Read and Download Ebook Firstborn...
Firstborn Arthur C. Clarke , Stephen Baxter
PDF File: Firstborn... 1 Read and Download Ebook Firstborn...
Firstborn
Arthur C. Clarke , Stephen Baxter
Firstborn Arthur C. Clarke , Stephen Baxter The Firstborn–the mysterious race of aliens who first became known to science fiction fans as the builders of the iconic black monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey–have inhabited legendary master of science fiction Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s writing for decades. With Time’s Eye and Sunstorm, the first two books in their acclaimed Time Odyssey series, Clarke and his brilliant co-author Stephen Baxter imagined a near-future in which the Firstborn seek to stop the advance of human civilization by employing a technology indistinguishable from magic.
Their first act was the Discontinuity, in which Earth was carved into sections from different eras of history, restitched into a patchwork world, and renamed Mir. Mir’s inhabitants included such notables as Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, and United Nations peacekeeper Bisesa Dutt. For reasons unknown to her, Bisesa entered into communication with an alien artifact of inscrutable purpose and godlike power–a power that eventually returned her to Earth. There, she played an instrumental role in humanity’s race against time to stop a doomsday event: a massive solar storm triggered by the alien Firstborn designed to eradicate all life from the planet. That fate was averted at an inconceivable price. Now, twenty-seven years later, the Firstborn are back.
This time, they are pulling no punches: They have sent a “quantum bomb.” Speeding toward Earth, it is a device that human scientists can barely comprehend, that cannot be stopped or destroyed–and one that will obliterate Earth.
Bisesa’s desperate quest for answers sends her first to Mars and then to Mir, which is itself threatened with extinction. The end seems inevitable. But as shocking new insights emerge into the nature of the Firstborn and their chilling plans for mankind, an unexpected ally appears from light-years away.
From the Hardcover edition.
Firstborn Details
Date : Published (first published 2007) ISBN : Author : Arthur C. Clarke , Stephen Baxter Format : Kindle Edition 388 pages Genre : Science Fiction, Fiction
Download Firstborn ...pdf
Read Online Firstborn ...pdf
Download and Read Free Online Firstborn Arthur C. Clarke , Stephen Baxter
PDF File: Firstborn... 2 Read and Download Ebook Firstborn...
PDF File: Firstborn... 3 Read and Download Ebook Firstborn...
From Reader Review Firstborn for online ebook
Benjamin D. says
Somewhere in this meandering travelogue is an outline for a decent book, but Baxter (I'm fairly certain Clarke wasn't actually involved in writing this) doesn't seem interested in it. In a rare moment of plot, when our main character finally matters, there's a couple pages of people talking about things, and then the event takes place off screen. None of the characters matter; they just move from place to place to place, and most are just caricatures anyway (What's that? Military guy is irritated by a non-violent perspective again? What a surprise!).
Army of Penguins says
Oof. I'll say this series was... interesting. I hadn't been a big fan of Time's Eye, but Sunstorm had been absolutely epic. And now this book... ends up somewhere between the other two, which is kinda fitting since it also tries to balance the uber-epic threat level of Sunstorm with the fantastic setting of Mir from Time's Eye.
I won't go into too spoiler-y plot details here, so I'll just say that my main issues with this book were the pacing and the last few chapters, which left me mildly confused and slightly disappointed.
If you read the other two books, then yeah, you should probably read this one, too. This book definitely isn't bad, but it's also not as awesome and epic as I had hoped (measured by the high standard that Sunstorm set for me). I truly hope that Stephen Baxter will give this series the real ending it deserves. And if/when that happens, I will gladly adjust my rating and review.
Alex says
This series was all over the place for me. Time's Eye was interesting and fun but not necessarily amazing, but then I'd consider Sunstorm one of my favorite Clarke books. Sunstorm is classic Clarke and extremely well done. An alien threat that seems insurmountable, many failed attempts to stop it to the point that you're just as nervous as the characters to find out what they're going to do, and ingenious science that makes it all come together.
