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Time (SF) - Stephen Baxter ***

It was perhaps a mistake to read this book so soon after Stephen Baxter's 1995 sequel to The Time Machine called The Time Ships. For some reason, Baxter had passed me by until recently, so, impressed by reading his recent The Thousand Earths and World Engines: Destroyer (which confusingly features another version of the same main character is this book), I've been digging back into his earlier work. Time is certainly is a book of ideas - but there are three big problems with this 1999 novel. Despite a totally different setting, it has too many similarities to The Time Ships, it has structural issues and its view of 2010 is bizarre.

Time features time travel, a portal on an asteroid, talking squids in space, the sudden emergence of super-intelligent children, a riff on time travel, alternate histories and universes, and more. You can't fault it for its reach, or all the (admittedly highly speculative) scientific concepts that are brought in. And when Baxter settles down and does a bit of action writing, notably in an attack on the asteroid, things suddenly kick up a gear. This is without doubt an impressive and interesting piece of thoughtful science fiction.

However, lets get onto those problems. Both this and The Time Ships feature time travel, intellects of the far future and alternative realities. Even more so than its predecessor, Time also has an ending with strong echoes of the finale of Blish's Cities in Flight series. That, to be honest, was more a problem from reading the two books one after the other, rather than anything fundamental. Structurally, the book is rambling and could do with a good tightening edit. It spends far too long on plodding through situations. Until the structure suddenly changes for a while near the end, it is broken up into sections from the point of view of different characters, each headed with the characters' names. I suspect it might have been originally framed as first person views from these individuals, because on a couple of occasions the text briefly switches into the first person, suggesting it was missed in a re-write. This all feels a little clumsy. The characterisation is often two-dimensional as well, while the character of Emma, the ex-wife of central character Reid Malenfant, is unbelievable in the way she is willing to go along with decision after decision she doesn't agree with.

Oddest of all, though, is Baxter's vision of 2010. It's worth noting that Baxter was something of a protégé of Arthur C. Clarke, as there are several echoes of 2001, A Space Odyssey here - one consciously and clearly making a direct reference to the film. And like 2001, Time shows us technological advances in its setting that are way too far ahead of what was ever likely. Of course, there was more excuse for the anomalies in 2001 as this came out 33 years before its setting, but Baxter used a date just 11 years in his future, yet introduced technological changes that are often still decades away. It just feels wrong. It's also amusing in retrospect that a major theme in the book is NASA and the US government's attempts to prevent private companies doing space flights (even resorting to military attack) - considering what has happened in the last few years.

It's also worth briefly picking up on the 'squids in space' thing. Baxter suggests that squids are sentient and very intelligent (even more so when their intelligence is enhanced by some technical magic) - this now seems exaggerated, especially if the suggestion in the book Sentience that only warm blooded animals are sentient is true. But the reason the concept is fascinating is in the context of Margaret Atwood's put-down of science fiction that it's limited to 'talking squids in outer space.' I've never found a date for that, so it's not clear if Baxter did this intentionally as a wind-up - if so, it's hilarious.

All in all a fascinating, if deeply flawed, book.

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Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here
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