FACT SF Reading Group

September 2001

September 4: Manifold: Time by Stephen Baxter

Eleven people attended the discussion of Manifold: Time. This book tells the near-future story of Reid Malenfant, a tycoon dedicated to bringing mankind into space. The book invokes several classic SF themes: space exploration, the education of gifted children, time travel, and first contact with aliens. Seven of us at the meeting had read the book, and the rest had not started it.

We enjoyed reading a traditional hard SF novel. It was fun to read about people building spaceships, going into orbit, visiting the moon and asteroids, and exploring time and space. We liked the use of intelligent squids as space pilots. The time travel element is cleverly used to explore recent theories about how galaxies and universes age. This book is brimming with interesting ideas.

There were some problems. Many of us felt that the characters were shallow and the book was filled with long-winded lectures. There were too many ideas to explore fully. Several details about space science were just wrong, which jarred those of us who know about such things. Many of the book?s central ideas were derivative of famous SF works. Everyone was reminded of Heinlein's "The Man Who Sold the Moon", and most were also reminded of Clarke's Childhood's End and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Overall we found Manifold: Time to be a mixed blessing. We appreciated Baxter?s obvious enthusiasm in writing a grand space adventure, but found the story too unoriginal and too flawed to give a strong recommendation.

Afterward we had a nice dinner at Ped?s Lemon Grass Asian Grill, a new restaurant next door to Adventures in Crime & Space.

September 18: Anonymous Rex by Eric Garcia

We had a wide variety of participation at this meeting. Thirteen people attended in person, two people emailed reports, and one person phoned in comments. Anonymous Rex is a humorous mystery novel. In this book?s world, a secret society of dinosaurs exists in the 21st century. The dinosaurs disguise themselves as humans and participate in society under fake identities. The book tells the story of Los Angeles private investigator Vincent Rubio, a velociraptor looking for his partner's killer. Eleven of us had read the book.

Many of us liked this book a lot, and one even called it ?a hoot!? The secret society was cleverly constructed, and we were amused when celebrities from our world turned out to be dinosaurs. Rubio?s amusing and sympathetic narrator helps make the book a successful noir detective story. Three members of the group had liked the book so much that they?d already bought and read its sequel, Casual Rex.

Several people found the book had serious flaws. We had trouble suspending disbelief. We kept wondering how the dinosaurs were able to fit themselves into human suits - particularly the dino swimsuit model. We questioned the dinosaur biology, and felt that a sex scene in the book just could not have happened as it was described. The book seemed to be filled with clever bits, but they didn't add up to a strong whole detective story.

Anonymous Rex turned out to be a book that polarizes people. They either like it a lot or want to poke holes in the story. We recommend it to anyone who thinks it sounds like fun.

After the meeting, several of us had a nice dinner at Ninfa's.

-- A. T. Campbell, III