A good idea and storyline for a book. However, the book can be hard to get into for a while. ( )

So humans go to Titan after discovering life there. All this done using leftover hardware from the STS & Apollo programs.
A very good book if quite quite depressing at the end. As always with Baxter the science is interesting and well presented, but unlike normal Baxter I found myself caring for the characters, he seems here to have cracked his normal Achilles heel of being unable to write characters.

Spoiler Warning:
I just found the end too depressing and marginally improbable and forced to give it the full 5 star recommendation. I can see why he did what he did, trying to give the exploration of space as humanity's only hope of survival and pointing out just how stupid mankind often is, however i think he really did take it too far to make this point and to make this disaster that was the outcome of the mission actually a success beyond anything else mankind has achieved. A good idea, just slightly forced and certainly improbable how they were brought back to life. ( )

A particularly grim book, but excellent all the same. Baxter at the top of his form. ( )

Interesting idea of going to Titan on the cheap, using 80s and 90s technology, but I found this book to be less engaging than Baxter's other similar works such as Voyage and Moonseed. I also found the ending to be weak. Nonetheless the characters and setup were strong and if you like Baxter's other work I'd recommend giving it a try. ( )

This was the first Baxter novel I ever read and it pushed me into reading the rest of his work. Titan however is still one of my favorites.

The novel is set in a world where NASA is dying (not too unlike our own). Bureaucratic red tape and hostile government influences/budget cuts are slowly destroying the pioneering spirit of NASA's heyday. A rag-tag group of scientists manage to achieve one more manned launch all the way to Saturn's moon Titan, based on evidence from unmanned probes that Titan might hold extra-terrestrial (albeit microbial) life and be a key base for future operations due to the atmosphere and ground conditions containing liquid (non-water) lakes and complex organic compounds; a la primitive earth. The crew is abandoned (no more radio contact; chance of follow up/re-supply mission squashed) halfway to Titan and the rest of the novel follows their struggle to stay alive in space and survive on Titan's surface. The end of the novel presented my first taste of Baxter's deep-future visions. It is absolutely beautiful and amazing.

Titan's characters are believable to a fault and I found myself lost in their world of struggles and trials. Completely absorbing, I highly recommend this novel to any hard sci-fi fan... ( )