A supreme colaboration between hypothetical inter steller time travel and the infantiscimle nat..... (Space - Stephen Baxter)

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Product:	Space - Stephen Baxter
Date:	24/05/01 (11 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Intelligent, thoughtful, scarey

Disadvantages: Hard work, Little real story, scarey

Space is a tenuous sequel to Stephen Baxter’s enjoyable Time and for those who didn’t read the first one, you can quickly pick up the flow. The main eek with the book early on is that it rushes through thirty years in the first 100 pages.
The next 400 Baxter hits you with his intellect and hypothetical understanding and detailed of the worlds best sci-fi theorist, but he presses on at a cracking pace leaving you wondering why he didn’t go into detail more, as he does it so well. After that its heavy going astro physics time where only the purist can hang on in.

Ried Malofant is five years on from his last interstellar adventure and is glowing from the final embers of his glory. After losing his wife in the last book, the aging astronaught is looking for a project to feed his ego and curiosity that could fill the gap left by his amazing voyage.

Ten years on, Nemoto, a famous Japanese scientist who lives and works on the moon after the Japanese set up a base camp there, has news for Malofant like a thunder clap on a clear blue sky, that will change mankind’s destiny and conscious when it gets out.
Strange lights are twinkling in a distant asteroid belt viewed from the pristine lunar clear telescopes. The self-made women and eminent doctor suggests Reid address one of her conferences at the base to see if it’s possible to investigate them.
With money no object and with the aging Bootstrap (His launch space center company) technology and space traveler, a module is knocked up and the mission is underway.

At this point there are references to Baxter’s over book in Titan and more to Time including a squid description. Now all you Time readers ears would have pricked up then I think don’t want to spoil it by saying what that relates to and I suspect the brighter ones are thinking fast here.

The Commodore Perry has been kited out with some serious HP under the bonnet. The author goes
into great detail and hypothesis on how to travel at 0.6 the speed of light, apparently that’s pretty darn fast.
Helium 3 seems to be the solution and its not the last time this valuable formula is pivotal in the book.

Baxter also introduces the theory of Van Neuman technology, which basically is a self-constructing vehicle or robot that can expand and adapt as it journeys into the unknown. That’s pretty cool if you think about it, and is probably how man will reach the stars eventually.

With his mind-bending speed and patience, Reid arrives at the mysterious lights. Suddenly the distant sun catches a glint of something that shouldn’t have been there, he presses on and out in his space suit, this could be the most important moment for mankind. After two years laborious space travel, its just what a 65 year old astronaught needs to buck up his spirits.”Pissing in jars, looking at stars”as the early pioneers once called it.

Back on Earth some fifty years on from page one, they have lost contact with the buccaneering space cowboy and another more advanced ship is dispatched. Nemoto is also offering a big pay packet to any budding explorer who fancies a run out to Venus and its newly discovered moon.
Further inspection of the planet and its terrain deepens this intriguing tale yet more. Again there are references to his previous work, which makes the mind boggle.

At this point in the book I had this idea that if certain ships over time with certain advanced speed capabilities, could technically catch up with each other as they rushed away from Earth.If they did then they would be moving through time in a strange sort of way, just a thought, a bad one at that. That’s why im writing crappy reviews, and not this intriguing tale.

Humans are the only being that can contemplate their own existence and they’re for their death. If anyone else is out there, will be that the case with
them. One of the many ideas that Nemoto and her think tank are pondering. If the universe is infinite, then evolution and time can create anything and everything.

The author also throws numerous theories at us who tended to send the book off into a statement, rather than a book of fiction. I quite like the idea that infinite time and space in different dimensions will eventually produce an exact duplicate of our Earth.

Sulfuric acid and black holes, interstellar travel and directed comets all figure in the author’s sci-fi soup. One of the biggest benefits of deep sppace travel and black hole time shifting is compound interest apparently. Ten minutes in a wormhole is 25 years interest!

All the famous authors’ ideas are incorporated in this tour de force of acquired knowledge. By the end of it you are over blown away or seriously worried about mankind’s future.
Bare in mind that the human race is expanding at two percent every ten years whilst exhausting the planets resources that we need to survive. If this continues as we expand through the universe, eventually we will be everywhere!.

Theres a great chat up line by a young scientist trying to cop off with a lady star hopper.”You have the tan of a thousand stars”now come on girls, could you resist this man.
Teleports are also a subject of discussion, with a great point about teleportation. Does the mind and soul also get regenerated after the jump. That’s the way this guy is working all through the book.

With Reid Malefant still wondering the endless universe and cosmos seeking the ultimate truth, and other earth based astronaughts seeking him. The book finally grinds to a cataclysmic climax as all the stories and sub plots collide in a spectacular supa nova juxtaposition.
I have kept the real meat of the book from you, as it’s quite an extroidanary read and plot for the seriously erudite. If you watch ITV and soaps t
hen steer well clear, BBC 2 and C4 viewers only thankyou.

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