Time

What started off as a pretty dull, sub-Crichton, Space Cowboy type story turned into something much more compelling half way through. You need to persist past the near future 2010 and initially clunky technobabble but then pay-off is worth it; the same mind-bending stuff that Bear and Simmons regularly trade in.

Originally posted on bluchickenninja.com.

I think I should start this review by mentioning the cover of this book which is so pretty I took one look at it and immediately decided I needed to read this book. It wasn't even the cover of the first book I saw (this whole series has super pretty covers), all I knew is it was science-fiction, it was written by Stephen Baxter and it had to be mine. Now I know many people will say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover (even though we all do) and I am very pleased to say that this book is as good as it's cover.

I think the best way to describe this book is to compare it to Interstellar. Both start out on Earth and are about scientists who find a thing in space and so decide to send people out to take a closer look at the thing in space. But this is where it starts to get weird. Because the closest thing to an antagonist in this book is a bunch of smart squid. Yes, smart squid. And it's not even like the squid are really evil, they are just hanging out in space doing their thing which just so happens to prevent the scientists from doing their thing.

But there is a chapter that gets really weird which involves a squid being sent into the future. I don't mean a few thousand years, I mean trillions and trillions of years into the future, basically to the end of the universe. And that chapter is pretty terrifying if I'm going to be honest, because it shows a very bleak outlook for the human race. You basically get to see a race of people trying to survive by mining black holes for energy. And it's pointed out that even this won't be enough, at some point there won't be any more black holes and no matter how much this race of future beings tries to avoid it everything is going to turn to dust in the end. I think the even scarier thing is that most of the science behind this is real, seriously, if you want to terrify yourself go google the heat death of the universe. It might just ruin your day.

So basically Time is like Interstellar but better and with more science and smart jellyfish and even though it gets a little weird at the end nothing can compare to how weird the ending of Interstellar was.