Following TIME’S EYE and SUNSTORM, Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter’s “Time Odyssey” series comes to a fitting end with FIRSTBORN. The title refers to the alien race that created the mysterious monolith of Clarke’s classic 2001, so cue up the “Also Sprach Zarathustra.”
In 2069 – no chuckles, please – series heroine/former British soldier Bisesa Dutt awakens after a near-two-decade sleep. After helping save Earth from being burnt to a crisp in the previous book, you’d think the planet she awoke to would be a peaceful one. Wrong!
See, from the depths of outer space, the Firstborn have sent a “Q-bomb” toward Earth that could result in yet another extinction-level event upon impact – something the crew of the spaceship Liberator intends to prevent.
Meanwhile, Dutt is brought by her daughter to Mars – via an ingenious space elevator – to see what has been discovered deep within a dug-out pit: an “eye,” one of the silver spheres that suddenly appeared all over the world in TIME’S EYE and started this whole mess. It sucks her in and throws her back to the days of Alexander the Great.
TIME’S EYE is one of the best time-travel novels I’ve ever read – actually, “time travel” isn’t exactly accurate, since all time periods suddenly occurred at once in an event the characters decreed “the Discontinuity,” so maybe “time throwing up on itself” is more apt. SUNSTORM, by comparison, was a mild disappointment, but now with the final piece that is FIRSTBORN in place, with everything clicking together, that follow-up seems better in hindsight. FIRSTBORN is, like its older brothers, an imaginative blend of adventure and hard science, making an impossible situation sound perfectly plausible.
However, it took me a good third before I was able to make peace with the novel. As seems to be a trend in trilogies, FIRSTBORN eschews reintroduction of its continuing characters, assuming you remember who they are, what they do, what they’ve done and what they’ve been through up to this point. Sorry, but SUNSTORM was nearly two years ago, so I don’t. Therefore, it took roughly 135 pages before I felt comfortable compartmentalizing all the pieces and players. (Would it kill authors for a one-page recap?)
Clarke and Baxter do a fine job of not only tying FIRSTBORN’s plot in with the rest of the series, but also the series from which it was spun off: that of 2001. Of course, part of that book’s enduring legend is the interpretation it leaves the reader to make. So if you don’t want specifics on the creators of the monolith, you may to avoid this one … or just certain chapters, because for fans of intelligent sci-fi, this is too good to miss. –Rod Lott
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THESE AUTHORS:
• SUNSTORM by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter
• TIME’S EYE by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter
Related posts:
- Time’s Eye / Sunstorm
- Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge
- Best Short Novels 2005
- QUICKGASM >> 4.2.07
- Deep Storm
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Rod, I strongly agree with you on your point about recaps, or some sort of refresher in continuing series. I don’t take notes or memorize plot points of any book I read, with the hope I’ll be well prepared for the sequel.