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3.92 AVERAGE
3.92 AVERAGE
It's been a while since I've read hard scifi, I forgot how much I enjoyed it. This is a great book that stands up well to my memory of it from years ago when I first read it.
I'll start with a quote from The Times which has to be one of the finest review quotes for any novel you'll ever read; "The book sends in to free-fall the most awesome ideas in science fiction today...What makes these ideas assimilable is the prism of people through which they are refracted...good SF reveals the mortal host in the machine."
With my reading of Ring Stephen Baxter has become my favourite modern science fiction author, comparable in terms of sheer pleasure brought through ideas and storytelling scope to the greats like Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein.
For days now I've been unable to stop myself from telling people how good this book is; a perfect blend of speculative high physics, a traditional adventure/exploration story updated to a story arc that takes place over 5 million years and yet through imaginative plotting maintains the same characters throughout. It's the first time I can remember being so totally engrossed in a science fiction story, fascinated by the universe building and willingly excited by end of chapter story revelations; there's just so much wonder contained within these 450 pages, more and more layers of awesome ideas and concepts and descriptions of theoretical events that last right through to the final page.
Lieserl the biologically engineered child who ages one year per day for spoilertastic reasons involving a 5 million year human plan to study the death of The Sun, and the opening chapter told from her point of view is just one of those feats of creation that will surely draw you in and excite your imagination as the assorted motley crew of travellers across space and time finally come face to face with Baxter's godlike creations, the Xeelee, and the ultimate artefact of their engineering prowess, the Ring.
Ring is technically the fourth book in the amazing Xeelee sequence but also stands completely alone as its own creation, as do the other three books in the series it turns out. I spent the entirety of Ring waiting for an explanation of how such wonderful and bizarre science fiction creations as earlier Xeelee books Flux and Raft could possibly be tied in to the same universe and the way Baxter links them is with quiet audacity, somewhat akin to the way Asimov returned to his Foundation sequence to link his Empire and Robots books in to it but with a great deal more subtlety. The numbering of this sequence seems arbitrary, in many ways you might get more from them by taking on this wondrous creation first and then taking the other three as an expansion of the themes and ideas contained within.
With my reading of Ring Stephen Baxter has become my favourite modern science fiction author, comparable in terms of sheer pleasure brought through ideas and storytelling scope to the greats like Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein.
For days now I've been unable to stop myself from telling people how good this book is; a perfect blend of speculative high physics, a traditional adventure/exploration story updated to a story arc that takes place over 5 million years and yet through imaginative plotting maintains the same characters throughout. It's the first time I can remember being so totally engrossed in a science fiction story, fascinated by the universe building and willingly excited by end of chapter story revelations; there's just so much wonder contained within these 450 pages, more and more layers of awesome ideas and concepts and descriptions of theoretical events that last right through to the final page.
Lieserl the biologically engineered child who ages one year per day for spoilertastic reasons involving a 5 million year human plan to study the death of The Sun, and the opening chapter told from her point of view is just one of those feats of creation that will surely draw you in and excite your imagination as the assorted motley crew of travellers across space and time finally come face to face with Baxter's godlike creations, the Xeelee, and the ultimate artefact of their engineering prowess, the Ring.
Ring is technically the fourth book in the amazing Xeelee sequence but also stands completely alone as its own creation, as do the other three books in the series it turns out. I spent the entirety of Ring waiting for an explanation of how such wonderful and bizarre science fiction creations as earlier Xeelee books Flux and Raft could possibly be tied in to the same universe and the way Baxter links them is with quiet audacity, somewhat akin to the way Asimov returned to his Foundation sequence to link his Empire and Robots books in to it but with a great deal more subtlety. The numbering of this sequence seems arbitrary, in many ways you might get more from them by taking on this wondrous creation first and then taking the other three as an expansion of the themes and ideas contained within.
I love Stephen Baxter's writing; he's a genuine nerdcore writer who manages to write hard-sci fi that's almost like fantasy. He really takes Arthur C Clarke's famous quote "A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," and wraps stories around it. In Ring we have a character who has been uploaded into the sun to find out why it's dying, a character who dragged a wormhole into the future, accidentally unleashes an alien invasion from the future as a result, and manifests himself in the quantum foam of the universe to help save the human race at very end of time. He throws in birds made of dark matter, and astounding array of concepts and at times you start to suspect you've missed something. Well in my case that's because I had. This book is the last book of the Xeelee novels (and there I thought 'Transcendence' was the last one) and takes that universe, and its millenia old war between the expansionist Human race, and the "baryonic lords," the Xeelee to it's fascinating conclusion. So now I really need to go and read 'Raft' and some of the earlier books that explore the fascinating life of Michael Pool.
I enjoy Baxter's SciFi even though so far, the few stories I've read have been depressing. Ring would appear to be the height of that trend, so I'm looking forward to reading other less depressing books of his. He certainly seems to be a fan of the old saying "If you want to make G-d laugh, tell him your plans.". Sure, the book is about the heat death of the universe, but that's not the most depressing part of it. I feel sorry for the characters because none of their plans ever come to fruition. They are at the mercy of forces much larger than themselves (including human arrogance) and they suffer because of it.
It sounds odd, but I enjoyed it despite finding it to be depressing.
It sounds odd, but I enjoyed it despite finding it to be depressing.
Meh. Slow and too obviously trying to teach people physics using poorly characterised dialogue.
More mind-expanding stuff from Baxter. Decent but not as good as the previous ones.
I really enjoyed this book and felt like it was a good follow-up to Timelike Infinity. Overall I did prefer the tighter story of TI, though Baxter did not fail to expand his massive ideas in the deep future. The progression of the generation ship over the 1,000 year journey was fascinating, and the depictions of our solar system in the late universe were solemn and morbidly beautiful. I loved the story and character of Lieserl and felt that she really made up for the lack of quality characters otherwise. Again, Baxter loves his scientific info dumps, but once again I felt like I came out of it smarter and with a greater understanding of the sun’s composition especially (I did need to supplement my reading with extensive reading of Wikipedia and educational YouTube videos, but isn’t that all part of the fun??).
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
First half of the book is pure gold in an epic scale but I somehow did not like when the handwavium Extra Super FTL hyperdrive appeared, it wasn't that bad to compromise the whole book but I was not expecting that at all. Probably it made sense in some way for the plot but It also made the universe looks like a small city and it sort of broke that sense of wonder you got when you reading about the Ring, super strings, etc.
Apart from that, it could be a full 5 star book.
Apart from that, it could be a full 5 star book.