It will comes as no surprise to my regular readers that I'm a Prof. Brian Cox fan

(Or 'Professor Lovely' as a delightfully snarky friend calls him). 

When I heard that he was hosting a live tour I jumped at the chance to see one of his lectures 'for real', and headed to Sheffield City Hall on Thursday 6th Oct, ready to be educated in all things space, not really knowing what to expect.

When the show opened with a video of singing muppets I was, to say the least, a bit confused, but certainly entertained. Talk about an intro!

As it happened, the show was effectively an extension of Brian Cox and Robin Ince's Radio 4 programme 'The Infinite Monkey Cage', where Brian and Robin take a look at the world through a scientist's eyes, with Brian to provide the science and with Robin bringing humor and taking on the role of the interested and self-educated everyman. While the focus was on the lecture style, at times Robin would also interject to lighten the mood, banter, and join in with Brian as well as encouraging audience participation, such as through tweeting science questions. Robin was funny and charming and the two got along very well. Having never heard of 'The Infinite Monkey Cage' before, I was intrigued to check it out (but more on that later).

The meat of the show though was, of course, Brian's main lecture. It focused around the discovery of the Big Bang and how we can detect the size and composition of our incredibly large universe, and drifted into questions about the possibility of alien life on other planets and the probability of finding anything that resembles us. While fans will have been introduced to these concepts in varying details in his other programmes, it still managed to be fresh and was delivered with his classic mix of gentle passion and wonder, and his ability to make the concepts approachable without compromising on precision.This made the whole talk very engaging. While time flew during the lecture, Robin's interjections managed to keep everything fresh, which helped keep the energy levels going. All in all it was a great night out for anything with a curiosity for sciences, especially fans of Brian's wide range of work.

Can I still See Him?

If you'd like to check out the show the good news is that it has proved so popular that Brian Cox Live has been given a series of arena dates as well for 2017. These will be visiting Derby, Nottingham, Newcastle, Glasgow and Wembley in May 2017. There are also a whole host of 2016 dates still on the cards, running up to the 2nd of December, if you can score the tickets. So why not give it a try? I certainly enjoyed myself.

The Infinite Monkey Cage

As I said, Robin and Brian's banter was a lot of fun, so when they mentioned (through muppet-song) that the show was a product of the programme Infinite Monkey Cage naturally I had to go searching to find it.

The great news is that all 14 series' are available to download on BBC radio 4's Iplayer account here.

I've listened to a couple so far and they've been delightful, bringing in interesting guests (both comedians and scientists) to weigh in on a whole variety of subjects. I know where my 5GB data limit will be going on my phone on the morning commute....

A while ago I went on at length about why you should be curious about the game No Man's Sky..

You can read my article here but basically the exciting thing about No Man's sky was the amazing procedural generation coding they used which allowed them to created a vast game that could generate 18 quintillion planets without any of the lagging and massive hard drive space required of many more traditional procedurally generated games. This generation was tied to a distinctive art style (with a computer that was physically 'taught' colour theory, no less) in order to create infinitely varied beautiful worlds that the player would discover themselves for the first time ever, without anyone else on the planet having seen what they've seen before.

Exciting stuff.

One of the planets i discovered on my playthrough

Now the game has released and we've all had a chance to play it, I've written a review over at 'The Player of Games' blog about the good and bad points of the game, whether it deserves the hate that it seems to be receiving lately, and whether you should fork out the £50 needed to play it.

If you're curious make sure to check it out.

To understand our own mortality is one of the biggest markers of being human. To seek to control it, even more so.

True, we're not sure whether the anticipation and understanding of death is uniquely human, and there are certainly plenty of arguments to suggest that some animals understand death too, but it might be that the concept of a soul that couples with the idea of death is entirely a human construct. In this way, humans would truly be unique.

In his book 'The Buried Soul', the archaeologist Timothy Taylor takes a close look into when it was that humans first started to create the concept of a soul and started to try to define and control their own mortality -and by extension - immortality.