This, the third and final book in the series, has all of the elements of its predecessor, and ties in the events of the first book, Time's Eye, as well. So it should be a homerun. Unfortunately all of those pieces come together sooooooo slowly, working their way through a thick sludge of "politics" and character development for 8 billion characters at once, many of whom have no bearing on the plot whatsoever. Grasper and Alexander the Great have no real role in the events of this book, yet we hear about their doings on several different occasions. It was kind of cool to read about Grasper's evolution but ultimately it just made the book seem that much longer.
I suppose if anyone asks my opinion I'd say to just read Sunstorm and skip the other two. Maybe you'll find it more interesting than I did though.
PDF File: Firstborn... 4 Read and Download Ebook Firstborn...
Peter Tillman says
This is a novel that, by objective standards, is pretty bad. A slow and clumsy start, stock characters, plot points that make no sense.... And yet, and yet -- there's a lot of actual science in the story (documented in an afterword), and the story finally got moving and sucked me in. The time-sliced mosaic-world Mir, with a glacial North America filled with the Pleistocene megafauna, is pretty great (even if the human characters aren't). The space-battle with the incoming Q-missile is thrilling, even if the strategy to divert the deadly missile and save the Earth is almost laughably naive (view spoiler) But the image of a universe full of refugees from the implacable Firstborn enemy is haunting.
Well, we hard-SF fans can't be too picky. 2.5 stars with a courtesy round up. But if you don't like hard SF, or demand a bit of polish in the prose, skip this one.
There's a hook for a sequel at the end, but Sir Arthur died the year after this book was published, so the series remains unfinished, and the mysteries of the Firstborn (and the refugees) remain unresolved.
Joe says
Somewhat more rambling and less satisfying than the previous two Time Odyssey books. Unsatisfying ending.
Massimo Marino says
An ancient race that will not share the available energy in the universe with other civilizations, and therefore is devoted to pursue the destruction of other intelligences as they become ‘competitors’; this is the premise of the great fresco by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter dedicated to the fight of humanity against the Firstborn who first became known to science fiction fans as the builders of the iconic black monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The Firstborn have inhabited legendary master of science fiction Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s writing for decades.
The novel should conclude the “Time Odyssey” trilogy, picking up the threads left open in previous novels and revealing those mysteries remained unsolved.
The story opens with the awakening of Bisesa Dutt, brave British soldier and heroine of the two previous episodes, from a cryogenic sleep that lasted 19 years. Her daughter Myra awakes her, driven by an emergency situation: an alien probe had been detected in the deep space and is headed toward Earth, and now identified as a quantum bomb able to obliterate an entire planet. Together with the young astronaut Alexei Carel, the two women fled from Earth through a space elevator, directed to Mars, where an Eye of the Firstborn had been found, preserved by the ancients and now disappeared Martians. But this is only the first part of the long journey of Bisesa, who finds herself on Mir, the planet built by taking countless splinters time of Earth ages by the Firstborn, and where the young astronomer Abdikadir awaits. In Babylon, the capital of the empire that Alexander the Great, (yes, THE Alexander the Great) intends to extend over the entire planet, a surprising news awaits Bisesa: in this pocket universe, Mars is blue and inhabited.
PDF File: Firstborn... 5 Read and Download Ebook Firstborn...
This and the discovery of the Eye allow to understand that in the past the mysterious Firstborn have already caused the extinction of an intelligent race in the solar system, the unfortunate Martians have not managed to avoid being swept away. Perhaps, now, the same fate awaits the human breed: it is the time of the end. More than science fiction, the story is full of Fantasy, with technology (and its descriptions) that clashes with science, so much so that I doubt Clarke, who lived through his last days, had the time to really work on this novel.
Spoiler alert: I’ll talk about details of the plot and the ending of the story, so if you are willing to read the novel, you should end now reading this review.
One would expect, from the third volume of a trilogy, some sort of conclusion, pleasant, surprising or predictable and disappointing as it will be, but a conclusion. It is not the case here. What the novel does is to replicate situations seen in the first two volumes, the Earth is under attack and the situation of fantasy world of Mir, but does not give any answer to the open questions, on the contrary, it adds new ones and prepare the turf for a… quadrilogy? The end of the novel sees the Q bomb destroy Mars, the Mars of our universe, sacrificed to save the Earth; Myra remains on the planet during the collapse, but somehow she does not die. She meets with Bisesa in an unknown place. Daughter and mother were transported there by the Lastborn, beings of which we know nothing, just that they are at war with the Firstborn.
