Average customer rating:
- Self-mating
- The heart of Botswana
- A couple of academic bags of hot air
- Where was the editor?
- A compulsive talker writes and writes
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Mating: A Novel
Norman Rush
Manufacturer: Vintage
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ASIN: 067973709X
Release Date: 1992-09-01 |
Amazon.com
Had Jane Austen been in the Peace Corps in Africa in the 1980s, Mating is the book she might have written. Set in Botswana in the days before the end of apartheid, Norman Rush's novel is, essentially, a comedy of manners played out in Austen's approved milieu: a country village. Granted, the village in question, Tsau, is a utopian society created by the great American anthropologist Nelson Denoon, and run largely by and for disenfranchised and abused African women. Still, the issue that interests Rush (and the one that fueled Austen's novels) is the age-old question of who mates with whom, and why? The unnamed narrator is a 32-year-old postgraduate student in anthropology whose dissertation has just gone south on her. Drifting around the edges of the expatriate community in Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, she first meets Denoon:
He was smiling at Kgosetlemang--the event was to be considered over with, clearly--and I could tell that his gingivae were as good as mine; which is saying a lot. I attend to my gums. People in the bush don't always attend to their oral hygiene, not to mention other niceties. There was no sign of that here. I of course am fanatical about my gums because my idea of what the movie I Wake Up Screaming is about is a woman who has to keep dating to find her soulmate and she's had to get dentures. I have very long-range anxieties.
Entranced by this potential soulmate, our heroine strikes out into the Kalahari Desert with a couple of donkeys and follows him to his utopia where sexual attraction, regional politics, and social experimentation make for very strange bedfellows, indeed.
Mating is a fiercely intelligent, hugely ambitious novel that takes on feminism, socialism, political corruption, foreign-sponsored rural development projects, and, yes, male-female relations in ways that are simultaneously hilarious and disturbing. Certainly Rush's language is a big part of what makes the novel work: the narrator's combination of elevated vocabulary and wacky non sequiturs is inspired. When, for example, Denoon explains to her that most of the women in Tsau are celibate and therefore so is he, she reflects that "of course the spiritus rector of a female community would need to be a sexual solitary, at least during the foundational period." She then wonders if "this situation was the analog of western series on television where the female watchership shrank to nothing when the producers let the marshal get married." Mating is remarkable for its wit, its acuity, and its ability to satirize without demeaning; it's also a heck of an entertaining story. Jane Austen would have been proud. --Alix Wilber
Book Description
Set in the African republic of Botswana--the locale of his acclaimed short story collection, Whites--Norman Rush's novel simultaneously explores the highest of intellectual high grounds and the most tortuous ravines of the erotic. tackles the geopolitics of poverty and the mystery of what men and women really want.
Customer Reviews:
Self-mating.......2007-07-11
It's about mating. The gold seal of the National Book Award glitters on the cover. Gushing review quotes from The New York Times Book Review, Chicago Tribune and Philadelphia Inquirer fill the front and back and more from the usual hip and intellectually superior sources grace the inside flap. Norman Rush looks cool with his Hemingway beard and kimono get up, but the book is still only about mating.
The narrator is an American ex-pat in Africa, out to get her kicks and write about them in a superior and vaguely stream of consciousness fashion. She is particularly superior to religion, knowing that the Zionist Christian Church is a sect that "sold its soul to the Botha regime". It must feel good and righteous to know this and say so on page twelve. Under the guise of anthropological snippets, she hides a profound racial disdain, masquerading, as is usual with liberal intellectuals of her ilk, as egalitarian with-it-ness.
She develops an interest for a reclusive aid activist from the United States who runs a utopian and very politically correct village in the remote desert. She lusts after him, pursues him and follows him, knowing full well that he is married. She meets the wife and even seems to be getting her collusion, so this must make the pursuit of the married for mating morally ok.
But hold on, there is all this soul searching and fulfillment and, yes, really good mating. Nonetheless, the Boers are BAD and she is ashamed to be an American, Ronnie at the helm at the time, naturally being a fearful disgrace. Curious how the invention of the concentration camp to terrorize the Boers never comes up among her seemingly well informed factoids.