One of the greatest problems with pre-history and early history is the difficulty in source materials and, by extension, the difficulty in stepping into the minds of those in the past. "The past is a foreign country" a wise man once said, and we are often scant-informed tourists. As an archaeologist Taylor is well aware of these problems and how these have led to what he believes are misinterpretations of the cultural data of mortality in the past, often due to anachronisms created when historians put their own modern cultural perspective onto the remnants of history. Too often we either assume that our ancestors thought and acted exactly like us (and therefore we reject the more distasteful parts of their cultures as false), or we view them as barbarians and so don't bother to properly unpick the layers of why their actions were important and unique to them. While Taylor runs through a whole host of different death cultures, it was his treatment of the above issue that I found the most valuable and interesting in the book.

For example, Taylor centres the majority of his book around unpicking an understanding the funeral of a Rus (Viking) chieftain, returning to the vividly described scene as each of his arguments shed more light on it and the mindsets of those involved. In this funeral we have a rare written account provided by an arab ambassador about how the chieftain was interred in the ground while a huge ship and scaffold were created, ready for his cremation. When complete he was disinterred and laid on a great bed on the ship. Of his slave girls, his favourite apparently volunteered and took part in a seemingly strange and brutal ceremony. She was given the rings of engagement, as if she was betrothed to the chieftain, and, heady on ritualistic wine, went to each tent of his closest men and slept with them. Afterwards she was lifted up above three houses, announcing that she could see her parents and others waiting for her in the afterlife. When she went to the great building of the ship she reportedly found herself hesitating and was encouraged inside. The rings were removed, she lay on the bed next to their chieftain and, with a noose tightening around her neck by the old women dubbed the 'Angel of Death', she was brutally raped by seven men as the crown outside drummed their shields to drown out her screams. 

Timothy Taylor

Why did this sequence of events occur?

How reliable is the account?

What purpose did the brutality serve and what was the slave girl's investment in it?

Why on earth do some historians reject the brutal realities and simply sign off with dismissive statements like: "The happy girl thus went to Valhallah?"

What does this ritual tell us about the purpose of death culture, and the potential danger that the chieftain's soul posed to the mortal living?

Taylor answers all of these questions and more with care and convincing evidence. In doing so he also looks into another brutal and controversial element of history: cannibalism. Since the 1970s it has been fashionable for historians to reject cannibalism altogether, finding it more comforting to assert that it never actually happened and was instead a racist accusation or a misinterpretation of evidence, to the point where I assumed this was likely. But Taylor challenges this in a very convincing manner, taking the stance that cannibalism was - and is - commonplace, but served very different purposes for different cultures, all of which features importantly in how these culture interacted with death and funerary rites. Cannibalism isn't something that belongs in a horror movie, but instead can be a legitimate, useful expression of grief that should not be ignored simply because it is distasteful to western historians. I must admit, after the reading the book, I'm pretty darn convinced he's on the right lines.

In the end, I know that in this blog I tend to trot our reviews of books that I like, leaving those less interesting neighbours by the wayside. But out of my pick of excellent books, this really is one worth paying attention to and picking up for yourself. Taylor's combination of engaging narrative writing as well as the exciting (and potentially controversial) views he has of the pre-history and history he knows so well, makes this a book that is both entertaining as well as being genuinely academically important for any interested in the subject. It certainly convinced me to re-evaluate how I looked at various elements of cultural history, which I think is worth it's weight in gold.

What's more, I couldn't put it down. For a non-fiction book is very high praise indeed. 



More Great Books and Media on Mortality and the Human Imagination:
- Sapiens, a Brief History of Humankind - By Yuval Noah Harrari
- The Self Illusion - by Bruce Hood
- Paranormality - By Richard Wiseman
- Gunther Von Hagen's Autopsy Series

I'm not big on military history, but you've got to admit that the innovation and design quality involved in kitting out the fighters and hunters of the past was pretty amazing.


With this in mind, I decided to go out on a noble quest to the Royal Armouries in Leeds to see some of these innovations in action.


