Aber genug davon, hier soll ja in erster Linie das Buch bewertet werden. Es beginnt mit der Vorgeschichte, dem "Aufbruch der Menschheit" (wie er im Film genannt wird): Auf der Erde, 3 Millionen Jahre vor unserer Zeit, stehen die Menschenaffen (bzw. Urmenschen oder wie man sie auch nennen mag) kurz vor dem Aussterben, da sie ihren natürlichen Feinden hoffnungslos unterlegen sind und ihr Überlebenskampf von Tag zu Tag härter wird. Zu diesem Zeitpunkt erreicht ein Monolith außerirdischer Herkunft die Erde, mit dem Auftrag die dortigen Lebewesen zu sondieren. Nur bei den vermeintlich zum Untergang verdammten Urmenschen findet er eine Art Verstand, primitiv und sich selbst nicht bewußt, aber existent. Der Stein lehrt sie den Gebrauch von Werkzeugen und macht sie so zur überlegenen Lebensform dieses Planeten ...
Drei Millionen Jahre später wird von einer auf dem Mond errichteten Station ein Monolith gefunden, tief im Mondgestein vergraben und Millionen Jahre alt -- der unwiderlegbare Beweis für eine außerirdische Zivilisation. Der Fund wird geheimgehalten, um die Bevölkerung nicht in Panik zu versetzen und ein Raumschiff wird für einen Flug zum Saturn konstruiert, dem Ziel eines Energieblitzes, den der Monolith nach seiner Freilegung abgab. An Bord dieses Raumschiffs, der "Discovery", befinden sich sechs Besatzungsmitglieder, von denen vier bis zum Erreichen des Ziels in Kälteschlaf gesetzt wurden, um Ressourcen zu sparen. Als Entlastung der Crew, sozusagen als "7. Mann" ist ein Supercomputer der HAL-9000-Serie an Bord, der abgesehen von den sich in Kryostase befindlichen Crewmitgliedern, als Einziger die wahre Mission kennt.
Clarke (wie nebenbei bemerkt auch Kubrick) bemüht sich um möglichst große Realitätsnähe ohne daß das Ganze in Hard-SF "eskaliert": ob es sich um den Aufbau des Raumschiffs, den Flug an sich oder auch um die abschließende Reise durch das Sternentor (die übrigens sehr an "Contact" erinnert) handelt, es bleibt immer im Rahmen des technisch bzw. wissenschaftlich Vorstellbaren.
Vor allem die Kapitel in denen die Erzählperspektive sozusagen aus dem Raumschiff "herausschwenkt" und Hintergründe beispielsweise zu HAL oder dem Monolithen liefern, lockern die Handlung auf, da diese ansonsten (ab dem zweiten Drittel) nur auf einen Ort mit praktisch drei handelnden Personen beschränkt ist.
Das Ende "schreit" förmlich nach einer Fortsetzung, was Clarke anscheinend ebenso sah und 2010, 2061 sowie in jüngster Zeit, als Abschluß der Tetralogie, 3001 folgen ließ. Urteil: Interessantes Buch, auch -- oder besser vor allem -- für diejenigen, die den Film bereits gesehen haben. Es geht insoweit über den Film hinaus, als es die Ursachen für HALs "Fehlfunktionen" und vor allem die Geschehnisse am Ende erklärt. --Oliver Faulhaber
]]>Auch wenn Die Zeit-Odyssee lose an Arthur C. Clarkes überaus erfolgreiche Serie 2001-- Odyssee im Weltraum anknüpft, handelt es sich dabei um den Auftakt eines neuen Zyklus mit einer unabhängigen Handlung, der die Kenntnis der vorhergehenden Romane nicht voraussetzt. Das inzwischen bewährte Gespann Baxter und Clarke läuft einmal mehr zu erzählerischer Hochform auf und präsentiert eine atemberaubende Mischung aus Zeitreisegeschichte und Alternativweltroman. Die Geschichte bezieht ihre Spannung vor allem aus dem Zusammenprall epochaler Gegensätze und den vielen originellen Ideen, die die Autoren daraus ableiten. Leider bleiben die Figuren mitunter etwas auf der Strecke und wirken allzu oft ein wenig farblos und unmotiviert. -- Alles in allem jedoch ein fesselndes neues Science-Fiction-Abenteuer von zwei Könnern des Genres! --Sara Schade
]]>The Light of Other Days follows a soulless tech billionaire (sort of an older, more crotchety Bill Gates), a soulful muckraking journalist, and the billionaire's two (separated since birth) sons. It's 2035, and all four hold ringside seats at the birth of a new paradigm-destroying technology, a system of "WormCams," harnessing the power of wormholes to see absolutely anyone or anything, anywhere, at any distance (even light years away). As if that weren't enough, the sons eventually figure out how to exploit a time-dilation effect, allowing them to use the holes to peer back in time.
