...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.

It takes you to visions of alternate futures, as well as pasts, such as a sphere around the sun, a war-torn Earth of 1939, the Paleocene era of fifty-million years ago, an alternate reality with machines as the heirs of man, and finally to the most fantastic vision of an infinite universe created and ruled over by the true power of the human Mind. The book closes with the Traveller being returned to his own reality so that he is able to go and save Weena in the far-off age of 800,000 years hence(I wont give away the ending).

Throughout the book, Stephen Baxter gives you insights into the world of Quantum Physics, an aspect that brings the book to have a more real-world feel than some bizarre odyssey. Stephen Baxter is a true visionary. Someone who is able to see the current trends of science and incorporate them into a masterfully executed story. This book, in my opinion, is among the greatest sci-fi masterpieces of all time. The story never gets too technical, but never reaches down to the level of a child-like fantasy story. It is a story not only about time travel, but about the nature of mankind itself. but the most important thing that this book teaches you is that no matter where you are, or what you do, the future is a world of infinite possibilities and it is up to us choose the right ones throughout our lives. For who knows what the future holds? Possibilities, my friend. Possibilities, indeed.


An Excellent Sequel to H.G. Well's "The Time Machine"   May 1, 2005
 26 out of 27 found this review helpful

Be prepared to spend more than a few hours reading "The Time Ships", because you won't be able to put it down. Stephen Baxter writes in H.G Well's style that builds on the events found in the original book. The reader can effortlessly follow a seamless transition of the time traveler's adventure to save Weena from the Morlocks, with a few surprises.




Well worth the time to read   May 31, 2000
 20 out of 24 found this review helpful

H.G. Wells told his original time travel tale in just over a hundred pages. Baxter took nearly 600 pages to spin his sequel. This is the only complaint I have for Time Ships. The story is believable. The characters were believable, meaning they seemed the same as the first tale by Wells. A very good book but also very disturbing. I don't mean disturbing in a bad way as far as the book is concerned. It is one of those books that makes you consider your own mortality and insignificance. A truly worthwhile book.


Maybe the best time travel novel ever!   October 27, 2004
 13 out of 17 found this review helpful

Those who enjoyed The Time Machine classic will delight in this sequel--if only H.G. Wells could have lived to read it! This is my first Stephen Baxter book. He is clearly a remarkably intelligent and creative scientist who can write great fiction. I found this novel believable; that is no mean feat when you're reading about Eloi and Morlocks. I can't recommend The Time Ships highly enough...it's like taking the vacation of your dreams.


A Crowded Forest Bereft of Trees . . .   March 8, 2005
 9 out of 19 found this review helpful

I began reading this novel with great expectations, largely because of the awards and reputation it had amassed since its initial publication. However, while the book is ambitious in its scope, it too often falls short in the most basic of ways.

I admire Baxter's duplication of Wells' writing style, and very much enjoyed the early pages inasmuch as they seemed to have been penned by Wells himself. But too often, as the story unfolded, Baxter fell into cliche and deux ex machina just to move the story forward. In one instance, the main character -- who to that point had been most deliberate and had considered the consequences of his every action -- suddenly, on a whim, chooses to return not to his own year of origin but to a point some twenty years before. Why would he fail to realize such a visitation would have a drastic effect on the 'history' he knew?

I have never been a fan of the whole 'Dyson sphere' concept, which is utilized repeatedly in this story and is a long-standing chestnut of the SF realm. It is simply impossible to construct a physical shell the diameter of 'the orbit of Venus,' thus fully enshrouding a star. Can't be done. The severe magnetic and gravitational forces of a star preclude the extraction of stellar material for such building purposes; no star system contains enough solid planetary matter to be cannibalized for such a structure; and no society, human or otherwise, will ever be cohesive enough and/or endure for long enough to spend the millions of years necessary for such a project. And what benefit could possibly make the herculean, eon-spanning effort of such a construction worthwhile?

From a pure story standpoint, the novel has no real cohesive action curve. Instead, it presents a series of tableaus set in different times, with no overarcing sense of rising action, rising drama or overall purpose. Given the nature of the story, perhaps this was unavoidable -- but some continuing thread, some overriding single goal should have been set in place in order to compensate. The main character's initial quest in resuming time travel, so heartfelt in the first chapter, is forgotten for the middle ninety percent of the book and recalled only in the final pages, almost as an afterthought.

And I would have enjoyed at least a little explanation of the nature of 'Plattnerite' which, as the operational secret of time travel, apparently is radioactive but not sufficiently so to be used as a weapon -- instead, in the story, something called 'Carolinium' was needed for that. I am unclear how the builder of the time machine could design -- let alone construct -- a device specifically intended to harness the unearthly physical properties of an element he did not at all understand.

In this novel's five-hundred-plus pages, there are too many unanswered questions, too many dramatic cliches, and far too much reliance on established SF notions. It is an ambitious novel to be sure, and I greatly enjoyed its Wellsian style. But ultimately, for me, 'The Time Ships' was an unsatisfying journey from one end of time to the other.