The first thing to know about the Royal Armouries is that it's free entry, which is always brilliant to see, and open 10am to 5pm. There's easy public parking not far away at Clarence Dock for about £10 for all day and the museum is situated on the dockside and walking distance from the town centre. Often it has live demonstrations and particular workshops and talks that you can attend, as well as exhibitions that - like most museums- mix the cyclical with the permanent: on my visit the special attraction was a display of some the treasures of the Staffordshire Horde. In my case we were a little too early to see the live tournament fights etc, but if you're visiting and especially if you're bringing kids along it might be worth aiming for after 11 or 12 and going for the weekend slots when everything is a little busier.


So what's in the museum?

The main displays on offer were War, Oriental, Hunting, Tournament, Self Defense and the Staffordshire Hoard. But it would be a crime to review the museum without talking about THAT entrance hall...
The museum is arranged vertically over a few floors and linking them all is a wide spiral staircase that surrounds a stunning display of historical arms and armour. War has always been a game of numbers and this is clearly shown in the sheer amount of items arranged in a grimly beautiful piece of gleaming art, perfectly regimented like the armies that bore the equipment.

Impressive, to say the least.

The level of attention to detail, pomp and circumstance follows through the whole museum: there really are some very important artifacts on display that belonged to very famous figures in history and the museum knows just how to present them so you can appreciate their full view. The tournament section is perhaps the most star-studded, displaying armour from Henry VIII to the Holy Roman Emperor, as well as the Armouries' famous mask that appears on their logos. But the War section does a fantastic job of showing a timeline of quality items from wars throughout the ages, and manages to inspire a little of the awe and fear people must have felt when facing down these warriors due to their fantastic model displays. One, for example, sees a full-sized pair of armoured soldiers facing off against soldiers with lances. Another, in the oriental section, shows the largest example of animal armour in the world - a 17thc almost fully complete set of war elephant armour. And you'd better believe that they've mounted it on a fully-scaled model of an Indian elephant, complete with rider. Intimidating stuff.

   The museum is set perfectly to help visitors appreciate the level of skill and craftsmanship involved from practical pieces to the decorative gifts that were given to great leaders. One element that I found fascinating was when they deconstructed armour or turned it inside out so that you could see the clever construction of an armoured jerkin, for example, or the intricate embroidery on the inside of a helmet. Image was everything in war, but the hidden details had real value to them too.


Does the Royal Armouries museum glorify war?

Miniature commoners caught in the fray.

It's impossible not to be struck with awe and an appreciation for the beauty in these instruments of protection and death, but does this mean that the museum glorifies war in a way that's distasteful? For my part I would say no. It's important to appreciate the beauty of these items and the skill of their use, both for their own sake and also to enable us to get into the minds of our ancestors and how they responded to them. Tournaments, chivalry, bravery and pomp were all huge parts of how mainstream masculinity was (and is) constructed, and how nationalism and many symbols of each country's culture are expressed. The important thing is that even in the rooms where the idealism and romance of war is most expressed by the exhibits, the curators are careful to include important details that impress upon you the reality of war. Those large imposing figures aren't just picture-bait, but put you in the position of someone facing them in person - looking up into that killing machine on horseback. The insides of the armour show the realities of living inside of them. And even in tiny details - such as the miniature representation of a great battle - they take the time to show common people fleeing in terror.

Finally the 'self defense' room, which pulls us into the modern age, acts as a sobering example of what war and violence means for us now. Here you can find testimonies of people affected by gun violence, different types of brutal common weapons throughout the twentieth century, and a display case swimming with examples of real weapons seized from every-day people by the police. Oddly, at the end of this exhibit there is also a display of the different swords from The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, further emphasising the conflict between the fantasy and reality of violence and battles, even in the modern mindset today.
In the end I appreciate the blend of realities: the good and bad sides of these battles in our culture. And neither side is turned into melodrama.


So....should I visit?

Absolutely! Not only is it free, but it has some seriously important and valuable artifacts, all beautifully presented. Definitely worth your time.




When you visit, keep your eyes peeled for these...

I wonder if king Henry noticed...