The utopian village run by the hero, preposterously called "The Solar Democrat", is nothing short of the fondest dreams concocted by the ecologist, anti-enterprise, feminist, secular elite. It is laughable how palpably absurd the science, engineering and social constructs of this idealized heaven in the Kalahari comes across. Fact checking and simple common sense would tell even the most gullible reader with minimal critical reasoning skills what kind of hubris this really is. This has never stopped a successful National Book Award winner, especially if there are regular, albeit pointless, description of and about, well, you guessed it, mating.
The ex-pat is admitted to the matriarchy by the village's model soviet (the "mother committee") because she was `seen as a friend of the poor women to gather strength and wealth'. There are plenty of groaners like that, but, no, wait, it gets more corny. The `ruling sex' apparently suppresses male genitalia displays by memorizing batting averages. Less benign is the author's misrepresentation of basic Christian tenets, where God is in control of every individual thing that happens and Alcoholics Anonymous uses `pop' theology. Hip intellectuals do not attend AA meetings. That's for hicks, Republicans and people that still believe there is more than mating to human relations.
After a particularly absurd diatribe about men loving prison and killing in the military, the protagonist justifies his brilliant position by observing that some African street performer in Paris is watched almost exclusively by men. PLEEEASE ! French men watching street art in Paris? That scene alone, in the mind's eye, should disqualify the observation from any sort of conclusion. And then there is the biometeorological cause for the existence of religion being better than magic mushrooms, followed, of course, by more coital details.
"The oldest male racket ever invented was hunting", and hunters make a laughable contribution to diet, so, of course, guns can't be good and never mind the presence of lions that threaten livestock and population. Even the local soviet does not buy that line, but it's good to know that hunting is an invented racket that contributes nothing serious, as opposed to, say, lipstick and fashion which have served so well to keep the hunters interested in mating. Scatological mating with clinical justification and while modesty "can be a little erotic", in the end "all religions manipulate and pump up human hysteria..." These misrepresentation continue: "Christ himself, . . ., never saw his doctrines extending as far as the condemnation of human slavery." Here the author's complete ignorance of Passover and Jesus' perfect connection to it is clearly exposed.
There is the insight about the Catholic church's unintentional creation of a haven for sodomites and pederasts by institutionalizing celibacy as well as her model socialism. There is honesty also in the admission that only religious aid workers stay on in the mean streets of the world, whereas secular `we-know-what-ails-you' experts find their own creations below standards of civilized life. Albeit, beneath the surface of Mother Theresa's benevolence lurks the motivation of self-punition. There is some aspect of that in reading through the second half of the book.
The succinct quote from Lenin that "The state is bodies of armed men" is akin to Mao's "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun". When the local soviet of the utopia authorizes the acquisition of Enfields, the protagonist cleverly controls access via his role as "guardian of the social surplus." Neither the fabulous arrogance of such a position, nor it's profound and sinister significance is anywhere acknowledged. That control of access to weapons is identical to ownership and what this makes the `guardian' and the mothers on the committee becomes clear from the context. All protestations aside about this utopia being apolitical and different from, say, `socialism', it is in fact a re-hash and post-modern hip reconstruct of the village soviet run by enlightened party members with the correct `attitude'.
Lamps will burn for twenty-four hours on two quarts of sunflower oil, but oh, how does one make two quarts of sunflower oil? That's a lot of sunflower seeds, grinding, pressing and filtering to keep a beer keg light fixture lit with its kaleidoscope of psychedelic loveliness. Never mind, because for The One who guards the surplus, such considerations are beyond the pale. Single malt whiskeys are regularly shipped to the Dear Leader in Pyongyang. The only thing missing are Jews: "... but there were no Jews there. All of my best friends were Jews." Yeah, and I have some friends who are Catholic. What exactly was that supposed to mean?
The hateful diatribes continue. The narrator is saved from a "berserk clutching" at religion, because faith may be caused by "thunder and lightning and wondering what the stars are, ..., but once it gets rolling it's about self-hatred". This is almost too self-revealing about the true ideological state of the hero and, by extension, the writer. By the way, there are no redwoods in Yreka, Norman, and marriage is not a wrestling match. Male prostitution is no different from any other, no matter how clever it appears to fit the theme of the book. The decay of the utopia is not from some traditionalist gender reversal, but made inevitable by its own internal inconsistency and absurdity.
The greatest absurdity is that we could possibly learn something here about world-historical processes or the "impending general planetary crisis", class analysis, feminism or the limited liability corporation. Naturally, that is exactly the conceit. Unfortunately, it's mostly just about mating, intellectual self-mating.