It goes without saying that the trilogy is transformed into a de facto quartet … at a minimum, but why limit yourself? Lastborn enter the stage as a Deus Ex Machina and voilà, nothing really ends and at least three other novels can now see the light. But there is a much bigger problem that the prolongation, the stretching of the series: the gradual loss of interest for the story. The first novel was by a great idea, the second had been a passable catastrophic novel, while the latter — or rather penultimate chapter? — a total disappointment.
Paradoxically, it has been more credible the building of a miniuniverso containing a planet assembled with thousands of “splinters time” from Earth, the planet Mir seen in the first novel, than the actual solar system where the action takes place in Firstborn. Only a few decades have passed after a disaster that swept away a billion people and caused enormous destructions; one would expect to find humanity intent to lick their wounds, prepare a comeback, and not committed to blindly colonize the space, build huge telescopes in Antarctica, and spending time and resources to recreate extinct species.
Another questionable detail, because of the deployment of forces and the sentinels placed up to the orbit of Saturn, why the Firstborn are so kind to send their herald of death, the Q bomb, along the ecliptic rather than let it arrive unexpected following a different route? Burglars don’t announce themselves at the gate, walk straight to the main door of the mansion, and ring the bell.
The real critical point of the novel is not, however, its illogic fabric, rather the weary drag of the story, which has never tense moments and is lost in long descriptions of technological marvels and parts that taste like magic and stick to the walls with spit, just to fill a few pages, (example, see chapter 25.) With a full universe with alien species, the action is virtually absent, the protagonists spend most of their time traveling from place to place for inscrutable reasons. The Q bomb is a lingering plot gimmick, disturbing, and the murder attempt of Alexander the Great gives no emotion.
Some points of interest: the novel tries to please those interested in future technologies, and they will find many examples, from space elevators to solar sailing ships, all based on the latest available studies, but — again — they seem to be there just to add pages to a thin story. It reads like badly written novel by a copycat writer of Arthur C. Clarke who only got the message “I need to write long technology descriptions, crazy, disruptive, wild, and I’m done.” I can only think that Clarke’s
PDF File: Firstborn... 6 Read and Download Ebook Firstborn... declining health has prevented him from giving his contribution (a few months after the publication the great writer left us), and that its decline coincided with that of this series.
To emphasize that the novel is a work of only Baxter I proceeded to clear the name of Clarke from the spine of the book. With a black marker.
Rick Ludwig says
A conclusion that ties up the other two books, but I was disappointed. I rank this between the other two. the first in the series was my favorite and promised more than the subsequent two delivered. This one was better than the second in the series, which had little to do with the first. I wish I had stopped after reading Time's Eye to be honest. Taken on its own, Firstborn had some good moments, but they were scattered. I was glad to see Bisesa return to Mir and to see what had happened there, but this only reminded me of how much better the first book was. Given that the Space Odyssey was also driven by the Firstborn, it would have been quite rewarding to merge the two in this final book, instead they continued to maintain them as distinct and conflicting stories. In reading some of the other reviews, I see that their is a broad range of opinions about this book and the second in the series. I am glad that there were those who found more here than I did.
Krbo says dosta ljudi je komentiralo kako im je znanost ovoga zadnjeg nastavka Vremenske odiseje strana i tegobna za razumijevanja. meni nije bila kako imam neko obrazovanje iz fizike no moglo bi biti problema tako da "?udne" re?enice jednostavno treba prihvatiti kao takve. finale bih smjetio negdje izme?u prve dvije knjige po kvaliteti, a cijelom serijalu ide jedna dobra ?etvorka, recimo 3,8 no moj op?i dojam je kako mi je bilo ugodno potrošiti vrijeme uz njega. netko od dvojca (vjerujem kako je Clarke ovdje više bio nadzor i usmjeriva?, a Baxter kvalitetno oru?e) je nažalost izveo Herbertov trik i sam kraj za?inio s više pitanja nego odgovora (sumnjam da je bila predvi?ena ?etvrta knjiga obzirom kako Clarke nije još dugo poživio) tako da mi to kvari okus. no dobro, ne moraju sve stvari u životu imati i napisan kraj, ponešto možemo i sami... ovo nije literatura za usputne nego baš za one koji vole tu i tamo pravi hard-SF s debelom znanstvenom podlogom.
