Manifold: Time
The universe is not enough
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Manifold: Time
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By Stephen Baxter
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Del Rey
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$24.00/$34.00 Canada
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Hardcover, Jan. 2000
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ISBN 0-345-43075-1
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Review by Curt Wohleber
 ndustrialist Reid Malenfant knows that Earth's limited resources can't
support the human race indefinitely. Malenfant, who washed out of the
astronaut corps years earlier, wants to mine asteroids, an enterprise that
will pave the way for a new era of commerce and exploration, securing
humanity's future in the cosmos.
But a man named Cornelius Taine urges Malenfant to look at the
really big picture: Not even the whole universe can
sustain humanity forever. In the far future, Taine notes, "the stars will die. It
is going to be cold and dark, a universe of shadows." Taine follows this bleak but remote notion with a bizarre hypothesis--based on a chain of logic that is neither provable nor refutable--that humanity is probably doomed to extinction not at the end of the universe, but within a few hundred years.
What to do? Scan for neutrino messages sent back in time by humanity's descendants, who will explain how to survive this eerily amorphous "Carter catastrophe."
Sure enough, Malenfant's people pick up a faint signal, apparently
identifying a near-Earth asteroid named Cruithne. Malenfant decides to
divert his prototype rocket from a metal-rich asteroid to the mysterious
Cruithne.
Malenfant isn't the only player in this cosmic drama. Genetically
engineered squids designed to operate Malenfant's space probes go
renegade and begin colonizing the solar system. Then there are the Blue
Children: mutant kids who are strange, withdrawn and superhumanly
intelligent. Governments around the world bring the Blue Children to special schools that end up being little more than concentration camps. But bringing the kids together is what enables them to carry out their strange and
terrifying agenda.
Cheap rockets and cosmic wonders
If ideas were radioactive particles, Manifold: Time would be a
block of plutonium. The story takes off at near-lightspeed
through some very
strange territory. Baxter treats readers to a gallery of cosmic wonders,
including a haunting look at a future so unimaginably distant
that beings of
that era see our own time as part of the hot, bright aftermath of the Big
Bang.
Baxter's interest in low-cost space flight threatened to give his otherwise impressive novels Moonseed and Titan a formulaic sameness.
Manifold: Time also features
cheap rockets and bitter laments about the decline of the space
program, but
they don't drive the novel. Nor does Baxter succumb to his
tendency to make
characters lecture each other about things they already know for the
reader's benefit.
Reid Malenfant, however, seems to have wandered in from a
Robert Heinlein
novel. He's a can-do guy, but this would-be leader of humanity's migration
into space ends up little more than a spectator while a group of children
reshape the very nature of reality. That might be a deliberate irony, but
the brash, single-minded Malenfant still sticks out like a sore
thumb.
Manifold: Time owes much to Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's
End and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Aside from thematic parallels,
Baxter includes several overt references to those books. Like Dave Bowman in
2001, a
spacesuited Malenfant winds up in a featureless hotel room created by
superintelligent entities. Humanity's distant descendants may have evolved beyond comprehension, but they still have a sense of humor.
Memo to NASA: Consider using squids to pilot future space probes.
Just don't let them reproduce.
-- Curt
Back to the top.
The Naked God
Perhaps eternity is the ultimate reality
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The Naked God
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By Peter F. Hamilton
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Warner Aspect
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$26.95/$36.00 Canada
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Hardcover, Jan. 2000
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ISBN 0-446-52567-7
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Review by Susan Dunman
 umanity's corner of the universe is in disarray at the opening of this, the final volume in Peter F. Hamilton's epic space adventure. The series, which began with The Reality Dysfunction, tells the story of a human starfaring culture invaded by souls of the dead who take possession of the living. The possessed exhibit "energistic" powers which make them nearly impervious to normal weapons. In The Naked God, no way has yet been found to stem the tide of spirits, but the Confederation is fighting valiantly to prevent further intrusions.
One of the recently revived is Al Capone, who quickly adapts to his new environment. He uses bitek starships and
anti-matter combat wasps as comfortably as he used to use machine guns and baseball bats. Capone strengthens his power base in the New California star system by consolidating a gangster-based society. Meanwhile the possessed on the planet Ombey have taken over an entire continent and wait defiantly for a final confrontation
with the best army that humanity can muster. Back on Earth,
Quinn Dexter reunites with his Light Bringer Satanist sect and uses these
ready-made recruits to complete his plans for a future even more horrific
than the possessed envision.
In time the Confederation finds that its advanced technology and superior organizational structure provide some strategic advantages against
the possessed, but the Edenist Consensus decides not to depend on
military might alone. Seeking outside assistance, they send starship
captain Joshua Calvert on a mission to find an entity referred to by the
alien Tyrathca as the Sleeping God. The enigmatic Kiint, an advanced alien race that claims to know the solution
to humanity's problem, watches all of these events unfold but insists that
the humans must find the answer for themselves.
A 4-D jigsaw puzzle
The universe is a huge place, but Hamilton manages to fill it with so many
ideas that it begins to feel downright crowded. The grand finale of this series immediately pulls readers back into the frightening yet by now familiar landscapes of Edenists, Adamists, voidhawks, hellhawks, swallowing
maneuvers, affinity links, neural nanonics and the possessed. Those
expecting a simple tying up of loose ends from earlier books will be
surprised that most of the novel's 975 pages are used to introduce new subplots, develop more characters, and pose additional questions.
It doesn't take long for Joshua Calvert to go sailing off on another
mission to save the universe, but so many variables are introduced into
the plot that predicting the outcome is difficult. But a grand tale deserves a grand ending, and Hamilton pulls out all the stops for a spectacular although melodramatic finish.
Unlike some authors, Hamilton's writing skills seem only to improve
with prodigious output. His draws fascinating pictures,
whether he is describing the magical worlds of the Kiint, the war-torn
battlegrounds of Ombey, or the ancient arcologies on Earth. The dialogue is
equally powerful, animating characters with personality and purpose. Overall The Naked God is an exotic blend of
science fiction, fantasy, horror, and mythology that makes this book
required reading for those who have already read the previous installments.
It should also inspire many others to read the entire series.
Clear off the appointment calendar and take a deep breath. Then jump
right into a book that keeps the brain engaged, the heart pounding, and overworked eyeballs begging for mercy.
-- Susan
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