The heart of Botswana.......2007-06-06
As someone who lived in Botswana as a young fellow for several years, lost his heart there in endless ways, I cannot have an unbiased view of this book. It finds the heart of Botswana from an expatriate's view and demonstrates love and compassion for that heart. Rush has his finger on the pulse of social tension and cultural evolution. It may not resonate for one who has never lived in or beside the Kalahari. It may not resonate for a Motswana. But for a fellow expatriate who found another world in those long horizons and high skies - a world of love, deep poetry and possibility - this book is outstanding. It will never leave my bedside as long as I live. Every sentence is precious and resonates. And ... an invidious comparison perhaps ... I far prefer it to Rush's other books that turn on Botswana. Mating is unique.
A couple of academic bags of hot air.......2007-05-30
Go to Africa and pontificate. I don't know why this book got the great reviews it did. I found it almost embarrassing to be stuck in the heads of characters with such inflated self-images. Seeing the world through their eyes was like being stuck on a long car drive with your spouse's uncle, who thinks he knows everything and never shuts up. Some people may have liked the "famous social scientist" who is just a self-satisfied man, pleased to think he is king of his small kingdom. I found it utterly boring. Occasional attempts at wit or insight didn't redeem this book for me. I'd say avoid it diligently.
Where was the editor?.......2007-03-26
Though this book has won awards and appeared on "Must Read" lists, I began to wonder if people had read a different book. Or maybe just the comments on the back cover? It did not bother me that the main character was pompous and wordy--some of her opinions were spot -on correct. The problems are pacing, plot, and ability to move the story forward without extraneous characters, un-necessary chance occurances, or pages and pages of socio-anthropologic babble. Unfortunately, the descriptions of Africa in the first sections had gotten my attention, so I continued reading til the bitter end. The last few chapters were particularly unsatisfying. I never expected a happy ending, or even one where all the plot lines tied together. It was as if the writer also got tired and decided the best plan was to maroon characters, inexplicably, in Botswana and California. I was hoping someone would be eaten by a lion--it would have been a more fitting end.
This book is one to borrow from the library. Definitely do not waste your money on a personal copy.
A compulsive talker writes and writes.......2007-03-03
Original, insufferable, grandstanding, unbearable, relentless, and (in its evocations of Africa) often stunning and memorable. I so much prefer Norman Rush's astounding short stories in WHITES. In a more disciplined form he is able to contain his stories and contain himself, but the liberating spaciousness of the novel, in throwing open the verbal floodgates, has been fatal to the otherworldly world he wants to make real.
Average customer rating:
- Sexual Chocolate
- A steamy page turner that's hard to put down
- Keepin it real....
- Can I rate this half a star?
- Sex in The Chocolate City
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The Mating Game
Jonathan Luckett
Manufacturer: Strebor Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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How Ya Livin'
ASIN: 159309101X |
Book Description
A sensuous, exhilarating ride through romance that takes an intimate look into the passions and pitfalls of modern urban life.
Trey, Vince, and Erika are best friends -- all single -- who live in Washington D. C. and are on the lookout for love. Blessed with intelligence, successful careers, and good looks, one would think the dating scene would be a snap for them. However, despite their charm, wit, and acheivements, none of their diverse approaches to the dating game are getting results.
In The Mating Game, Jonathan Luckett examines the lives of these three friends who seem to have it all -- except someone to share it with. Trey is an often arrogant ladies' man with a quick tongue and dapper good looks. His friend and alter ego Vince is the ruggedly handsome, hopelessly romantic Renaissance man who is searching high and low for his ideal mate. And then there is the confidant, beautiful, no-nonsense Erika, who thinks she has found the man of her dreams, only to find out the opposite. However, when two mysterious women enter the scene, their lives -- and their friendships -- are turned upside down.
From the streets of Washington and New York to the steamy French Quarter of New Orleans, Trey, Vince, and Erika leave a trail of pandemonium in their wake as they search for love, sometimes in all the wrong places.
Customer Reviews:
Sexual Chocolate.......2007-07-03
The book was pretty good, even though the character Trey kinda got on my last nerve. It's a very descriptive book. I could visualize almost every scene described in the book-Good job Mr. Luckett. I did not give it a 5 star for the same reason that someone else wrote, I was disappointed in how it just ended.
