Stephen Baxter- VOYAGE

[Melvin Loh]

Just flicked thru this AH novel today- whose POD is that JFK survives in 1963, which leads to NASA embarking on a fullscale Mars exploration program that enables a female US atronaut to set foot on Mars in 1986. Apparently part of the NASA Trilogy...

[Tom Kalbfus]

This is the first I've heard that it was a trilogy. I thought it was a stand alone book. What's the second book in the trilogy called, perhaps I'll look for it?

[Melvin Loh]

TITAN, I think- though I've not come across it yet...

[Raymann]

Hey Melvin, what's up?

Anyway, since Baxter is my favorite author (even though he's a dirty leftist), I thought I'd chime in.

The trilogy is Voyage, Titan, and Moonseed. Baxter is primarily a hard sci-fi writer and his politics simply bleed through Voyage and Titan...those are the only two books of his I never finished.

Moonseed on the other hand is great novel, I do recommend it.

What I would also recommend is Baxter's Time Odyessy series that he did with Arthur C. Clarke. The first book "Time's Eye" is essentially a giant ASB intervention (the climax is a battle between Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan).

The two following novels mostly take place in the near future (where mankind is trying to defend itself against said ASB's) but there are many scenes going back to the alternate Earth where everything is jumbled up.

[xchen08]

Originally Posted by Raymann

Hey Melvin, what's up?

Anyway, since Baxter is my favorite author (even though he's a dirty leftist), I thought I'd chime in.

The trilogy is Voyage, Titan, and Moonseed. Baxter is primarily a hard sci-fi writer and his politics simply bleed through Voyage and Titan...those are the only two books of his I never finished.

Moonseed on the other hand is great novel, I do recommend it.

What I would also recommend is Baxter's Time Odyessy series that he did with Arthur C. Clarke. The first book "Time's Eye" is essentially a giant ASB intervention (the climax is a battle between Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan).

The two following novels mostly take place in the near future (where mankind is trying to defend itself against said ASB's) but there are many scenes going back to the alternate Earth where everything is jumbled up.

A trilogy? But the world gets destroyed in both Titan and Moonseed!

[Melvin Loh]

hey Raymann, nice as always to see you here- thx for your input, mate, sounds like an interesting trilogy there. I only flicked thru VOYAGE yest when I saw it in the book section of the Pick & Pay hypermarket just down the road...

[Raymann]

Originally Posted by xchen08

A trilogy? But the world gets destroyed in both Titan and Moonseed!

I think that's the unifying theme of them.

He also does it in his Manifold novels, same central character in 4 different realities.

[Raymann]

Originally Posted by Melvin Loh

hey Raymann, nice as always to see you here- thx for your input, mate, sounds like an interesting trilogy there. I only flicked thru VOYAGE yest when I saw it in the book section of the Pick & Pay hypermarket just down the road...

No problem. For the record my favorite books of his are his Xeelee Sequence of novels. (BTW: if there is ever a discussion of the oldest or most powerful species invented in sci-fi, it's the Xeelee)

Another standalone novel of his which HAS TO BE READ is The Time Ships which actually is the official sequel to H. G. Wells Time Machine. Just remember though that all these books are very hard sci-fi. In The Time Ships, the narrator goes back like at the end of the previous book and changes the future. When he goes back to meet his chick, it turns out there are still Morlocks but their pacifists, and oh yeah...they super intelligent and they built a Dyson Sphere around the Solar System.

[Marius]

Yeah, I like Baxter's stuff.

Didn't really get into the Time Odyssey books, tried to read the first one, but didn't enjoy it. Strange, cause I like Baxter and Clarke.

Recently read his latest book, Flood, where water under the Earth's crust gets released, and the world gets flooded. Pretty decent.

[Tom Kalbfus]

Originally Posted by Marius

Yeah, I like Baxter's stuff.

Didn't really get into the Time Odyssey books, tried to read the first one, but didn't enjoy it. Strange, cause I like Baxter and Clarke.

Recently read his latest book, Flood, where water under the Earth's crust gets released, and the world gets flooded. Pretty decent.

I wouldn't exactly call that Hard Science Fiction, sounds like the story the Creationists would have you believe about the Biblical flood. There would have to be a very good reason to have all that rock sitting on top of all that water, Rock is heavier than water after all.

[eschaton]

Voyage is probably the single worst book Stephen Baxter has written, and I'm pretty sure I've read all of his books except some of his juveniles (the mammoth series).

He gone through several distinct phases as an author. The books of his closest to AH are:

Anti-Ice: Steampunk - some novel element is discovered in the Victorian era which allows spaceflight IIRC.

The Time Ships: An official sequel to The Time Machine. Segments of it are AH by design, due to interferences in the timeline.

Voyage: Though it's awful as I said unless you have a hard on for rocketry.

Manifold: Origin: The last book in the loose trilogy - the protagonist ends up on a mars-size moon which travels through alternate worlds and picks up inhabitants.

Time's Eye: I believe this book is where the Mosaic Earth idea came from, so it's a classic ASB scenario. The second book in this series doesn't involve this world at all, but the third (Firstborn) reintroduces it with some new developments.

Time's Tapestry Series: Technically, all four of these books are AH. However, the first two read like pretty much straight up historical fiction with only one minor twist. In the third, some hints of alternate timelines are explored for the first time. The last is full-on AH scenario where the Nazis occupy a portion of England.

In addition, Coalescent, Evolution, and The Light of Other Days all have segments which deal with historical fiction, or history. They are not AH exactly however.