For Baxter's part, the Light of Other Days develops another aspect of Manifold's notion that humanity might have to master the flow of time itself to avert a comparatively mundane disaster (yet another yawn-inducing big rock threatening to hit the earth); Clarke, just as he did with Trigger's anti-gun ray, speculates on how a revolutionary technology can change the world forever. --Paul Hughes
]]>...and it leads all the way to the end of Eternity. But the journey has a terrible cost. It alters not only the future but he "present" in which we live.
A century after the publication of H. G. Wells' immortal The Time Machine, Stephen Baxter, today's most acclaimed new "hard SF" author, and the acknowledged Clarke, returns to the distant conflict between the Eloi and the Morlocks in a story that is at once an exciting expansion, and a radical departure based on the astonishing new understandings of quantum physics.
]]><CENTER>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.
<CENTER>The universe had a door. And it was open...
]]>A world-class disaster epic worthy of any Saturday matinee, Moonseed opens with the spectacular, explosive death of Venus, an event requiring energy a thousand billion times the world's nuclear arsenal. As the radioactive blast from the late Venus reaches Earth, scientists scramble to attribute a cause, with massless black holes and elementary particles the size of bacteria pointing towards some sort of superstring as the smoking gun. The pace quickens when the substance that may have caused the demise of Venus is accidentally introduced to Earth. This substance, dubbed moonseed, acts as a geological lubricant: processes that normally take millions of years occur in mere months with moonseed in the picture. Once Scotland and the state of Washington get gobbled up by this rock-eating, 10th-dimensional nano-lifeform, all hell breaks loose and the search turns towards finding safe refuge for humanity on the Moon. The book's second half is a seat-of-your-pants, what-if exploration of space travel and terraforming.
An over-the-top doomsday yarn by some measures, Moonseed keeps your feet on the ground with good science, good characters, and a good story. --Paul Hughes
]]>Possible signs of organic life have been found on Titan, Saturn's largest moon. A group of visionaries led by NASA's Paula Benacerraf plan a daring one-way mission that will cost them everything. Taking nearly a decade, the billion-mile voyage includes a "slingshot" transit of Venus, a catastrophic solar storm, and a constant struggle to keep the ship and crew functioning. But it is on the icy surface of Titan itself that the true adventure begins. In the orange methane slush the astronauts will discover the secret of life's origins and reach for a human destiny beyond their wildest dreams.
]]>Michael Poole, architect of the tunnel, must boldly confront the consequences of his genius.
Timelike Infinity: the strange region at the end of time where the Xeelee, owners of the universe, are waiting . . .
]]> Dozois's summation of the year in science fiction alone is worth the cost of admission to these annual collections. Along with his usual takes on publishing, literature, film, and more, Dozois delivers a retrospective on the state of science fiction in the year 2000. Contrary to those who claim science fiction is either dead or (at least) losing its heart and soul since the deaths of authors like Isaac Asimov and Robert J. Heinlein, Dozois emphatically argues that the health of SF has never been stronger. Discussing increased numbers of novels being published (he includes numbers to prove his point), discoveries of young new writers, ongoing evolution of the literature, and innovative viewpoints to mine, Dozois bubbles over with enthusiasm for the genre in which he made his name, as well as the coming century and its mysterious developments waiting to surprise and delight us. --Bonnie Bouman
Comprising:
The Juniper Tree by John Kessel;
Antibodies by Charles Stross;
The Birthday of the World by Ursula K. Le Guin;
Saviour by Nancy Kress;
Reef by Paul J. McAuley;
Going After Bobo by Susan Palwick;
Crux by Albert E. Cowdrey;
The Cure for Everything by Severna Park;
The Suspect Genome by Peter F. Hamilton;
The Raggle-Taggle Gypsy-O by Michael Swanwick;
Radiant Green Star by Lucius Shepard;
Great Wall of Mars by Alastair Reynolds;
Milo and Sylvie by Eliot Fintushel;
Snowball in Hell by Brian Stableford;
On the Orion Line by Stephen Baxter;
Oracle by Greg Egan;
Obsidian Harvest by Rick Cook and Ernest Hogan;
Patient Zero by Tananarive Due;
A Colder War by Charles Stross;
The Real World by Steven Utley;
The Thing About Benny by M. Shayne Bell;
The Great Goodbye by Robert Charles Wilson;
Tendeleo's Story by Ian McDonald.
