January 28, 2002
This third and final book in Baxter's ambitious trilogy, whose vast scale calls to mind Asimov's Foundation series, shares the same strengths and weaknesses as the two previous volumes, Manifold: Space
and Manifold: Time. More anthropology than hard SF, the novel follows the disjointed adventures of series hero Reid Malenfant's wife, Emma Stoney, on the hostile surface of an alien red moon that mysteriously replaces Earth's moon. Using multiple viewpoints (sometimes within the same paragraph), the author details the primitive thinking of at least five hominid races (higher humans included) that inhabit the red moon and of a super-race that's been manipulating human evolution. Once Emma sorts out the evolutionary differences, she favors the Runners (Australopithecines) and Hams (Neandertals) over the higher humans, who have foisted their crude fundamentalist religious beliefs on the other races. A variety of characters speculate on the simpler aspects of Darwinian theory, but somewhat disappointingly they all reach the same conclusion. Gratuitous violence from time to time offers relief from the challenge of keeping straight the host of loosely related story lines. Baxter fans should be well satisfied, but those who prefer more thought-provoking SF will need to look elsewhere. (Feb. 1)FYI:The second book of the trilogy,
Manifold: Time, was nominated for an Arthur C. Clarke Award.
January 1, 2002
Baxter's astronaut-hero Reid Malenfant returns for one last exploration of the possibilities of human evolution across near infinities of space and time. He and wife Emma Storey are flying over South Africa when a mysterious red moon replaces the normal one, and a curious, blue-lit gateway appears in Earth's atmosphere. The gateway disgorges a bizarre variety of hominids and displaces many humans, including Emma, to the red moon, where they have to struggle to survive amid an even more bizarre and actively dangerous hominid population. Meanwhile, Malenfant lobbies NASA into backing an improvised Japanese-American expedition to the red moon. Landing there, Malenfant discovers that not all of the population is primitive, for it includes survivors of an expedition from an alternate Earth, on which spaceflight began in the Victorian era, and on the way to learning the secret of the red moon, he is reunited briefly with Emma. Baxter uses many more characters and viewpoint shifts than Arthur C. Clarke in support of a theme that distinctly recalls Clarke's classic "Childhood's End" (1953). He also details survival in primitive societies unsparingly; as a result, much of the book is not for the weak of stomach. Lovers of intelligent variations on classic sf themes, however, will embrace this worthy successor to "Manifold: Time" (2000) and "Manifold: Space" (2001). (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2002, American Library Association.)