[Marius]

Originally Posted by Tom Kalbfus

I wouldn't exactly call that Hard Science Fiction, sounds like the story the Creationists would have you believe about the Biblical flood. There would have to be a very good reason to have all that rock sitting on top of all that water, Rock is heavier than water after all.

I didn't say it was Hard SF, just that I enjoyed the story.

[Melvin Loh]

[QUOTE=eschaton;2590308]
Time's Tapestry Series: Technically, all four of these books are AH. However, the first two read like pretty much straight up historical fiction with only one minor twist. In the third, some hints of alternate timelines are explored for the first time. The last is full-on AH scenario where the Nazis occupy a portion of England.

QUOTE]

Hmmm, I just read Book 2 I think it was of TIME'S TAPESTRY the other day- wasn't too sure initially if this was exactly the same author- but yeah, the account of 1066 pretty much read like a standard hist novel (albeit with interesting unusual characters such as a Norwegian mercenary serving the Normans & a Moorish slave with the main Saxon characters) without any AH underpinning storylines- woah, would be interesting to read the other books in that series, too...

[Melvin Loh]

Originally Posted by Raymann

No problem. For the record my favorite books of his are his Xeelee Sequence of novels. (BTW: if there is ever a discussion of the oldest or most powerful species invented in sci-fi, it's the Xeelee)

Another standalone novel of his which HAS TO BE READ is The Time Ships which actually is the official sequel to H. G. Wells Time Machine. Just remember though that all these books are very hard sci-fi. In The Time Ships, the narrator goes back like at the end of the previous book and changes the future. When he goes back to meet his chick, it turns out there are still Morlocks but their pacifists, and oh yeah...they super intelligent and they built a Dyson Sphere around the Solar System.

hmmm, THE TIME SHIPS eh ? sounds pretty full-on with time travel back & forth- would be interesting to see as a big screen portrayal eh ?

[Aranfan]

Originally Posted by Raymann

No problem. For the record my favorite books of his are his Xeelee Sequence of novels. (BTW: if there is ever a discussion of the oldest or most powerful species invented in sci-fi, it's the Xeelee)

I would contest that. The Photino Birds beat them.

[xchen08]

Originally Posted by Aranfan

I would contest that. The Photino Birds beat them.

Though I honestly don't see how. I mean the Xeelee are the masters of time and space. Their dependence on stellar radiation which leads to their defeat is frankly incomprehensible. They could have blown up every star in the universe, thereby exterminating the photino birds, then survive as long as they would have otherwise on the stellar remains.

[Raymann]

Originally Posted by Aranfan

I would contest that. The Photino Birds beat them.

Ok, that's true, they did beat them.

HOWEVER, we really don't get to know anything about them except that they're made of dark matter, they're old, and they like stable gravity wells.

Originally Posted by Melvin Loh

hmmm, THE TIME SHIPS eh ? sounds pretty full-on with time travel back & forth- would be interesting to see as a big screen portrayal eh ?

I wish, it's a THICK book though and even 3 three hour movies would just scratch the surface. There are major stories in at least 5 different times/timelines ranging from the birth of the universe to it's heat death.

[SunilTanna]

My opinion:

I loved:
Titan
Moonseed
Anti-ice
Manifold series (there are 3 novels + 1 short stories) - they share a theme and some characters, but an separate independent stories.
Traces (short stories collection)
The Time Ships


I hated:
Voyage


The reason Titan/Moonseed/Voyage are sometimes grouped together is that they are all supposed to be hard-scifi based on current/plausible-alternate space technology in the solar system

[Tom Kalbfus]

[QUOTE=Melvin Loh;2591764]

Originally Posted by eschaton

Time's Tapestry Series: Technically, all four of these books are AH. However, the first two read like pretty much straight up historical fiction with only one minor twist. In the third, some hints of alternate timelines are explored for the first time. The last is full-on AH scenario where the Nazis occupy a portion of England.

QUOTE]

Hmmm, I just read Book 2 I think it was of TIME'S TAPESTRY the other day- wasn't too sure initially if this was exactly the same author- but yeah, the account of 1066 pretty much read like a standard hist novel (albeit with interesting unusual characters such as a Norwegian mercenary serving the Normans & a Moorish slave with the main Saxon characters) without any AH underpinning storylines- woah, would be interesting to read the other books in that series, too...

I liked Time's Tapestry series, it is basically a stem in which a number of alternate histories could branch out from. The first one was Emperor, it starts out with a poem. It appears someone from the future is sending messages into the past, the first one appears to be trying to create a United States of America out of Roman Britian, and prophesies are made which characters profit from and it all build up towards a climax where it tries to get one of the main characters to assassinate Emperor Constantine in order to change the course of history, but he refuses, and so it stays historical

The prophesy sent in Conqueror appears to have been sent by Nazis, and it attempts to save King Harold for the purposes of "keeping the Aryan blood of Britian pure"

The third prophesy seems to be sent by someone who hates muslims and it tries to get Christopher Columbus to abandon his voyage to the New World and concentrate instead on eradicating Muslims in North Africa and the Middle East. There appears to be some battle over history going on in the future where each side is trying to shape history to its own liking with the resultant being our own history. In other words the books refer to alternate history, but it is in itself a historical novel dealing with prophesy from the future. I wonder what the fourth book in the series is all about. I imagine its going to take place in North America and lead up to the American Revolution given what's happened so far, but that's just a guess.