Product Description

Sir Arthur C. Clarke is a living legend, a writer whose name has been synonymous with science fiction for more than fifty years. An indomitable believer in human and scientific potential, Clarke is a genuine visionary. If Clarke has an heir among today’s science fiction writers, it is award-winning author Stephen Baxter. In each of his acclaimed novels, Baxter has demonstrated dazzling gifts of imagination and intellect, along with a rare ability to bring the most cerebral science dramatically to life. Now these two champions of humanism and scientific speculation have combined their talents in a novel sure to be one of the most talked-about of the year, a 2001 for the new millennium.

TIME’S EYE

For eons, Earth has been under observation by the Firstborn, beings almost as old as the universe itself. The Firstborn are unknown to humankind— until they act. In an instant, Earth is carved up and reassembled like a huge jigsaw puzzle. Suddenly the planet and every living thing on it no longer exist in a single timeline. Instead, the world becomes a patchwork of eras, from prehistory to 2037, each with its own indigenous inhabitants.

Scattered across the planet are floating silver orbs impervious to all weapons and impossible to communicate with. Are these technologically advanced devices responsible for creating and sustaining the rifts in time? Are they cameras through which inscrutable alien eyes are watching? Or are they something stranger and more terrifying still?

The answer may lie in the ancient city of Babylon, where two groups of refugees from 2037—three cosmonauts returning to Earth from the International Space Station, and three United Nations peacekeepers on a mission in Afghanistan—have detected radio signals: the only such signals on the planet, apart from their own. The peacekeepers find allies in nineteenth-century British troops and in the armies of Alexander the Great. The astronauts, crash-landed in the steppes of Asia, join forces with the Mongol horde led by Genghis Khan. The two sides set out for Babylon, each determined to win the race for knowledge . . . and the power that lies within.

Yet the real power is beyond human control, perhaps even human understanding. As two great armies face off before the gates of Babylon, it watches, waiting. . . .


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #72382 in Books
• Published on: 2005-03-01
• Released on: 2005-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 384 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780345452474
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Amazon.com Review
Sir Arthur C. Clarke may be the greatest science fiction writer in the world; certainly, he's the best-known, not least because he wrote the novel and coauthored the screenplay of 2001: A Space Odyssey. He's also the only SF writer to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize or to be knighted by Her Majesty Elizabeth II. This god of SF has twice collaborated with one of the best SF writers to emerge in the 1990s, Stephen Baxter, winner of the British SF Award, the Locus Award, and the Philip K. Dick Award. Their first collaboration is the novel The Light of Other Days. Their second is the novel Time's Eye: Book One of a Time Odyssey.

As the subtitle indicates, Time's Eye is the first book of a series intended to do for time what 2001 did for space. Does Time's Eye succeed in this goal? No. In 2001, humanity discovers a mysterious monolith on the moon, triggering a signal that astronauts pursue to one of the moons of Jupiter. In Time's Eye, mysterious satellites appear all around the Earth and scramble time, bringing together an ape-woman; twenty- first-century soldiers and astronauts; nineteenth-century British and Indian soldiers; and the armies of Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great. The characters march around in search of other survivors, then clash in epic battle. It's not until the end that the novel returns to the mystery of the tiny, eye-like satellites (and doesn't solve it). In other words, the plot of Time's Eye is a nearly 300-page digression, and 2001 fans expecting exploration of the scientific enigma and examination of the meaning of existence will be disappointed. However, fans of rousing and well-written transtemporal adventure in the tradition of S.M. Stirling's novel Island in the Sea of Time will enjoy Time's Eye. --Cynthia Ward