Jackie from Ebony Eyes book club
A steamy page turner that's hard to put down.......2007-07-03
...be careful, however, of where you choose to read it. Some of the scenes are rather intense and may cause you to giggle, blush or get hot around the neck/ears;)
The book was not a five for me because it ended too abruptly and the description on the back cover did not match the book's contents. Despite its shortcomings, I am still looking forward to reading the sequel.
Keepin it real...........2007-04-29
DC dating and reality slaps you right in the face! Looking forward to the next book to see the three main characters in the Mating Game come full circle.
Can I rate this half a star?.......2007-04-11
I was anxiously awaiting the release of this book and I can't find enough words to say how disappointed I was once I began to read this book! It was long, tedious and just plain boring.
Sex in The Chocolate City .......2007-02-11
Jonathan Luckett's THE MATING GAME, originally released as How Ya Livin', is the first half of the tale of three best friends- Trey, Vince and Erika and their quest to find the right mate. All three are residents of Washington, DC., holding down successful careers and are very attractive. The story is shared mainly from Trey's point of view. When he is not handling high-profile divorce cases, he is actively pursuing erotic encounters. Haunted by an ex-lover, he involves himself with numerous women to feed his over-inflated ego.
Vince, an author and an inspirational speaker, is a romantic. In his search for "Ms. Right", he is not sure which of the women he's seeing is the one. Erika rounds out the trio. She is a fine and extremely sexy sister who has it all together. The new man in her life is handsome, a very arduous lover and financially stable but she can't shake the feeling that something is not right.
I felt THE MATING GAME was saying a lot but not really saying anything at all. The scenes were humorous and sizzling, but the unrealistic ego of the main character was over the top, which took away from the story. Erica's character could have been developed more. Luckett kept the action moving, so I could easily make it through the story but I found myself wondering where it was going because the book just ended. This is due to the fact that How Ya Livin' is now split into two books and the second half is the sequel. Maybe that volume will provide the answers that I seek.
Reviewed by Paula Henderson
of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers
Average customer rating:
- Imaginative and keeps you wanting more
- An ethereal charmer
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The Mating Season: A Novel
Alex Brunkhorst
Manufacturer: Picador
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: B000KHXCCG
Release Date: 2005-06-16 |
Book Description
The Mating Season A Novel Alex Brunkhorst A poignant debut novel about the magic of love and its power to transform the world orka Carpenter lives a life completely devoted to animals. In a glass house on a hill she spends her days absorbed in her menagerie. Enigmatic architect Richard Dorsey has spent his life trying to escape the fame he garnered in his youth. Living in a world of his own construction, he finds solace only in the past. When these two worlds collide in a magical tryst both Zorka and Richard are challenged to escape their isolated lives and find connection in the hearts of one another. Astonishingly in-ventive, Alex Brunkhorst's The Mating Season is a dazz-ling work of the imagination, and a piercing look at the human heart. 'Welcome to an enchanted kingdom-a world where women talk to their furniture and bugs are household pets......A rare gem: extraordinarily in-ven-tive, full of irrepressible humor and warmth. Alex Brunkhorst writes like no one else. Her voice is as welcome and refreshing as a cool drink of spring water. This beautiful book sparkles with charm.' -Lisa Dierbeck, author of One Pill Makes You Smaller: A Novel 'A strange and gorgeous novel about the symbiotic relationship between loneliness and love. You can feel your heart expanding as you read it.' -Joseph Weisberg, author of 10th Grade ALEX BRUNKHORST graduated from Georgetown University. A native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, she currently lives in Los Angeles. The Mating Season, originally written as a Christmas present for her boyfriend at the time, is her first novel. Fiction 0-312-31853-7 $24.95 $34.95 Canadian 51/2" x 81/4" / 352 pages July
Customer Reviews:
Imaginative and keeps you wanting more.......2005-12-02
A very unique book, I really enjoyed reading it. If youre looking for an intricate plot, this is not the book, but if youre looking for imagination and a unique telling of a sad love story, this is a great book for you. I was also extremely impressed to learn that this is the author's first novel...
An ethereal charmer.......2004-07-24
The charms of this book are so absorbing and the main character so compelling that it's hard to believe it's a first novel. Although I rarely delve into fiction by new authors, I can honestly say this book makes me reconsider that oversight--I read it all in one sitting! I look forward to seeing many more books by this bright young author in the future as she continues to refine her decidedly idiosyncratic style.
