunky technobabble but then pay-off is worth it; the same mind-bending stuff that Bear and Simmons
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regularly trade in. Show Less
LibraryThing member chrisbee
My first book by Stephen Baxter. Could be formulaic; not sure. Need to read the others I bought.
Had trouble with it - just too much happening, too many enormous ideas (made them almost trivial), and some bad clashes with reality, eg hole in a spacesuit which doesn't kill people...
Had trouble with it - just too much happening, too many enormous ideas (made them almost trivial), and some bad clashes with reality, eg hole in a spacesuit which doesn't kill people...
LibraryThing member MarysGirl
From the flyleaf: "The year is 2010. More than a century of ecological damage, industrial and technological expansion and unchecked population growth has left the Earth on the brink of devastation. But as the world's governments turn inward, one man dares to gable on a bolder, brighter future. That
A got this hardback copy several years ago from a generous Freecycler and it sat on my TBR shelf ever since. It's been a while since I've read much SF, but finally got around to reading this one. I very much appreciated the sweeping scope and tremendous amount of science Baster shoehorned into this massive book, but the actual story didn't grab me. The way people reacted to a looming crisis was relentlessly pessimistic and depressing. It might (or not) be an accurate prediction, but it was tough emotional slogging. He pulls off a moderately optimistic ending (I think!)
A writerly trick he uses to good effect: whenever there is heavy science, he has a character who doesn't understand, so the "speaker" has to simplify and analogize. Frequently the stand-in for the reader still doesn't understand, so we don't feel too stupid. I felt the character's name Malenfant ("bad child" in French) was a bit over the top, but I've seen worse. I enjoyed this throwback to my old reading, but I don't think I'll pick up the sequels.
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man--Reid Malenfant--has a very different solution to the problems plaguing the planet: the explorations an colonization of space."A got this hardback copy several years ago from a generous Freecycler and it sat on my TBR shelf ever since. It's been a while since I've read much SF, but finally got around to reading this one. I very much appreciated the sweeping scope and tremendous amount of science Baster shoehorned into this massive book, but the actual story didn't grab me. The way people reacted to a looming crisis was relentlessly pessimistic and depressing. It might (or not) be an accurate prediction, but it was tough emotional slogging. He pulls off a moderately optimistic ending (I think!)
A writerly trick he uses to good effect: whenever there is heavy science, he has a character who doesn't understand, so the "speaker" has to simplify and analogize. Frequently the stand-in for the reader still doesn't understand, so we don't feel too stupid. I felt the character's name Malenfant ("bad child" in French) was a bit over the top, but I've seen worse. I enjoyed this throwback to my old reading, but I don't think I'll pick up the sequels.
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LibraryThing member jasonlf
Highly evolved squid fly to an asteroid with a portal to other universes. Overall brilliant, but a little loose around the edges -- especially the last fifty or so pages traveling through the multiverse.
LibraryThing member RobertDay
"The last great sf novel of the Millennium" said the publisher's blurb, and indeed I was surprised to see that this had been written as long ago as 1999. Which makes it all the more interesting to see how things actually turned out, seeing as the novel is set in the future year of 2010. I know that
So what we have here is a maverick wannabe astronaut setting up a space transportation company using discarded Shuttle components after that programme is cancelled. He is planning to establish an asteroid mining operation, with genetically-enhanced squid running the show because they are smaller and easier to transport (and expendable). He is approached by a mysterious stranger who claims to have a forecast of planetary doom which would demands a change of destination...
Meanwhile, children all over the world are suddenly demonstrating massive leaps of scientific achievement out of nowhere.
The depiction of the near-future space enterprise seems very plausible, even with the benefit of hindsight. This, after all, is what Baxter excels in. His characters are a little less well drawn, as they tend to be vehicles to advance the plot - after all, this is a typical big sf "novel of ideas". However, some of the minor characters come out rather better: a female US Congresswoman who investigates the hero's business activities, for instance, or the geek expert in charge of the squid programme spring to mind. The real oddity here is Cornelius, the 'mysterious stranger'; he is quite vividly drawn; indeed, so much so that I began to wonder if he was all he appeared, or whether he would become the subject of some revelation later on in the story. (The answer was no, which makes it odder that Baxter devoted so much time and effort to him - or does he have significance in the later books in the trilogy?)