Rusty says
I try to remind myself that my enjoyment of a book, or movie, or TV show, or game, whatever, stems from my expectations going into it. Which of course is why I’m sure I’ll hate the new Avengers movie when it comes out later this year, but I’ll probably love something that should be lame, like The Phantom Menace 3D experience – which I would probably see in 2D.
PDF File: Firstborn... 7 Read and Download Ebook Firstborn...
Anyhow, the last book I reviewed I was a bit harsh on. I expected a fun romp through a future universe full of FTL and mysterious aliens, and instead I got a lesson in economics and bureaucratics… wait, is bureaucratics a word? Whatever, I got a lesson in how a bureaucracy can hamper pretty much anything important. I was disappointed and I vented. I still feel bad about it. I just hate being angry like that, anyone with kids might understand. After your kid does something stupid and you lose your cool and yell and scream and threaten and later realize that you might have overreacted… that’s the kind of guilt I feel over that last review.
Well, keep that in mind as I go forward. I had picked up Firstborn recently, a book by Arthur C Clarke and Stephen Baxter. If what I’ve heard is true, it’s really a book by Stephen Baxter with Clarke’s name attached. As this was shortly before Clarke passed away, and I’ve heard rumors that he hasn’t really contributed much to his collaborative efforts in a very long time anyway.
Regardless, Stephen Baxter is an author that I caught onto back in the early nineties and was someone I now look at like – if you can forgive me for dipping into baseball terms – a batter that in his second or third year in the major leagues, seemingly out of nowhere, manages bat .350 for a season. You think you have the next Ted Williams on your hands, but then he spends the rest of his career hitting around .290. You keep asking yourself why he’s not hitting the ball like he used to, but really, he was just an okay hitter that had an unbelievable hot streak one year.
In the case of Baxter, he had about 7 or 8 books that came out from around 94 til 2000 or so that blew me away with their sci fi awesomeness. Timelike Infinity, Ring, Mainfold: Time, Manifold: Space, Titan, Vacuum Diagrams (a short story collection). I couldn’t get enough of his stuff. He was my favorite author. This is the guy that made me a science fiction fan. In a lot of ways, he helped mold me into the person I am today.
But since that time, his novels have gotten a bit more… I don’t know, abstract. Things bottomed out for me when I read his Weaver books, I just didn’t like them, so much so that I quit the series without reading the final book.
Since that time, I’ve just been leery of Baxter, I see flashes of that great streak he had, but it’s only flashes. The man has this going for him though, he has BIG ideas.
Now, Firstborn is the third book in a trilogy, I read the first two, but is seemed like it was a very long time coming before the third one came out, so long in fact, that I didn’t bother to pick it up when it was new. I recall the first one I enjoyed, and the second one I thought was a bit odd. Wait, maybe I have that backwards. Damn. I just can't remember.
Regardless, when I was in the discount store the other day, they had stacks and stacks of this novel laying out for $3 I thought I would give it a chance. Maybe it was because I was coming off such a negative experience with my previous book, or because I was so ambivalent about starting this one – but whatever it was, I loved it.
Funny, as I look at other reviewers, I can see that not everyone felt this way about it. For me though, it was a grand tour of a post-apocalyptic earth, in a universe where some god like entity is determined to wipe out humanity from the cosmos, and humanity thumbs their nose at the gods, and decides to fight back.
Well, not fight back exactly, but avoid confrontation with as much balls as they can. I like Baxter’s take on the subject, it made me think. I struggled for a bit trying to recall characters from previous books, and I still am not sure I understand the aliens’ logic in the actions they took. But whatever, if this book was a letdown for some, it wasn’t for me, I wish he would riff off this theme for the rest of his career as an author. It’s awesome sci fi with a Clarke-like feel to it. Except with better characters. Not great characters mind you, but
PDF File: Firstborn... 8 Read and Download Ebook Firstborn... at least people I don’t think of as robots.