• The craftsman's mistake on the patterning Henry VIII's duelling armour and his rushed-job attempt to fix it. (We've all been there, man!)
• A very cool demon's-mask for a horse in the oriental section.
• An unsettlingly anatomically correct realisation of a lady boar's nether region on one of the models. (That's..uh...good attention to detail there, buddy.)
• Armadillo-scaled armour in the oriental section
• Tiny, tiny full-plate armour for children.
• The biggest codpiece I've ever seen.
• A completely adorable chinese dog/demon face on a sword hilt.
• The most badass elephant & hunters vs tiger model you're ever likely to see.

It's a little while since we've had a fiction review, and this week I've been reading The Palace of Curiosities by Rosie Garland.



The Story & Characters

The Palace of Curiosities opens with a line that is sure to already have you hooked after the rather delectable cover: 'Before I am born, my mother goes to the circus'. The first chapter is dedicated to recounting her experience in 1831 and is a heady journey of the senses as the mother revels in a rare nervous night out with the man of her desires, the release from 'ladylike' sensibilities into the braying joy of the crowd and the stink and sensation of the circus and its acts, that are equally thrilling and oddly tragic. The thrill of the circus is soon kicked into horror as an act goes wrong that will affect the mother very personally for the rest of her life.

The chapter is stand alone, but it does a good job of setting the tone for the rest of the book as we move to follow the fortunes of her daughter Eve the 'Lion-faced girl' as she seeks out her independence and belonging. In turn we follow the story of Abel, a man washed out of the mud of the Thames, confused, forgetful and groping for his memories each day. As the two are brought together Garland builds a picture of the Victorian underworld and the profitable and at times brutal world of the Freak Show.

The story moves along their lives, switching between each protagonist at an easygoing pace that shrugs off a more rigid plot in favour of creating a series of scenes and the tone of a dark fairytale. Plot certainly happens, and you are never left adrift, and this style allows you to more easily occupy the moments of each character's lives and their inner worlds as they each gradually grow out their roots and inch towards control of their own lives, purpose and a sense of belonging. The style has been compared to Angela Carter and the comparison is one I could certainly see - there is a lot in the mix of brutality and dreamy description that reminded me of Angela carter's 'the Bloody Chamber' and Eve's mentions of the story of Bluebeard throughout the book is surely not an accident. When you click into the style of writing, it's an enjoyably gothic read.

The supporting characters are all very well realised, from Abel's difficult relationship with his best friend Alfred, and Eve's conflicted relationship with her husband and freak-show owner Josiah Arroner. My personal favourite was Lizzie, the voluptous, fierce and comforting figure who took on the role of the Whore of Babylon at the performances.


Does This Work As a Historical Novel?


Since this blog is effectively one that looks at history, I couldn't finish a review here without looking at how this fares as a historical novel. For me, it's a difficult assessment to make as I don't really think that this is a particular goal of the book, nor should it really be judged on it's historical accuracy. The Carter-esque fairy story style of the book tends to creep into the languages and characteristics, and works very well to create a certain dreamy tone, but fails to create the same sharp sense of authenticity of language and character that I find in the CJ Sansom books, for example. The language, while Victorian of course, is a little too showy and flowery at times to feel authentic, though it should be said that when characters are in their darker moments and angry this improves.
That said, the book does excel in certain scenes and themes. Eve's navigation of subservience to her husband and of respectability vs her own aching sexual awakening and need for power and independence and how she classifies this within what it means to be a 'good wife' all ring very true to the time. Abel's early life living in a crowded stinking cellar as an abattoir 'slaughter-man' and his peer's contentments and frustrations at this life also paint a brilliantly real picture of slum life. A particularly raw and tragic scene with his friend Alfred and how Alfred deals with the situation also rings painfully authentic for how many men must have coped in the harsher times. Finally the Freak-Show itself and the way the audiences are written and the downtimes in the house that all the freaks occupy feel very real.

Is It Worth a Read?

