Forget such conventional novelistic virtues as characters, linear plotting, or continuous narrative; instead, Baxter offers...
This second part of Baxter's spectacular hard-science trilogy has nothing in common with Manifold: Time (2000) except the protagonist, astronaut Reid Malenfant. In 2020, Malenfant, forced into retirement following the collapse of the US space program, yet still convinced that humanity must expand into space, spends his time on the speech circuit and wondering why no alien civilizations have been detected, when theoretically there should be many spreading through the galaxy. Then researcher Nemoto detects intruders in the asteroid belt. Engaged in industrial activity, the multi-limbed, robotlike “Gaijin” seem little interested in humanity. Reid and Nemoto cobble together a ship, so that Malenfant can go find the Gaijin star gate. When Malenfant enters, he ends up at Alpha Centauri and runs out of air. The Gaijin save him, begin to communicate, and send him farther and farther afield. Meanwhile, back in the solar system, the Gaijin begin to trade and exchange ideas with humanity. Nemoto accumulates evidence that numerous bodies were modified in the remote past by now-vanished aliens. The Gaijin, indeed, know that new civilizations constantly appear, spread rapidly, then always collapse before maturing. More aliens approach the solar system: these Crackers cause stars to go nova, for reasons unknown; the Gaijin prepare defenses against them. What causes civilizations to collapse every time? Why should the Gaijin bother to defend the solar system, and why are they so interested in Reid Malenfant?
Forget such conventional novelistic virtues as characters, linear plotting, or continuous narrative; instead, Baxter offers challenging puzzles and mind-boggling extrapolations in a sweeping yarn that explodes with ideas.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2001
ISBN: 0-345-43077-8
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2000
An almost-but-not-quite-great slavery novel.
The celebrated author of Between the World and Me (2015) and We Were Eight Years in Power (2017) merges magic, adventure, and antebellum intrigue in his first novel.
In pre–Civil War Virginia, people who are white, whatever their degree of refinement, are considered “the Quality” while those who are black, whatever their degree of dignity, are regarded as “the Tasked.” Whether such euphemisms for slavery actually existed in the 19th century, they are evocatively deployed in this account of the Underground Railroad and one of its conductors: Hiram Walker, one of the Tasked who’s barely out of his teens when he’s recruited to help guide escapees from bondage in the South to freedom in the North. “Conduction” has more than one meaning for Hiram. It's also the name for a mysterious force that transports certain gifted individuals from one place to another by way of a blue light that lifts and carries them along or across bodies of water. Hiram knows he has this gift after it saves him from drowning in a carriage mishap that kills his master’s oafish son (who’s Hiram’s biological brother). Whatever the source of this power, it galvanizes Hiram to leave behind not only his chains, but also the two Tasked people he loves most: Thena, a truculent older woman who practically raised him as a surrogate mother, and Sophia, a vivacious young friend from childhood whose attempt to accompany Hiram on his escape is thwarted practically at the start when they’re caught and jailed by slave catchers. Hiram directly confronts the most pernicious abuses of slavery before he is once again conducted away from danger and into sanctuary with the Underground, whose members convey him to the freer, if funkier environs of Philadelphia, where he continues to test his power and prepare to return to Virginia to emancipate the women he left behind—and to confront the mysteries of his past. Coates’ imaginative spin on the Underground Railroad’s history is as audacious as Colson Whitehead’s, if less intensely realized. Coates’ narrative flourishes and magic-powered protagonist are reminiscent of his work on Marvel’s Black Panther superhero comic book, but even his most melodramatic effects are deepened by historical facts and contemporary urgency.
An almost-but-not-quite-great slavery novel.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-399-59059-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The body count is high, the gadgetry pure genius, the sex scenes deliriously overwrought, and the worn cynicism thoroughly...
A cyberwarrior from another planet is reborn on Earth to do a rich man’s bidding and is none too happy about it. Takeshi Kovacs is a hard-case kid from the colony-planet Harlan’s World (guess which two ethnic groups comprised the majority of its settlers) recently decommissioned from the Envoys—overtrained, amoral shock troops that enforce the laws of the galaxy laid down by the United Nations—and more recently turned to a life of crime. A police raid leaves him and his accomplice/girlfriend dead, but that’s not an immediate problem, since in the 25th century the dead are simply taken to clinics where their “stack” (a small metal tube embedded in the spine that contains a backup of their personality, memory, DNA, etc.) is then loaded into a new “sleeve,” or body. Resleeved and woken on Earth, Kovacs finds himself summoned to the Bay Area home of Laurens Bancroft, a filthy-rich member of the class known as “Meths” (for Methuselah) because they could afford to be continuously resleeved over the centuries. Bancroft thinks that when someone shot him in the head the other day and ruined that sleeve, somebody was trying to murder him, though the local cops think he was just trying to kill himself and doesn’t remember because his stack hadn’t been backed up yet. His only choice being to return to Harland’s World, Kovacs is sent off to find his new boss’s killer. The way ahead is quickly littered with the bodies of the unsavory types he comes across and with enough juicy future-detail to make any veteran SF scribe jealous.
The body count is high, the gadgetry pure genius, the sex scenes deliriously overwrought, and the worn cynicism thoroughly distasteful: a welcome return to cyberpunk’s badass roots.Pub Date: March 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45768-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2002
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