Average customer rating:
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Mating Birds: A Novel
Lewis Nkosi
Manufacturer: St Martins Pr
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Binding: Hardcover
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The Pickup
ASIN: 0312522959 |
Book Description
The story of a young South African black man obsessed with an English girl whom he encounters on the segregated Durban beachfront is told from the narrator's prison cell in this classic African novel. Although no words are exchanged, a connection develops between the two mismatched lovers, leading to an intense and ambiguous sexual encounter. He is charged with rape and receives the death sentence. Reconstructing his own history, his obsession with the girl, and his court proceedings, the narrator offers a powerful examination of the warped racial morality and brutality of apartheid.
Average customer rating:
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The Mating Cry
Manufacturer: Gold Medal
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000EXVSI6 |
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Another Lovable Betty Neels ..........2006-11-29
Book Description: When distinguished surgeon Gerard van Doorninck asked Staff Nurse Deborah Culpepper to marry him, his reasons were practical, not romantic. As she had been secretly in love with Gerard for some time, Deborah accepted his terms and hoped for the best. It might all have worked out very happily, had Gerard's friend Claude van Trapp not done his best to try and spoil things!
Gerard is an Orthpaedic Surgeion/Consultant and Deborah, his Theatre Sister, has secretly been in love with him for a long time. She knows he appreciates her nursing skills but doesn't see her as a woman; she is suprised and thrilled when he asks her to marry him. He tells her of course that it is a marriage of convenience. Included are the scenic, architectural, and food descriptions as any Neels reader may expect. ... This Good-Looking Rich Dutch Doctor and Good-Looking British Nurse is a lovable and slightly different Betty Neels - this time the spoiler is a male.
Coenraad & Adelaide van Essen from "Sister Peters in Amsterdam" and Dominic & Abigail van Wijkelen from "Saturday's Child" appear in this story.
Comfort food for a reader's soul........2006-06-24
Reading Betty Neels is like listening to George Strait, if you like one song chances are you are going to like all the others, if not, move on. Ms. Neels has essentially written the same story 134 times and if it pleased you once it will satisfy over and over. In this book Deborah, surgical nurse, has secretly been in love with the Dutch doctor who has been working at her hospital for two years. He seems aloof and oblivious to her and others. As the story opens he pops in and asks her to marry him as he is leaving for Holland and wants a companion and hostess to manage his home life and obligations while he continutes his practice. Love is not mentioned and Deborah, who had been on the point of fleeing, gives in and accepts. The plot progresses through fancy dinners and expensive fashions until love triumphs in the end. Though it sounds as if I am mocking, believe me it is just a gentle nudge as I have read most all of these books more than once already in my life and have a stack at hand to fall back on when real reading gets tough. Either this is a comfort zone for you or they will annoy you. But if you choose to embrace them, welcome to my world!
Stars Through The Mist.......2004-11-16
Gerard van Doorninck asked Deborah to marry him, explaining he had found her a sensible reliable girl--one who would make an ideal hostess for his home. Love was not mentioned. But loving him, Deborah found his offer better than losing him.
Average customer rating:
- Big Picture science fiction
- On a friend's recommendation
- A really dumb idea
- What happened to Baxter?
- Disappointing Trilogy Opener from Author of Moonseed
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Manifold: Time
Stephen Baxter
Manufacturer: Del Rey
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
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ASIN: 034543076X
Release Date: 2000-11-28 |
Amazon.com
Leave it to the consistently clever Stephen Baxter to pull the old bait and switch. A story that begins as a hoary asteroid-mining tale, set in 2010 against the by-now familiar spiel of fulfilling humanity's pan-galactic Manifest Destiny, instead takes a bold, delightful ascent into a trajectory far more ambitious. To ensure its survival, humankind need not merely master the galaxy but also the flow of time itself.
Manifold: Time's would-be asteroid-miner-in-chief is bootstrap space entrepreneur Reid Malenfant, a media-savvy firebrand who's showed those crotchety NASA folks what's what with his ready-to-fly Big Dumb Booster, piloted by a genetically enhanced super-squid. But Malenfant's near-term plans to exploit the asteroids get diverted when he crosses paths with creepy mathematician and eschatologist Cornelius Taine. Applying Bayes's theorem and a series of other statistical do-si-dos, Taine convinces Malenfant that an inescapable extinction event--the "Carter catastrophe"--is nigh, and that even working to colonize the galaxy might not be enough to save humanity. The answer: build a Feynman "radio" to listen to the future and, by detecting coded quantum waves traveling back through time, divine the fate of human "downstreamers" and find the key to their survival. Space flight, time travel, and even squid negotiations ensue, while Earth is gripped in Last Days madness.
