By: Stephen Baxter Publisher: Eos Average Rating: Binding: Mass Market Paperback Label: Eos Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 544 Publication Date: January 01, 1996 Release Date: November 27, 1995
...and it leads all the way to the end of Eternity. But the journey has a terrible cost. It alters not only the future but he "present" in which we live.
A century after the publication of H. G. Wells' immortal The Time Machine, Stephen Baxter, today's most acclaimed new "hard SF" author, and the acknowledged Clarke, returns to the distant conflict between the Eloi and the Morlocks in a story that is at once an exciting expansion, and a radical departure based on the astonishing new understandings of quantum physics.
Amazon.com Review: What if the time machine from H.G. Wells' classic novel of the same name had fallen into government hands? That's the question that led Stephen Baxter to create this modern-day sequel, which combines a basic Wellsian premise with a Baxteresque universe-spanning epic. The Time Traveller, driven by his failure to save Weena from the Morlocks, sets off again for the future. But this time the future has changed, altered by the very tale of the Traveller's previous journey.
Good but long and drawn out This is a good read but only just that, good, not great, not even very good.
The author does a great job in creating some new and wondrous worlds for the Time Traveler. I was enthralled by the worlds he created.
But boy o boy does this book drone on. I hate skipping parts of a book. I usually want to read every word and not miss one piece of the story. But in "The Time Ships" I found myself often bored to tears and skimming over whole pages. Portions that were intriguing and wondrous very regularly evolved slowly into monotonous and bleak hazes of explanations and political views I was not interested in.
I admit I enjoy fast paced action in my sci-fi but, if a book is written well, I can still be engrossed it, it just has to be entertaining and well written. "Rendezvous with Rama" is a great example of a book without a whole lot of action yet so well written you can hardly to put it down.
It took me weeks to read "The Time Ships". I would often find myself waking after a nice nap and having only finished a few pages. Yet Baxter gives us a big enough glimpse of what time travel might be to keep us going back for more even though we know following the excitement we are bound to find page after page of dullness.
This would be a superb story were it written in only 350 pages.
Go ahead and buy it if you are a die-hard sci-fi reader with lots of time on your hands. Not that 520 pages will take that much time, it's all the naps in between that will consume you.
And one more thing, don't be fooled by the title, the actual Time Ships are a very small and somewhat minor portion of the total story.
Great Time Travel Book I loved this book! I've read it 3 times and it still a great read. The ideas, the forethought, and pure creativity level are fantastic. Yes, the original Time Machine novel is a classic and this book more than does it justice.
The most adventure This book is truly a treasure, the most amazing adventure I have ever read. Wonderful storyline, very believable and in keeping with real science. Tho it is over 500 pages long, in somewhat smaller print than in most paperbacks by Stephen Baxter by the time you reach the end you'll wish it was twice as long.
Steam Punked To be sure, there is really no way to recreate a classic. If the original author did not write a sequel, then there just may not be one. In fact, some stories need no sequel (Napoleon Dynamite), or if a sequel is done, it is never up to snuff (Return to Oz, Ghostbusters II). Added to that is "The Time Machine"'s status as an ace of aces, not to mention the wonderful George Pal film version done in 1960. In sequalizing a classic, Baxter has everything going against him.
Despite all of this, I think he succeeds. Not just in imitating Wells's voice, but in all aspects.
To begin, this book has some prerequisites. To be sure, you need to read The Time Machine (Penguin Classics), and to track down the missing part to chapter 11--alluded to on p.103ff. You will also do well to track down The Chronic Argonauts, the early draft version of "The Time Machine." Watch the names Moses and Nebogipfel! Additionally, "The Time Ships" includes several Wellsian inside-jokes. These are references to several of his lesser-know works: "The World Set Free," (p. 157ff) "Things to Come," (both the book and the movie), and the quick nod to "War of Worlds" with the virus discussion (p. 284ff), and "The First Men in the Moon" with the selenites. I think some of the book's criticism comes from missing these subtle allusions.
(I recommend seeing the 1960's movie BEFORE reading this book, and seeing the 2002 version AFTER reading this book).
By including these easter eggs, Baxter's time travel story double-backs to its roots. The first two time travels stores, Wells's and Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (Tor Classics), were works of social criticism, with Twain's included the expected satire. Baxter, by including allusions to Wells's utopian future histories, brings back to square one. This is refreshing. So much of popular time travel stories are just variations on the Grandfather Paradox (The City on the Edge of Foreve, Back To the Future, every episode of Star Trek: Voyager). This book, however, uses time travel as a type of social commentary (akin to Star Trek IV), but on a scale reminiscent of Olaf Stapleton (Last and First Man, the Star-Makers, The Nebula-Makers).
Of course here and there it has a feel of "Goes Nowhere, Does Nothing," but so does Wells's work. "War of the Worlds" ends in a Deus Ex Machina, and the Time Traveler abandon Weena in the fire and zips on to 30 million years into the future. The flaws reminds us of Wells's flaws.
The tone/setting of the story also zigzags, almost chiasmically . We start with Wells's setting, then go to the high concept of Morlocks 2.0, then back to Wells's England, then to a steam-punk/pulp 1930's "World Set Free" time line, then back to Jurassic Park/Robinson Crusoe for Humanity 3.0, the New Humans, the to the high concept of the Constructors, and end up in full circle at the correct ending of "The Time Machine." What a ride! What a vision! C. S. Lewis would have loved this book!
Indeed, as I read books 5 and 6, I felt joy. For those of us who felt let down by the direction of Clarke's 2001 series (3001 The Final Odyssey in particular), rest assured that Baxter delivers on the promise Clarke failed to keep, If you see the Time Traveler as Dave Bowman, and Nebogipfel as HAL 9000 (both are cyclopean), and the Constructors as the Monoliths (they were originally pyramids in "The Sentinel"), then you see my point. Plagiarism, no! An unfulfilled promise finally met, yes, yes, yes.
This book has been one of the most refreshing, and invigorating books I have read in recent years. If you have lost faith in SF, read this book and welcome home!
*
PS- If you were confused by Star Trek: Enterprise's "Temporal Cold War," I assume they got the idea from this book.
Superb and astonishing SF Long ago, I gave up hope of reading anything remotely as imaginative as Olaf Stapledon's "First and Last Men" and "Star Maker". Stephen Baxter goes as far and possibly in some ways even beyond these remarkable visions. "Time Ships" is gripping and readable. Baxter even gave me for the first time a glimmer of the geometrical construct that the great Goedel conceived to challenge Einstein's views on time travel. Also, he describes marvelously and believably today's London set in a horrible alternate time. There is much much more!
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