All in all I enjoyed the book and the journey it took me through. For those looking for a historical novel it holds enough good scenes in it as to be attractive, so long as you slip yourself into the frame of mind of this being a fairytale story. For those looking for tight plot, instead you would do better to relax yourselves into their fairytale tone, enjoy the slow build of the characters and be taken down the story of love and belonging. Definitely worth picking up if you'd like a change.




For more posts on freak shows....

- The Human Marvels: 'Circus Freaks and Human Oddities'
- Interpretation, Taboo and Climbing Mountains: The Problem of Frieda Pushnick's Obituary

If there was one thing the Victorians were crazy for, it was a good seance.


Victorians occupied an unusual moment in history, where the scientific revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries had become professionalised and atheism, while still unusual and often distrusted, was gaining popularity. Life was hard yet - for many- more genteel than ever before, and death was romanticised while still haunting the majority of families as a danger that could strike at any moment.  The rise of the middle classes and self-made men meant that what was fashionable spread like competitive wildfire and defined how many people saw themselves in society that was increasingly critical of itself. In an uncertain world, hung between science and religion, nature and the power of man, spiritualism offered some form of compromise between the old ways and the new. The alter of spiritualism was the seance performed in a fashionable gentleman's parlour, and the grand vicar of spiritualism was the medium.

In The First Psychic Peter Lamont tells us the story of the Victorian era's most notorious medium, Daniel Dunglas Home and, through this narrative, examines all the complexities of how our ancestors (and we) witness and interpret the world around us.

Who was Daniel Home?

Daniel Home

Daniel Home was the Scottish-American son of a mother who was reported to have 'the gift' of clairvoyance and spiritual contacts. He was Christian, often sickly and effeminate in appearance, with blonde-red hair, but commanded an impressive presence when he set out on his mission to convince the world that spiritualism was truth. He conducted his 'mission' by holding regular seances for the famous and well-born of America and Victorian London. He never charged a cent and instead relied on the hospitality of his clients to keep from homelessness and quickly built up a reputation as a frighteningly talented medium. It was said that Daniel communed directly with the spirits and through them he caused tables to float and flip, instruments to play without being touched and for spirit hands to appear and interact with the audience members. But, most impressively, he was known to levitate high off the ground,even flying in and out of windows.

Naturally, plenty of people doubted Daniel and the others who followed his profession, but while his contemporaries were discovered one by one Daniel continued to perform and astound his audiences without his methods ever being found out. He made powerful enemies in Robert Browning and Charles Dickens, while utterly convincing Mrs Browning and many eminent scientists. In the meantime his wide net of acquaintances took him through the turbulent seas of poverty and wealth, even drawing him to marry a relative of the Russian tsar! Daniel polarised public opinion about one of the most controversial topics of the Victorian era.


'The First Psychic', really?

Daniel set up in one of Crook's experiments

The title of the book might be a surprise, given that soothsayers and clairvoyants are seemingly as old as time, but it perfectly encapsulates the position of this little snapshot of history. The treatment of Daniel's 'powers' by skeptics was typical of the new professionalism of the scientific method, and Daniel was famously tested by William Crookes, the scientist who famously discovered thallium. Crookes devised a series of experiments to test (and restrict) Daniel's 'powers' to determine their integrity and in doing so found that he could not disprove any of Daniel's powers. Even when in the presence of precise measuring equipment and restricted conditions the tables still moved and the accordions still played as if by ghostly hands. Having no other alternative he was forced to concede that Daniel really did have access to 'another force', a mysterious power of movement. He officially dubbed this 'psychic force' - the first use of the term - and Daniel Home became the official world's first 'psychic', sanctioned by the scientific method.
Naturally, Victorian society did not take this sitting down.


So is it worth a read?