Once again, the award-spangled Baxter gives us sci-fi at its beard-stroking best, with an imaginative, audacious plot line that's firmly grounded in good science, reminiscent of Baxter's own excellent Vacuum Diagrams. --Paul Hughes
Book Description
The year is 2010. More than a century of ecological damage, industrial and technological expansion, and unchecked population growth has left the Earth on the brink of devastation. As the world's governments turn inward, one man dares to envision a bolder, brighter future. That man, Reid Malenfant, has a very different solution to the problems plaguing the planet: the exploration and colonization of space. Now Malenfant gambles the very existence of time on a single desperate throw of the dice. Battling national sabotage and international outcry, as apocalyptic riots sweep the globe, he builds a spacecraft and launches it into deep space. The odds are a trillion to one against him. Or are they?
Download Description
The year is 2010. More than a century of ecological damage, industrial and technological expansion, and unchecked population growth has left the Earth on the brink of devastation. As the world's governments turn inward, one man dares to envision a bolder, brighter future. That man, Reid Malenfant, has a very different solution to the problems plaguing the planet: the exploration and colonization of space.
Now Malenfant gambles the very existence of time on a single desperate throw of the dice. Battling national sabotage and international outcry, as apocalyptic riots sweep the globe, he builds a spacecraft and launches it into deep space. The odds are a trillion to one against him. Or are they?
"A staggering novel! If you ever thought you understood time, you'll be quickly disillusioned when you read Manifold: Time."
SIR ARTHUR C. CLARKE
"A joy to read -- an exuberant and involving exploration of time."
GREG BEAR
"Reading Manifold: Time is like sending your mind to the gym for a brisk workout. If you don't feel both exhausted and exhilarated when you're done, you haven't been working hard enough."
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
Customer Reviews:
Big Picture science fiction.......2007-07-23
Time has been sitting on my bookshelf since the day it was published in 1999. Over the years I've collected the rest of the Manifold Sequence and they too have gathered dust. Every time I thought about starting on Time I'd talk myself out of it. Baxter has a reputation as the hardest of Hard SF writers and I usually just want something simple and fun to read before drifting off each evening. What I always forget is that, regardless of how 'hard' Baxter is, he is always very readable. So I started the book and quickly became so engrossed I was staying up late just to read one more section...and then another. That horrible cliche - of not being able to put it down - became a truth.
Baxter's most impressive talent is his ability to take the reader on a journey through time and space that encompasses years and distances that are almost unimaginable. The story begins in the year 2010 on Earth but extends trillions of years into the future and out to the farthest regions of space and through a multitude of universes. Baxter's self-confidence in writing about such grandiose elements permits the reader to be swept along for the ride. All of this is done with a minimum of difficult detail - Time isn't really a Hard SF novel after all. There's lots of science but for the most part it deals with such esoteric and hypothetical situations that it might as well be fantasy. The artefact, found on a near-Earth asteroid, that allows travel through time and space, is in essence a 'magic gate'.
I don't think Baxter gets all of his story right. In particular, the way he portrays humanity's response to the Carter Catastrophe and the images from the Deep Future just don't ring true for me. Perhaps I just have a more optimistic opinion of mankind's ability to deal with monumental crises. One of the most common complaints about Baxter's works is that his characters aren't multi-dimensional beings - each is a cypher that represents a single viewpoint. This is still true in Time. The three main characters - Reid Malefant, Emma Stoney and Cornelius Taine - don't behave in rational ways and they certainly don't seem to be entirely human in their motivations. Strangely - and interestingly - the exception to this one-dimensionality is the politician Maura Della. She is the only character that even slightly reflects on the moral dilemmas she encounters.
This is Big Picture science fiction and the little people don't matter. Lives are taken. Morality is up-turned. Science is destroyed. Cosmology is reinvented. Humanity fights and loses. And wins. It takes enormous talent to right about these sorts of concepts and to make that writing enjoyable. I'll be starting on Space, the first sequel to Time, fairly soon. I want to know what happens next - and that surely is the best recommendation a book can be given.
http://derekspace.blogspot.com/
On a friend's recommendation.......2007-04-06
Recently a friend and I were talking about science fiction over coffee, and he said that I needed to check out Baxter's work. I usually don't look for new fiction, I let it get suggested to me--that way I have some feeling of why it will appeal to me.
