This was an interesting book. While not a direct sequel to [b:Voyage|843565|Voyage (NASA Trilogy, #1)|Stephen Baxter|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1295247466s/843565.jpg|55352], it's a book written in a similar manner.

That being said, this is one of the single most depressing books that I've read in a while. It completely crushes my hope for humanity. Again, I realize this is a work of fiction, but it doesn't matter. It takes zero imagination to see this as a probably future of the human race. Do not read this book if you want a happy story.

This book has certainly cured me of any desire I might have had to go all the way to Saturn in a modified Space Shuttle.

Dnf at 17%. I thought it was going ok until I read some about Stephan Baxter and a couple of reviews for this book. Not gonna waste time reading it.

Out of all the books I’ve read and loved, this is the only one I would describe as “miserable.” It’s like Baxter thought “what would be the most utterly depressing and cynical way that a manned mission to Titan could be achieved,” and you know what? He nailed it! As much of a bummer as this book is, it’s also really damn good. Baxter can be hit or miss but his books are never forgettable, and despite how long this book is, I absolutely devoured it in a few days. The characters are surprisingly well-written for Baxter and there are some events in this book that are weirdly accurate to what would later occur in real life (the Columbia space shuttle disaster, for example). Though most of the story is indeed a miserable time for pretty much all of humanity, the final conclusion is actually quite hopeful and beautiful. While I can understand why some people probably do not like the ending and find it unnecessary, I found it quite satisfying and it made me like the book even more.

I'm a late comer to this series, but I absolutely loved Voyage and was thrilled when I found out that it was part of a trilogy. Immediately I jumped into Titan, and almost immediately had misgivings. Nevertheless, I pushed my way through, and this review is my warning to anybody in the same boat: Just quit. The story doesn't get better. The implausibilities are never resolved. There's no redeeming grace waiting at the end. The whole book starts off crappy, and ends even worse.

Voyage was a compelling and realistic take on an alternate history culminating in a crewed mission to Mars in the 80's--so I expected that this book would pick up where that one left off. I was woefully wrong as it turns out. Titan is an alternate future, written in the late 90's about the 2000's to 2010's. And it is *painfully* bad.

Among its many, many sins is falling into the trap of writing about a future that is too near to the present. Baxter writes about the early 2000's as featuring animated tattoos, ubiquitous virtual reality, self-driving cars, and a caricature of a right-wing populist that somehow manages to look ridiculous even in a post-2016 world. And it's not just the technology that is painfully out of place, his portrayal of the younger generation in the book has an overwhelming "old man yells at cloud" flavor to it.

But beyond that, for a book that is ostensibly hard science fiction, the core of the book centers around a mission that is laughably implausible from every perspective. And even if you get beyond the insanely inadequate exposition, immediately after the launch of the mission there is an utterly absurd sabotage attempt with absolutely no reasonable motive and with zero consequences for either the protagonists or antagonists. And it doesn't get better from there: each subsequent scene just piles on to the absurdity of the plot, while being monumentally depressing to boot. Scenes seem to be thrown in for no other purpose than to make the reader miserable. Which, done properly, can work great! Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, and more recently Neal Stephenson's Seveneves manage to make that trope work. Titan utterly fails to do so. It's a miserable read with no redeeming qualities.

Every single character is eminently hateable, the plot is absurd, the realism is lacking, there's no unifying theme or purpose, and to top it all off, it ends with a completely incongruous Deus Ex Machina.

In short, I would wholeheartedly recommend that everybody skip this book entirely, even if you enjoy other books from Baxter and especially if you enjoyed his book Voyage.

This dystopian space tale was out of date shortly after it was published, but it's still a good story with an important message - space travel is bigger than short-term interests, and politics will always nuke expensive programs. The Apollo moon landings were a freak, needed to put the commies in their place, so to speak.

In the early 21st century, the dying days of the space program are in sight. The possibility of life is discovered on Titan, one of Saturns moons. A new NASA director gets the idea to sneak in a mission to Titan before the space program is dismantled by the incoming president. (I found this one a little hard to swallow - how often is is a presidential race years in the future that certain?)

The scope of the novel is expansive, focusing on world affairs for much of it, and progressing to humanity's future in the universe. I enjoyed it, and am reading Mr. Baxter's novel The Time Ships, picked up on the strength of this book.

I'm not quite sure what to say about this book...part of me enjoyed it - it included the hard technology that I enjoy reading (talking about how current technology can be used to support a manned mission to Titan), but the overall tone of the book was very negative and downbeat - and, then (without any spoilers), the ending was "way out there..."

The book did feel too long...but, I think that was a result of the incredibly detailed technical aspects...and, some of the later medical issues were described in rather striking detail.

So, I'm just giving it three stars...