Manifold

This is how it is, how it was, how it came to be...

If, in the future, anyone ever asks me which writers I remember from when I was growing up, Stephen Baxter will always be the first name that comes to mind.

That's not because I think he's the best writer around at the moment (although he'd be close to the top of the list because, oh, he can be good). It's just because Baxter is my author. Around 1993-4 I was finishing off my Dad's stock of Asimov and Clarke, and casting around for other things to read - and found Baxter. I think Raft was the first science fiction novel I actually bought, and since then I've bought everything he's published, as soon as it's been published. Gradually, of course, I discovered other authors I like enough to buy regularly, mostly from reading reviews - Peter F Hamilton, Ken Macleod, Greg Egan, Kim Stanley Robinson. But Baxter was the first one I found. And then, when I got to Oxford, who was being advertised as a guest speaker by OUSFG? Baxter.

He's not going to be to everyone's taste. He's a hard SF writer in the classic vein, and it's not for nothing that he's often described as heir to Arthur C Clarke. Both are concerned with the Big Ideas in SF - both have produced some of the best sensawunda moments I've ever read. But if you want fully developed, real characters, or lush prose then you're probably better off reading elsewhere (with a few exceptions, obviously - Baxter's Voyage, the story of the mission to Mars that never was, being one). But if you want SF as mind-expanding drug, there are few who can do it better.

His most recent project has been the Manifold series. Three novels - Time, Space and Origin - plus his new short story collection, Phase Space, that deal with the Fermi Paradox. According to all the laws of probability, given the age and nature of the universe, intelligent life should exist elsewhere. But if it exists elsewhere, we should be able to see it, or its legacy - the ruins of ancient engineering works, radio transmissions, space ships, dyson speheres, something. So why don't we?

In each book, Reid Malenfant is one of the central characters. He's an ex-astronaut, he's an entrepreneur. He thinks about the big picture, and he wants more than anything to find out where everyone is. I didn't use his name for this livejournal because he's like me- I don't think he is. I used it because I love the books. Time and Space, in particular, I would say are outstanding. Baxter deals with the big ideas wonderfully well, from visions of the deep future to...well, I don't want to spoil things, to be honest . Unfortunately, Origin isn't nearly as good. Partly I think it's just due to bad pacing; the middle segment (in which a variety of hominid species of varying intelligence wander around a reality-jumping moon) is far too long and meandering. Partly, sadly, I think he runs up against the limitations of his writing in trying to describe the differing perceptions of the various species. That said, the last third is suitably awe-inspiring, and does redeem things somewhat; but it's not one of the novels I'd recommend to a friend.

Which brings us to Phase Space ('the set of all conceivable states of a given system', as it is defined fairly early on), which seems intended as a capstone for Manifold. In some ways, it's a bit of a cheat; a good number of the stories here (including two of the best, 'Moon-Calf' and 'The Twelfth Album') aren't Manifold stories at all. Some are just regular alternate universes; some are variations on Baxter's favourite theme of life in unlikely environments ('The We Who Sing' is the best of these). Some are, as far as I can tell, utterly unrelated to either alien life or Fermi or Manifold. To be honest, though, some flexible marketing doesn't really bother me when the stories are as good as most of the offerings here. It's not quite as fine a collection as Egan's Axiomatic, but it's close.

In short, everyone who likes SF should read Manifold. As a body of work, for my money it's the best thing Baxter has done. If nothing else, at least walk into a bookshop and read the prologue of Time. You won't regret it.

"Watch the moon, Malenfant, watch the moon. It's starting-"