Bryan says
Well... I am suitably impressed with the way this series just got better and better. This book was the best of the trilogy, and that's a feat because I was quite satisfied with book #2 (after being a bit underwhelmed with book #1).
The first book (Time's Eye) seemed like a science fantasy to me. (Of course, it's still Clarke & Baxter, so the science included will be accurate.) In the vein of Barsoom, in which an alternate Earth (called Mir) is explored, and alternate time-streams result in a massive showdown between Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great. Oh.. and bad guys are responsible - Mir exists because they are trying to get us.
The second book (Sunstorm) seemed like a different genre. Action from the first book is referred to, but nothing takes place on Mir. It's all on Earth, and it's a nicely technical story about the struggles to build the infrastructure needed to stave off the attack of the aliens known as "Firstborn". (They're the bad guys who are responsible for the action-adventure that took place in the first book.)
So.. two different books, sitting comfortably within two completely different sub-genres of SF. Of course I'm going to like book #2 better, and I believe I even suggested (in my review of Sunstorm) that it would be possible to bypass the first book and go straight into the 2nd book.
But now... the final book (Firstborn) ties up the narrative from *both* previous books. It splits its action to occur both on Mir and on Earth. And there are numerously many references (and names) from events/places/people from both books that you might find it confusing if you don't go start book #3 immediately after reading the first two volumes.
In fact, I had to go back and skim my way through both previous works to remind myself about the details, because they do show up in this novel. I have to retract my previous suggestion then about skipping the first book. If you want to fully enjoy this series, you'll need to read them in the proper order, and pretty well successively so that you don't forget names and places.
Beyond that, the story in the final volume is a nice followup to that which happened in Sunstorm. The aliens are still out to get us, and they lob another weapon at Earth. This time, however, we may not have time (or proper technology) to build any structure that will shelter us.
While I considered this a slight step up from Sunstorm, it suffers in other areas, and thus I couldn't give this 5 full stars. There was far too much secrecy and distrust among "spacers" and those on Earth. It almost seems like somebody was reading some Larry Niven and decided that they also needed some political intrigue between the spacers and the flatlanders.
A good read, and recommended, but now I know that really should have read the whole series pretty well one-after-the-other. Worth your time.
PDF File: Firstborn... 9 Read and Download Ebook Firstborn...
Nabine says
I loved the first book in the series with its highly intriguing premise and was excited to find out about its sequels. Having now finished them, I see why people who loved the last two volumes prefer it to the first-- they really go more into the hard science, which is why I didn't enjoy them as much. I truly appreciate the attention to accurate science, but as a non-science person it just wasn't as interesting to me. I persevered through the series, however, because I felt invested in the characters, especially Bisesa, who is a wonderfully strong, capable and intelligent woman. I was hoping for more of a resolution at the end, but if there is to be another volume I'd definitely check it out.
Jake says
Like some other readers, I had a harder time getting into this book than Time’s Eye and Sunstorm . I'll admit that one reason was my inability to fully grasp the scientific concepts involved. However, I also think that Stephen Baxter uses so much ink developing the technological and theoretical concepts that character development gets neglected.
Nevertheless, I loved the last 70 pages or so. Once Mr. Baxter gets past the predictable fate of the Q-bomb, the story opens up into a fascinating exploration of the farthest reaches of time, space and mind. Only the general pessimism of the final chapters lessened my enjoyment a bit.
I very much liked the ending. No, it's not a firm Shakespearean resolution where everyone winds up married or dead. Yes it's an ending that begs for a fourth installment to be written. So much the better. Clarke's themes are worthy of future treatments. Another 30 years down the road, I hope some strong sci-fi talent with real scientific expertise takes up the odyssey again. In the meantime, the openness of Firstborn's ending encourages my imagination to resume running free--something I've always loved about Sir Arthur C. Clarke's “endings.”
Firstborn isn't a classic in our time, though it may yet be if it proves sufficiently prophetic. Still, if you love Clarke's space odysseys, and you want to seriously explore what it might mean for humanity to grow up and truly become advanced, I recommend the entire Time Odyssey trilogy.
Bradley says
Concluding (sadly) the Time Odyssey trilogy, this book firmly solidifies the wildly disconnected first and second novels into one cohesive storyline.
