Manifold: Time

This book has some interesting ideas, but lacks for good characters. I liked how Baxter played with the idea of time being a stream and that the the future can reach back to change itself. I also like the ideas about how to get to space by making short trips to resource rich near earth objects and then spread from there and so on. The idea of creating more mind by creating a bigger bang is also sort of cool. The characters all sort of sucked. I felt the most for Emma because I could understand her motivation. I also like Malefant because his obsession was well drawn. The rest of the characters were blah. The book dragged on too long and had too many side plots. In fact, the plots were manifold. The manifold nature was cute, but made for a poor novel. Any one of the three story lines would have made a good novel, but all three was too much.
The scary children story has a rich history. Done properly, the Blue children's saga could have been poignant. The Tybee's were a perfect entry into that world. The way the father adored his child served as an eloquent counter point to the how the rest of the world viewed them. The world packing them away in concentration camps would have made logical sense without the Carter prediction or Malefant's visions from the future.
The Malefant story with it Carter prediction and the crazy blue circle could have been a great story of societal decline in the face of knowing the future. Flash Forward did a good job of it. There is plenty of material.
The story of the squid expanding into the galaxy had plenty of room to run. I could imagine a tale of eventual warfare between humans and the alien race they created. A little bit a Battlestar Galatica.
Any one of the three would have worked with the upstream time story. It all could have blossomed into a better way to make black holes.
Instead, they all muddle each other up and became a third of the book any one could have been separately.