I picked Manifold: Time because its title suggested time travel, and I'm a sucker for time travel stories. Straight up time travel, science thrown to the side. I also love hard sci-fi. And Baxter delivered both.
When he talked about squid and their communication, I turned the page. I wanted more. He talked about going into space as a commercially viable enterprise, and I thought I was going to read a Heinlein book. Which would have been very good indeed.
Then Baxter threw his curve. He introduced an eccentric charater from an organization called Eschatology. At first I thought with a name like Eschatology, I might have stumbled in to Philip K. Dick, but was I wrong.
The man from Eschatology introduced the time element; which as I said, I was looking for. The time thread of the book begins, for all purposes, at Fermilab, which is home to the Tevatron. And Baxter painted a picture so accurate that it meshed with my memory--I grew up very near Fermilab. The deal was sealed.
He made good on the deal with his use of advance and retarded signals to advance the story. The quantum science of time. Oooo. And what's better than the science being right? Having it all get paid off the right way. No garbage. No deus ex machina. Just honest story telling while trying to unravel and explain the mysteries of our universe.
I would wholeheartely recommend this book to anyone who likes hard sci-fi. I'd peg Baxter as somewhere between Philip K. Dick, whose work Baxter has obviously read, and Robert Heinlein.
A really dumb idea.......2007-02-22
Caution, Spoilers Ahead
This is a really awful book--one of the few truly laughable works of recent so-called "hard"science fiction. While there are a lot of unrelated sub plots (with some admittedly interesting scientific "what if's,") the real plot line is simplistic, preposterous, muddle-headed and just downright offensive. In Baxter's hypothetical near future, people of the future somehow reach back in time to create a bunch of super intelligent children whose mission (we find in the end, after countless red herrings) is...wait for it...to destroy the universe! But, these kids are not the bad guys, because (in Baxter's view) the "heat death" of the universe is somehow intolerable to the human spirit. Thus, by destroying the universe ("It's the wrong universe!" exclaims one of the children) a new one with different physical laws will be created in its place; and even though everybody in the old universe dies a terrible death, it's ok because the new universe will somehow recreate the human mind and we will all live happily ever after in a universe that is eternal, set free of the horrible laws of thermodynamics.
This is about the loopiest idea for a science fiction story I've ever heard. It also puts Baxter squarely in the camp of the "we-are-the-only-intelligent-life-in-the-universe" crowd. As you may know, there are two lines of thought on extraterrestrial intelligence: "we are alone" is one; and "we are not alone" is the other. The math and statistics of each is camp points, not to a right or wrong analysis of the data, but rather insufficient data. It's an argument tantamount to the existence of God, with both sides stridently arguing their obvious correctness.
In any case, this novel is pure drivel, with an idiotic premise, and an idiotic conclusion.
What happened to Baxter?.......2007-02-18
Baxter was a super airplane read with Timeships, Vacuum Diagrams and Ring ... this Time, Space, Origin series lacks whatever it was that made his earlier work fun. I'll try his newest, Time's Tapestry. If there's not significant improvement, syonara Stephen.
Disappointing Trilogy Opener from Author of Moonseed.......2007-01-16
Stephen Baxter is an award-winning author who obviously takes great care in writing his carefully researched science-fiction novels. Manifold Time is book one in a trilogy about what happens to the world when people discover that the end is in sight. It's not your standard doomsday story, however, for a number of reasons, foremost among them being the painstaking care with which Baxter presents his central thesis: that the earth is doomed not because of an iminent threat such as a comet or global nuclear war but simply because of probability.
The book starts out confusing, levels out into understandable and exciting, builds to suspenseful, and then makes a disappointing decline into a long section of bewildering fluxation before finally going out with a fizzle. Hopefully books two and three in the trilogy will pick up a bit; I felt let down by the end of Manifold Time.
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Time (Manifold 1)
Stephen Baxter
Manufacturer: Voyager
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Binding: Paperback
Baxter, Stephen
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ASIN: 0006511821 |
Customer Reviews:
Excellent read.......2006-03-20
Baxter has written a very clever book, very enjoyable. I really liked the way he uses things like Feynman's radio in the story.
