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Mark and Gerry's Sci-Fi Reviews continued.......
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TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE: TIMELINE
Michael Crichton and MANIFOLD: TIME by Stephen Baxter
reviewed by Gerry
Time travel is a popular literary device. As scientific speculation and debate about
the nature of space and time enters a new era, there has been a simultaneous
increase in science fiction tales with time as a variable. Two of the most recent novels
which incorporate recent thinking about space and time are TIMELINE by Michael
Crichton and MANIFOLD: TIME by Stephen Baxter.
In TIMELINE, a brilliant, unscrupulous scientist is the leader of a secretive
research company. His company has had two recent, top secret successes: the
development of the quantum computer, and a device which can transport people to
another place in space and time. The company has focused its attention on a small
area in France, in the year 1357, for reasons explained later in the story. A group of
academicians, specializing in medieval studies (and unaware of the company's true
goals) is reconstructing that area for the company in the present time. The lead
professor of the project becomes suspicious, contacts the company, and vanishes.
The rest of the group becomes concerned, and is sent by the company back into 1357
in order to find the professor. Prior to sending them off on their adventure in the past,
the company's leader is quick to point out to them (and the reader) that they are NOT
engaged in time travel. Rather, the device is based on the idea of teleporting people to
another point in space and time in another universe. The multiple universes are
connected with quantum foam, and the other universes do have some effects on ours
(for example it is possible to detect the interference patterns produced by their
presence). Information about the person is compressed and transmitted to the other
location, with the help of the quantum computerr to collect and process all that
information. So they are not going back into our past. The reader might wonder why,
for example, if the professor loses his glasses in this other universe in 1357, they are
found in aged form in the present in our universe, but this is never clearly explained.
The impression is given that similar events happen in all of these universes.
Most of the story in TIMELINE does not deal with futuristic scientific hardware or
quantum effects. It is primarily an adventure story, about a group of unlikely heroes
who have to mature to survive in medieval France. And there are plenty of sword
fights, knights in armor, romance, treachery, blood and gore. The medieval details are
carefully done, and there's a long bibliography at the end listing historical references.
There is a much shorter but interesting list of scientific references as well.
On the whole, TIMELINE is a good novel. It makes use of a limited number of
scientific concepts, but the ones it uses are current and described fairly well. There is
that apparent contradiction (the professor's glasses, etc.), but if the reader can
overlook that, it's possible to get caught up in the adventure. And it's a safe bet that a
movie version of TIMELINE will be coming to a theater near you soon.
The novel MANIFOLD: TIME is built on its own manifold of engineering and
scientific ideas about space travel, human evolution, multiple universes, and the
ultimate destiny of everything. It is a bold undertaking for one novel, and teeters on the
edge of being too ambitious.
On the surface, it's a story about humans in our near future. The principle
character, Reid Malenfant, wants to bypass the bureaucracy of NASA to get man back
into space, initially mining asteroids. As part of the plan, smart squid have been
produced, and the star squid, Sheena, is trained to fly alone on the first mission to an
asteroid. Meanwhile, an eccentric mathematician has predicted the end of all mankind
in 200 years, and wants to listen for messages from the future. Plus there is a group
of superintelligent children, the "blues", being born into regular families for no apparent
reason. The story shifts point of view continuously, from character to character, and
even includes the perspective of an array of everyday people who are somehow linked
to all the events.
About halfway through the story, as the characters get a glimpse into possible
future developments in the universe, you begin to suspect that it's not merely a story
about bypassing red tape to get into space. And that suspicion is correct. At times,
the latter half of the story evokes memories of novels such as Arthur C. Clark's 2001:
A SPACE ODYSSEY (the artifact; the surreal hotel room), Frederick Pohl's ANNALS
OF THE HEECHEE (attempts to change basic parameters of the universe), Pohl's THE
WORLD AT THE END OF TIME (as described by its title), and to a lesser extent
Greg Bear's EON and ETERNITY (alternate universes, with subtle and not so subtle
differences). In Baxter's MANIFOLD: TIME, the evolution of the universe depends on
it's initial conditions. And there is one group of sentients which is convinced that it
knows what is best , with no debate, no discussion, and no alternate opinions
presented. It was hard for me to accept the idea that these sentients of the future
could be so confident about their choice, and that sentients could evolve to the point
where there is total agreement on a course of action with profound results. It is a
classic case of do the ends justify the means, and who gets to decide what the ends
should be? To find out who these sentients are, what they want to do, and if they
succeed, you will have to read the story.
MANIFOLD: TIME gets a mixed review from me. I enjoyed the story of Malenfant's
brazen efforts to make a new space program while juggling concerns about doomsday
predictions. And the adventures of the enhanced squid are interesting as well. The
story also contains an abundance of scientific ideas to ponder. Where it is weakest
and strains credulity the most is when it tries to tackle the manifold of universes on all
levels. There is a limit to what a human can do.
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