A 1930s seance

Peter Lamont does a great job of writing in an engaging fashion in this little biopic. It took me less than 10 days to read which, for non-fiction books I typically only read in snippets at my breakfast or commute, is pretty darn good. What might have been a dry , though admittedly curious, life story in someone else's' hands actually turned out to be a well balanced well thought out piece on science, spiritualism, conjuring and the always difficult reliability of testimony. lamont reminds us that the stakes are always high, as friendships, relationships and professional reputations are built and destroyed as they orbited the controversy of spiritualism. Though showing us the remarkable life of one extraordinary man Lamont manages to tell a detailed history of the tensions victorians felt between the scientific and the spiritual, and how the various facets of private victorian societies interacted and rubbed against one another. Most importantly, lamont offers a very balanced view, not letting his own beliefs about whether Daniel's actions as a medium were real or trickery. He examines the evidence carefully as well as the counter evidence and in doing so remains remarkably without bias - a feat that previous historical writers of Daniel's life have often failed to maintain.

If you're interested in stories about remarkable people, the weird and wonderful, or the culture of fashionable Victorians, this is a book for you.


Other posts on the weird and wonderful:

- The science behind 'Bloody Mary'
- Mary Toft's Rabbit Births
- Why do so many aliens in real-life abduction stories look the same?
-Review: on Monsters and Marvels
-Running around like headless chickens



Keep in touch....

Remember, you can follow Preludes: Blog of Words us on Twitter and Facebook. Or Subscribe to us on Blogluvin' to never miss a post.

When you 'grow up' often a lot of your school-day education gets forgotten.

It's how the brain works, in the end, it doesn't tend to hold onto information that doesn't have a direct application.
 When I was in secondary school I did very well in all three sciences (ie I scored good grades) but I was never really scientifically minded at all. Really, the good marks were more testament to a talent to approaching exams and coursework in the right way rather than scientific intelligence. I have always been interested in how things worked of course, but at the time I was blinkered in science lessons away from how what they were teaching us (all tables and formulae) actually served to make the world tick. I saw no beauty in it.
Now, as an adult, that curiosity has come back, as has an appreciation for what science acrtually is and does. And it frustrates me no end that iIve forgotten so much of what I was taught as a kid in such detail.

Enter PBS Spacetime.

PBS Spacetime is a brilliant Youtube channel that takes astronomical science and makes it acessible but in a very detailed way. Unlike some other youtube channels there is no 'dumbing down' of the science, but they have a talent for keeping the audience engaged and intrigued nevertheless. As a result, they can get into some pretty deep and detailed topics but maintain an open and interactive dialouge with their audience. The hosts are excellent, both being very informed in the subject and clear presenters. It's impossible to leave a PBS Spacetime video without feeling like you have genuinely been taught something valuable.

Some of the topics on offer are:

• Can you trust your eyes in spacetime?
• When time breaks down
• The origin of matter and time
• Why haven't we found alien life yet?
• What does dark energy really do?
• Will the universe expand forever?
• Why the big bang definately happened

So if you're curious about space, you could do a lot worse than PBS Spacetime. Check them out!



Other 'Preludes Recommends' Posts:

-Crash Course
-Brian Cox and the Wonders of the Universe
-PBS Ideas Channel
-Vsauce



Keep in touch....

Remember, you can follow Preludes: Blog of Words us on Twitter and Facebook. Or Subscribe to us on Blogluvin' to never miss a post.

Stay curious!

Have you ever read a book twice without realising it?

Gotta admit, it's a sexy cover

I found myself in this situation with Stephen Baxter's Time.

Perhaps already this is a sign that the review won't be a ringing endorsement by the fact that you can wander down the same plot twice without it sticking with you, and my kneejerk reaction was certainly one of frustration because of this. But in the end I found that in it's way Time was worth recommending. It led me to think about the 'hard sci-fi' genre in general, my relationship with it, and what books like these are really trying to achieve.

Digging into 'Hard Sci-fi'

I'll confess now, I'm not a 'proper' sci-fi fan. I grew up with The Next Generation and Deep Space 9 on TV: for me sci-fi has always been a vehicle for cool alien designs, exploration and character driven plots in strange surroundings. When I got older I loved Doctor Who and the playground of history and space that it offered us, and when Doctor Who declined in quality I slipped into Rick and Morty. In films I can appreciate something more dystopian, but they have to be on a firm foundation of wonder, style and adventure. All things considered, sci-fi for me if an ultimately optimistic open world wrought with unique challenges - a final frontier.