The iconic "talking squid in outer space", made infamous by Margaret Attwood's dismissal of the entire science fiction genre, have a strong role in the novel. They are perhaps as well drawn as any other characters....
Part-way through the book, there is a major plot turn which sends the whole story in a new direction and sets it into a far wider stage. At one point, four of the main characters find themselves with a ringside seat at the heat death of the universe, over and over again (in a sequence which owed a little, in my mind, to the ending of James Blish's 'A Clash of Cymbals'). We are looking at nothing less than the opening up of the 'manifold' of all possible times and spaces - no-one can accuse Baxter of petty-mindedness! And given that, it transpires that ti really doesn't matter that we are looking at the future from yesterday: it is indeed (at one level) a story of a possible future that we never experienced. I shall be interested to see how the events of this book influence the stories that follow in the (thematic) sequels.
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sf isn't supposed to be prediction, but sometimes the temptation is just too much...So what we have here is a maverick wannabe astronaut setting up a space transportation company using discarded Shuttle components after that programme is cancelled. He is planning to establish an asteroid mining operation, with genetically-enhanced squid running the show because they are smaller and easier to transport (and expendable). He is approached by a mysterious stranger who claims to have a forecast of planetary doom which would demands a change of destination...
Meanwhile, children all over the world are suddenly demonstrating massive leaps of scientific achievement out of nowhere.
The depiction of the near-future space enterprise seems very plausible, even with the benefit of hindsight. This, after all, is what Baxter excels in. His characters are a little less well drawn, as they tend to be vehicles to advance the plot - after all, this is a typical big sf "novel of ideas". However, some of the minor characters come out rather better: a female US Congresswoman who investigates the hero's business activities, for instance, or the geek expert in charge of the squid programme spring to mind. The real oddity here is Cornelius, the 'mysterious stranger'; he is quite vividly drawn; indeed, so much so that I began to wonder if he was all he appeared, or whether he would become the subject of some revelation later on in the story. (The answer was no, which makes it odder that Baxter devoted so much time and effort to him - or does he have significance in the later books in the trilogy?)
The iconic "talking squid in outer space", made infamous by Margaret Attwood's dismissal of the entire science fiction genre, have a strong role in the novel. They are perhaps as well drawn as any other characters....
Part-way through the book, there is a major plot turn which sends the whole story in a new direction and sets it into a far wider stage. At one point, four of the main characters find themselves with a ringside seat at the heat death of the universe, over and over again (in a sequence which owed a little, in my mind, to the ending of James Blish's 'A Clash of Cymbals'). We are looking at nothing less than the opening up of the 'manifold' of all possible times and spaces - no-one can accuse Baxter of petty-mindedness! And given that, it transpires that ti really doesn't matter that we are looking at the future from yesterday: it is indeed (at one level) a story of a possible future that we never experienced. I shall be interested to see how the events of this book influence the stories that follow in the (thematic) sequels.
Show Less
LibraryThing member nosajeel
Highly evolved squid fly to an asteroid with a portal to other universes. Overall brilliant, but a little loose around the edges -- especially the last fifty or so pages traveling through the multiverse.
LibraryThing member rondoctor
Excellent read. Be prepared to think about quantum concepts that Baxter tosses into the narrative.
LibraryThing member usuallee
I really enjoyed this science fiction mindbender. To call Baxter's characters one dimensional would perhaps be generous. However, Baxter is such a smooth writer that he gets a pass. Some of the scientific concepts he introduces boggled my brain (in a good way) and his descriptions really conjure up
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some amazing visuals. The book even manages to have a pulse-quickening climax. Fully intend to read more in the series. Show Less
Subjects
Awards
Arthur C. Clarke Award (Shortlist — 2000)
Original publication date
1999
Physical description
480 p.; 4.2 inches
ISBN
034543076X / 9780345430762