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Title: Ring |
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Review of Ring
- Michael Poole's wormholes constructed in the orbit of Jupiter had opened the galaxy to humankind. Then Poole tried looping a wormhole back on itself, tying a knot in space and ripping a hole in time.
It worked. Too well. Poole was never seen again. Then from far in the future, from a time so distant that the stars themselves were dying embers, came an urgent SOS--and a promise. The universe was doomed, but humankind was not. Poole had stumbled upon an immense artifact, light-years across, fabricated from the very string of the cosmos.
The universe had a door. And it was open...
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Comments for Ring
- Posted on 2008-06-12
Fundamentally Flawed
There are (at least) three devastating flaws in this book.
1: Baxter, despite his obvious grasp of cosmology, becomes so caught up in telling a story that spans millions of years that he simply forgets that light is still subject to its eponymous speed limit. For example, the characters notice the same abnormalities in the stellar lifecycle of stars across the galaxy (and beyond) at the same time; in fact, as Baxter well knows, an event occuring 100,000 thousand light years (or 150 million) will not be evident for another 100,000 (or 1 million) years. Baxter utterly fails to represent this most basic physical fact, and insists on presenting concurrent events separated by millions of light years as being visible at the same time.
2: The book posits the absolutely ubiquitous and universal evolution of a life form, members of which behave identically with identical results though separated by billions of light years; we know this because, again, Baxter makes changes happening now, billions of light years away, visible immediately.
3: His characters are horribly drawn, and his dialog is completely banal, littered with the same didactic turns and cheap ploys from start to end. First, every single time one character explains something to another (which happens a lot), they begin the sentence or paragraph with the other's name; e.g. "Louise, this is..." or "Morrow, that is..." Secondly, every single time a character is upset, they say "damn you", "damn it" or just "damn". Usually it's "damn you". Both of these patterns became so obvious by the end of the book that it was almost funny.
Baxter is clearly a brilliant guy and I love his big ideas, including those in this book, which is why i gave it two stars instead of one; I thought Evolution was 3/4 astoundingly good. But reading the last quarter of this book actually made me angry at him, for losing his great ideas in such a muddle of poor decisionmaking.
Score: 2
- Posted on 2007-11-22
Physics lessons hidden in epic fiction
This book had some great information about stellar physics and then proceeded to a tour of some truely giant machines of war. The humans are primitives getting to view some of the battle fields of the photino vs. xeelee war. The view is fantastic. Galactic scale machines using, and being undone by, quantum effects.
Add in the usual Baxterisms of human societies evolving over millenia. In Ring, however, I think the character development is a bit better than in some of the other books.
Score: 5
- Posted on 2007-10-27
Epic Science Fiction
I loved it. It is hard to believe this story was imagined, let alone written. Take a mixed bag of characters (virtual humans, genetically altered primitive humans, space born humans, etc.) place them in exotic locations from the heart of our sun to the great attractor and then send on a journey through millions of years of time and millions of light years in distance to the very end of the universe itself and you have a novel worthy of any SF fan's attention. Baxter's knowledge of hard science, creative imagination and story-telling skills deliver a strong addition to the cannon of hard SF with Ring. Don't let this one pass you by.
Score: 5 - Posted on 2007-10-12
Unbelievable Ring
Stephen Baxter must have had to meet a novel contract in a short amount of time. So what did he do? He took an old short story and used a 10 pound sledge hammer to merge it into an old story loop. He expounds upon trajectories quite a bit. Trajectories both "time-like" and "space-like." With section titles such as "Trajectory: Time-Like" and... you can guess the rest of it. What it amounts to is something that is "boring-like." Wait. Strike that. It isn't like something that is boring, it is boring all by itself. The characters are stiff and unbelievable, the style the science is written in very condescending and repetitive. This novel bears no resemblance to some of his earlier work, like Raft, which is very good. I would give Raft five stars, but unfortunately cannot give less than one for this dreck. Don't waste your money on this.
EDIT: Since writing this review, I decided that maybe I was a little too harsh. Baxter is an incredible writer, so maybe my disappointment with this volume added a little to the tone of the review. He most definitely deserves kudos for such far-ranging vision as he displayed in this work, so I would give him two more stars for a total of three if I could.
Score: 1
- Posted on 2007-04-24
techno-novel lacking soul
This was an award winner, which beat out The Algebraist. I disagree with the outcome. Ring is definitely full of goopy science (particles, strings, quantum mechanics, etc.) - all things the geeks love. I'd prefer a better science-based story over the profusion of hard-science.
Only a few things got me interested in this book. The situations the characters faced were kind of dry. I wanted something more juicy, epic and humorous. Don't get me wrong, the sun burning out and the universe coming to an end is epic (duh), but it doesn't feel epic in his writing.
This is more of a technical work than an opera. Regardless, fine read.
Score: 4