My taste in sci-fi books follows the same lines as my taste in fantasy and historical novels . I'm a sucker for good character development, and for these concepts to work and be fully realised they need to hang on an already solid plot... like a murder mystery for example (see: Altered Carbon). I want to fall in love with characters and be taken on a journey, and I want to see the strange intelligently thought out setting through a protagonist's empathetic gaze while something tangible drives the plot along. It might not be 'proper' sci-fi, but it's damned entertaining.

The trouble was - is- that so much proper 'hard' sci-fi hangs on...seemingly nothing but concept.

 The key, I think, with 'hard' sci-fi is that it's central aim is one of realistic world building, or to illustrate and interesting scientific concept. They are usually fantastically well researched, intelligent and incredibly detailed. I picked up Time at first years and years ago in a charity shop, determined to immerse myself in 'proper' sci-fi and once and for all declare myself a 'proper' geek....and I hated it. It bored me to tears, it was so stale.

'High Sci-fi' was to me what Jules Verne was to H.G.Wells: on the one 'hard' Verne side you had blueprints, on the other 'soft' Wells side you had story.

'Hark! A Vagrant' perfectly illustrates the difference.

But time marches on, as does the vague sense of guilt for not being a 'proper' geek. After reading the non-fiction book In Search of Schrodinger's Cat I thought it was high time that I tried 'hard sci-fi' again now that I had a better understanding of some of those more interesting quantum theories. Little did I know that when I picked up that sexy book cover it was the exact same book again. 

I smelled a rat when I got deja vu about hyper-intelligent squid and space sex.

The cover on my first read..not so sexy.

What is Time About?

Time tells the story of Emma Stoney ...until the book abruptly decides that the main character is actually Reid Malenfant. 

It starts off slow, taking the reader through the challenges of the Bootstrap corporation as Malenfant - a failed astronaut and maverick - works against NASA and the governments to cobble together his own funded voyage into space. Emma is his ex-wife and leads the legwork in keeping the company afloat, batting off officials who would like to pull them under as Malenfant takes greater and greater risks. One fly in the ointment in Cornelius Taine, who arrives out of the blue at Emma's door, pushing for a meeting with Malenfant to hijack his aspirations away from simple material wealth and forwards into avoiding the doom of humanity itself by interpreting messages from the future. Initially dismissed as a nutjob by Emma, he captures Malenfant's attention and takes the couple and the company on a dangerous course.

Meanwhile hyper-intelligent children are popping up all over the world, spooking their parents and the governments around them. Could they signal the end of humanity as we know it?

It's hard to talk about Time without entirely spoiling the story, especially since it doesn't pick up at all until well past the middle of the book. Suffice to say there is space travel, the concept of messages from time are explored and, in the end, Baxter puts forward a very bittersweet idea about what one of the purposes of humanity might be if we actually were alone in the universe. What it might mean if aliens don't exist? What sort of life would it be if human beings succeeded enduring all the way to the end of this empty universe?

The 'Hard Science' of Time: Does it Fare Better on a Second Readthrough?

I have to admit that, once I had gotten past the first half of the book (and the endless shuttling of Emma back and forth to meetings), I found myself rather caught up in the scientific realism of it once the action started. When the team managed to get into space Baxter describes future technologies - such as false gravity- in a realistic way, and keeps at his heart the image of space as a great ordeal full of both wonder and constant indignities. What's more the idea of using a hyper intelligent cephalopod as an astronaut was inspired, and gave us the more interesting character in the book.

Black holes are scary, yo.

When it came to describing the concept of messages from time he made a wise choice to use different characters to explain the difficult concept in different ways, with Cornelius as the expert, Emma as the practical layman, and Malenfant as the idealist somewhere in-between. In Search of Schrodinger's Cat helped me a great deal with the basics, and I think without it I would have struggled, as I did before on my first readthrough when I was younger. The bleak picture of the future it gave (before the final flourish) was one that again was helped from reading the final chapters of books like Centuries of Change, and how humanity seems doomed to slide away from the current 'golden age' and turn against itself into something more brutal and old fashioned. The Blue Children served as a decent enough catalyst and focus for this downturn, but they fundamentally didn't strike the right note as characters for me. Similarly, the whole reason for messages from the future boils down to the 'inevitability' of the 'Carter Catastrophe', which is a central concept that - while based on real theories- is one that I didn't accept in part because I couldn't convincingly wrap my head around the assumptions that they leapt to from basic (flawed?) statistics.