There are bigger stakes, believe it or not. Badder weapons, new strangeness, and a direct call-back between Clarke's Firstborn race that became noncorporeal, were the architects of intelligent life, and who were directly referenced in all the psychedelic images from 2001 A Space Odyssey. If that doesn't get your blood pumping with all those obelisks, I don't know what will.
Add that to some of Baxter's most awesome aliens in the silver spheres, a massive world-building experience with the Xeelee with universal implications and an almost completely one-sided fight, and this novel becomes a truly fascinating collage and melding of two absolutely enormous adventures full of great (and
PDF File: Firstborn... 10 Read and Download Ebook Firstborn... apparently accurate) science, lovely characters (especially the AIs), and a great cross-section of everyone. Spacers, Martians, Earthers, Alt-Earthers, Non-human intelligences, including the Watcher and our Missing Linkers, and of course the Firstborn.
Let's destroy some planets, damn the fates of some futures, and ask a few new questions.
It's good. Not great, but very good. It's better in the idea realm where we can explore the worlds of Clarke and Baxter in a truly cool mesh between their imaginations. I really believe it was an equal collaboration. This is, despite the fact that Clarke died soon after.
And that's where my biggest concern lies.
The end. Is not the end. It's not even close to an end. Everyone SAYS it's the end, that it wraps up the trilogy, and it does, at least by combining the previous two in a really big and cool way, answering tons of questions while asking even more...
But the VERY END is ... unsatisfying. Who the HELL is the Lastborn, and why are they losing the fight????? WTF!?!
Okay. Great cliffhanger. Whatever. But where is the NEXT trilogy?
Oh, wait. Clarke died. That was back in '07.
*screams and pulls out his hair*
I'm emotional because I see great things in this series. I see how the Three-Body Problem built and stood on the shoulders of JUST THIS KIND OF SF. OF course, this was a much easier read and didn't jam-pack nearly as much astounding ideas in its pages as Cixin Liu's work, but it comes awfully close.
And years before Cixin Liu wrote his something similar. :)
Just postulating here. And wondering. And wistful. I wish I had a lot more of these books.
Dan says
The third in the trilogy by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter which sees the Earth of the near-future face the threat of the firstborn, a malevolent alien race who want to destroy humanity. The book once again follows Bisea, who has survived the time-spliced version of Earth in Time's Eye and the huge sunstorm in Sunstorm. This time the threat is a quantum bomb heading straight for Earth.
Oddly we actually spend very little time on Earth as Bisea is taken to Mars to see a discovery which changes everything. The book also follows Myra, Bisea's daughter, as she spends time on Mars, the crew of the first space war ship and we find out how Mir has fared since we last saw it. Essentially it ties the first two books together whilst seeing the universe(s) the pair created face a new threat.
I always find I enjoy Stephen Baxter books a lot more than most reviewers do. I didn't hesitate in giving it five stars because I loved it. It's full of science which I loved, making the entire plot seem possible without being too much like a textbook. At the same time it's full of all sorts of great sci-fi ideas which explore how humanity could move into space in the near future. I really liked the idea of the Firstborn being the cause of
PDF File: Firstborn... 11 Read and Download Ebook Firstborn... our rapid scientific leap forward when us travelling through space is what they are trying to avoid. It is a beautiful paradox.
The only issue with this book? The fact it is the last in the trilogy and whilst it does defeat the threat of the book the general threat of the Firstborn still remains. It begins to tie the threads of the series together yet it feels like there should be another book. Sadly that never happened as Clarke died not long after this was published.
A hugely enjoyable sci-fi story, with an emphasis on the science. Wonderful.
Cian Beirdd says
Unsatisfying. For those of us hoping to see the aliens (which Clarke never does) or find some emotional conclusion, the book is a disappointment. Neat technology, fun science, but not much in terms of any real conclusion; at the end of this series the Firstborn are still an imminent threat, they still have technology beyond our imaginings, and they still want us dead. Mir is still in flux, Mars is gone but what that entails for the solar system is not explored. Frustrating is a good word for this book, extremely frustrating. I know much more about what Clarke imagined us doing in the future, but nothing more of the characters or species involved. That is, after all, why you read Sci Fi novels.
PDF File: Firstborn... 12