For fifty thousand springs, Silverhair and her kind, the last of the woolly mammoths, have lived in a remote tundra, rimmed by ice and sea and mountain. Soon to be a mother, Silverhair looks to the future with hope. But even as her life begins, the world she loves is ending. A new menace, more vicious than any enemy, is descending upon the snowlands -- a two-legged creature that kills for joy. Desperate to save their kind, Silverhair and the matriarch, Owlheart, must travel across the glacial torrents, beyond the saw-toothed mountains. There they will seek help from the distant cousins who found their destiny in the sea, and from an enemy -- an ice-faced menace known as...the Lost.
]]>"The phase space of a system is the set of all conceivable states of that system," says the first page. As with "Manifold" these stories explore possible (and significantly linked) states of Earth and the universe, alternate timelines offering different solutions to Baxter's favourite cosmological question--the Fermi Paradox.
It's a simple idea. According to our best scientific theories there's nothing special about Earth or the Solar System. Intelligent life has evolved here--ourselves. It's likely to evolve elsewhere. The skies should be full of other intelligences. Where are they?
Perhaps our theories are wrong and we're in a galactic quarantine. Perhaps what we see through our telescopes is a clever fake--but supposing we overload the capabilities of the fakers? Maybe intelligence always destroys itself before crossing interstellar space, or something kindly takes emerging life away to a safer place. Perhaps there's teeming intelligence out there, but we're not listening on the right wavelength. Perhaps they're hiding...?
Another Baxter theme revisited again in this mind-stretching collection is the high-tech romance of the space programme and walking on the Moon. Alternate histories of space exploration are deftly conjured up, some of them wonderfully paranoid. Yet another theme is deep time--the unthinkable gulf from Big Bang to the final extinction of the universe and possibilities of life at both extremes.
Baxter at his best has a bleakly lyrical view of the remote future, reminiscent of Arthur C Clarke. There are homages to other classics, including Asimov's "Nightfall" and even Dante's Divine Comedy whose final vision of paradise takes on a highly unexpected SF meaning. --David Langford
]]>Paul McAuley's "Making History" On a ravaged space colony, a historian from the winning side of The Quiet War sets out to chronicle the official story-but will history record the most important battle?
Ian McDonald's "Tendeleo's Story" An alien technolife overruns the African savannah and infects its people-and a preacher's young daughter is at the center of its interstellar transformation.
]]>In the grand tradition of Watership Down, Stephen Baxter has created a complex society complete with elaborate myths and legends. With Icebones, he brilliantly and dramatically brings the acclaimed Mammoth trilogy to its resounding conclusion.
]]>Fast Forward is offered in the tradition of Damon Knight’s prestigious and influential anthology series, Orbit, and Frederik Pohl’s landmark Star SF. Fast Forward marks the start of a new hard science fiction anthology series, dedicated to presenting the vanguard of the genre and charting the undiscovered country that is the future.
Contributors scheduled for the first volume include: Paolo Bacigalupi, Kage Baker, Tony Ballantyne, Stephen Baxter, Elizabeth Bear (Sarah B.E. Kindred), A.M. Dellamonica, Paul Di Filippo, Robyn Hitchcock, Louise Marley, Ken MacLeod, Ian McDonald, John Meaney, Larry Niven & Brenda Cooper, Mike Resnick & Nancy Kress, Justina Robson, Pamela Sargent, Mary A. Turzillo, Robert Charles Wilson, Gene Wolfe, George Zebrowski.
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