Finally the scientific view of the universe in the book is one that was frightening and also beautiful - massive chaos, but with fierce possibility...up until the point of hopelessness. The descriptions of how the universe itself could be mined by people in the far future has the black triumph that I appreciated in Doctor Who's Utopia episode - a triumph and yet a withering defeat. A whimper, not a bang. And this leads to the final act that again was quite a blackly impressive question: what is the purpose of human life if we are alone?

But...Was Time An Entertaining Read as a Story?

In the end, despite having read it for a second time, my first emotions at the end of the book were ones of frustration and fatigue. It took a good few days for the book to sit with me as a whole before I could come around to appreciating it for what it showed me with the science parts of the science-fiction. But the fiction parts left me cold, which is why this, for me, will always be a book that ends up off my shelf and in the donation pile.

Sheena 5. The most human character.

Emma Stoney was an interesting enough character, though we don't have much chance to actually sit in her head or see her doing much else but deal with Malenfant's crap. I like that she is independant and a capable business woman while being tied to him for reasons she understands and accepts despite her own common sense - that could have been more interesting if developed even further. But she still seems flat, being pulled along by events, initially presented as the protagonist until the book realises that Malenfant is the guy they want to haul through the sequels. Similarly Maura Della - a politician- is another strong capable woman who was actually quite well drawn out, but the way both their endings are handled seems, in my opinion, to short change them by - quite literally - treating them as fundamentally interchangeable. Also there is a theme of childlessness with the two of them that at times seems to be a decent enough avenue into a commentary on how they don't feel connected to mankind's future, but at other times comes across as a little condescending - it just doesn't quite hit the note it needs to.

Malenfant himself is on the periphery throughout most of the book, and not as charming as he needs to be as a protagonist. Though he grows on you by the time the team get into space I never found myself particularly interested in him. He's meant to be a maverick, but I found myself emphasising more with Emma's groans at the inevitable paperwork he creates rather than his ambitions. Cornelius works well enough as the shifty point of intelligence to drive the plot along that no one really trusts, but the story seems to enjoy picking on him for the sake of it. But he redeems himself more at the end - a serious injury later on had a genuine emotional resonance - while never being fully 'redeemed' into a likable character

Stephen Baxter

which...I liked.

As for side characters, the blue children were entirely unsympathetic, which was I believe the intention since we - as homo sapiens - are supposed not to trust them and to be afraid of them. But they become more irritating than real threats and some of the images used later on that are associated with them are just silly. You never get a proper closure on who they are as people and they seem to fall flat rather than being fleshed out yet still mysterious. The true star of the show was, instead, Sheena the hyper intelligent cephalopod, and - credit where credit's due - Baxter did a fantastic job of writing in a way that was both animalistic and sympathetic when her parts were in the book.

Finally the storytelling itself was bland and choppy with several little chunks under honest-to-god name headers. I understand the need to bounce around different characters' heads in a story like this, but it defeated a sense of flow and further put roadblocks in front of your developing much empathy for the characters.

So should you pick up Time and the Manifold Series?

In the end, Stephen Baxter is clearly a very intelligent man, and there are quite a few things in Time  that are well worth a look. For me, the story just didn't hit the right notes, but that could be due to my general dislike of the priorities that 'High Sci-Fi' have. For me story and characters always should come first, and in Time they're more vehicles to take the reader into various realisations of scientific ideas.

If this sounds like your cup of tea, give it a whirl. You'll certainly learn something interesting.

What do you think? Did you enjoy 'Time' if you read it?

What is your relationship with the Hard Sci-fi genre?

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Stay curious!