Product Description
This is a AIR FORCE INST OF TECH WRIGHT-PATTERSONAFB OH SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING report procured by the Pentagon and made available for public release. It has been reproduced in the best form available to the Pentagon. It is not spiral-bound, but rather assembled with Velobinding in a soft, white linen cover. The Storming Media report number is A693463. The abstract provided by the Pentagon follows: We propose a dual channel matched filtering system that addresses twokey challenges in the practical implementation of a single channel matched filtering system: secondary data support and computational cost. We demonstratedthat the dual channel system requires half the secondary data to achieve nearly the same signal-to-interference plus noise ratio (SINR) as an equivalent single channel system. The key to the dual channel system is the block diagonalization of the interference plus noise correlation matrix with a fixed transformation. We investigated the application of this dual channel concept to the problem of space-time adaptive processing (STAP), referring to the system as Block STAP. Weprovide evidence that the family of STAP correlation matrices cannot be simultaneously block diagonalized with a fixed transformation, and thus, the Block STAP processor is suboptimal. We propose a transformation selection criterion for minimizing the loss in SINR performance of the suboptimal Block STAP processor. Finally, we introduce the SINR metric and a new eigen-based, reduced-rank direct form STAP processor based on the SINR metric. The SINR metric is used to identify the eigenvectors of the correlation matrix that have the greatest impact on SINR performance of a direct form processor.
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Manifold
1. Time (1999)
2. Space (2000)
3. Origin (2001)
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Symmetries of Spacetimes and Riemannian Manifolds (Mathematics and Its Applications)
K.L. Duggal , and
R. Sharma
Manufacturer: Springer
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ASIN: 0792357930 |
Book Description
This book provides up-to-date information on metric (i.e. Killing, homothetic and conformal), connection (i.e. affine, conformal and projective), curvature collineations and curvature inheritance symmetries. It is the first-ever attempt to present a comprehensive account of a very large number of papers on symmetries of spacetimes and Riemannian manifolds. An attempt has been made to present the Lie group/algebra structures of symmetry vectors, their kinematics/dynamics, compact hypersurfaces (dealing with the initial value problem in general relativity) and lightlike hypersurfaces. This book also contains the latest information on symmetries of Kaehler, contact and globally framed manifolds.
Audience: Graduate students, post-doctoral students and faculty interested in differential geometry and/or general relativity.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Fairfield County Business Journal, published by Westfair Communications, Inc. on July 29, 1991. The length of the article is 664 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Danbury Business Forms seeks time to reorganize.
Author: Joan Stableford
Publication:
Fairfield County Business Journal (Magazine/Journal)
Date: July 29, 1991
Publisher: Westfair Communications, Inc.
Volume: v22
Issue: n27
Page: p1(2)
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Westchester County Business Journal, published by Westfair Communications, Inc. on July 8, 1991. The length of the article is 1075 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Interactive Business Products builds market one client at a time. (Interactive Business Products Company Inc.) (company profile)
Author: Caryn A. McBride
Publication:
Westchester County Business Journal (Magazine/Journal)
Date: July 8, 1991
Publisher: Westfair Communications, Inc.
Volume: v23
Issue: n30
Page: p10(1)
Article Type: company profile
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
As Eugene Peterson was writing The Message, his magnificent and popular translation of the Bible, he wanted readers to understand that forty years of living the message preceded the writing of it. The result is Living the Message, a unique daily reader that combines scriptural verses with Peterson's classic writings on the spiritual life.
Here readers are offered a daily spiritual companion that brings God's message vividly to life. With a new foreword by the author, this classic devotional presents readers with the tools and insights they need to go beyond an ordinary faith. Peterson draws on his profound reflections on the Bible, prayer, and community to usher the reader on a path of discovering the relevancy of God's word to our everyday lives.
From the author of nearly thirty books, Peterson's Living the Message weaves together insightful selections from some of his best works to produce a volume full of wisdom and hope. Reading this collection will endow your spiritual life with a new urgency and desire to live out your faith more fully.
Customer Reviews:
Daily Pick Up.......2000-07-10
This book provides the quickest way I know to have my heart touched first thing in the morning as I awake, turn to these pages, and know that Jesus loves me. His guidance is there each moment as the vicissitudes of daily living go on. Eugene Peterson and his wife have brought us a gem in this book. Every household needs it.
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