From Publishers Weekly
Clarke, with Baxter (Coalescent), probably the most talented of the former's several collaborators, have cooked up an exciting tale full of high-tech physics, military tactics and larger-than-life characters in the first of two novels related to the bestselling senior author's Space Odyssey series. In an awesome and unexplained catastrophe, the earth has been literally diced and put back together again. Each of the segments of terrain (and you can actually see the dividing lines between them) comes from a different era, some of them millions of years apart. As the novel opens, a 19th-century British army company, stationed on the Afghan-Pakistani border, captures an Australopithecine mother and child, just as a team of 21st-century U.N. peacekeepers crash their helicopter nearby. Later they join forces with Alexander the Great. Simultaneously, a Soyuz descent vehicle, having just left the International Space Station, crash-lands in the middle of Genghis Khan's army. Eventually, the armies of Alexander and the Khan converge on Babylon, the last remaining large city in Eurasia and a titanic battle seems imminent. Fans of 2001: A Space Odyssey will have fun with the many references to that earlier novel. Although not flawless, this is probably the best book to appear with Clarke's name on it in a decade.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Mysterious, incredibly superior alien beings assemble a new Earth out of bits and pieces of the old one, which they snatch from various eras. So a UN helicopter crew from 2037, a crew of astronauts from the same era, Genghis Khan and his Horde, Alexander the Great and his army, a British Indian outpost where Rudyard Kipling (rendered here in all his youthful complexity) is visiting, and a remnant of Babylon end up coexisting. Not at all peacefully, either, especially when one astronaut, a ruthless and foul-mouthed American woman, decides to aid and abet the Mongols in their career of world conquest, which can be halted only by the other civilized time travelers joining forces with a very well portrayed Alexander. In the end, civilization's prospects have been propped up, and one of the UN crew is off to find the aliens (her search will be, one presumes, the subject of another book). With Clarke and Baxter collaborating smoothly, this is a fine exploration of themes that Clarke has explored regularly since Childhood's End (1953), at least, and good news for those who enjoy both men's work. Oh, yes, this book begins a new saga, entitled A Time Odyssey--does that ring a bell? Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

What If?
Because of the many similarities of the premise of this book to 2001, many readers will pick the book up expecting something quite similar and stimulating in the same ways. That expectation would be wrong. Although on the surface the books have similar elements, Time's Eye uses a story-telling technique that focuses much more on bringing incongruities from different periods of history together to imaginatively describe "what if?" You have famous authors (Rudyard Kipling), famous conquerors (Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan), and famous places (Babylon in its prime) brought together in unexpected collisions. It's like running a particle accelerator to collide with something to see what might happen.

The book lives or dies by how compelling you find the historical juxtapositions. I personally found them to be mildly interesting . . . but not compelling. The story itself was a little clunky in its plot elements, and I found myself disbelieving the ending.

The 2001-like element in the book mostly recedes into the background. Had it been more in the foreground, the book could have been a four-star effort.

I loved the idea of including the CD with bonus book and other material. Nice!

Perhaps the series will improve in the rest of the book . . . I hope so. The potential for a good story is certainly there.

Unusual and exceptional collaboration
The Earth has been carved up into a giant temporal jig-saw puzzle and put back together randomly by aliens called the Firstborns. These aliens were unknown to humanity until their watchdogs (or are they?) in the form of little silver orbs floating quietly above humanity.

This forms the fascinating and promising premise of Arthur Clarke and Stephen Baxter's Time's Eye which is subtitled A Time Odyssey. While only time (pardon the pun) will tell if this is as important or thought provoking as Clarke's other Odyssey novels, this makes for a fascinating start. Clarke has finally found another collaborator up to the task of working with him. The only other novelist that would have been capable and could flesh out Clarke's characters was the late Mike McQuay.

Baxter's a well known sf novelist and award winner in his own write (all these nasty puns just keep wanting to pop in for time). His novels Manifold: Time is an essential modern science fiction classic (and included in CD-ROM form with the book). The characters are pretty well developed (a problem for even Clarke's best novels)and the writing is about as sound from a science point of view as a tale like this could be. We'll have to wait for the other two novels in this series to be published before finding out what the real motives are behind the Firstborn.

With Clarke and Baxter's well developed idea along with the deft characterizations make Time's Eye an important sf book from two of the best writers around.

Great idea, so-so execution
This novel mixes themes from both Clarke's and Baxter's prior work - ancient intelligences, harvesting mind, pre-humans. The device in this novel is the creation of an earth composed of a patchwork of different timelines spanning 2 million years of history, culminating in 2037.

This sets up a world that allows exploration of the novelty of intersecting pieces from different timelines. The main plot centers around the events that lead to a battle between the armies Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan, aided by a small group of 21st century people and a contingent of a 19th century British army.

The main characters were well drawn, and I was felt that this world was real and interesting, mainly from the little details that are Baxter's trademark, especially the sense of smell.

Despite my being a huge Clarke and Baxter fan, I came away feeling this was not the best collaboration, certainly weaker than the "light of other days", and the ending had a definite Deux ex Machina problem. Baxter seems to be writing so much these days that maybe he is being stretched a little thin.

Overall this is an interesting read, but not up to the best that either author has written, with regards to theme and content.

(I used to be a little cynical that Baxter collaborated with Clarke to get a career boost from such a distinguished author. But his talent as an author is now so obvious that I have to wonder whether it isn't Clarke who is getting most of the benefit now.)