Vacuum Diagrams by Stephen Baxter
Baxter’s future history, known as the Xeelee sequence, is an exemplar of the form: it comprises his first four novels, Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux and Ring, and these marvellous linked stories. The stories are like pearls on the timeline of the sequence, which stretches from the formation of life in the quagma to the virtual extinction of baryonic life in this universe. Owners of the universe, the Xeelee, first contact photino birds at the beginning, then flee them at the end, having modified their own evolutionary history in a failed attempt to defeat the birds, creatures of dark matter. They flee through the eponymous Ring of exotic matter, and some humans will follow them. Baxter’s magnificent, mind-boggling ideas infuse the stories with enduring meaning and bring with them a sense of perspective married to wonder to be found nowhere else. There are new and amazing facets of the future here, and the reader can also once more spend time with Michael Poole, the wormhole technology genius from Timelike Infinity; with the wonderful Lieserl, modified human being inhabiting the sun; with the microscopic humans of the world of Flux; with the aliens threatening earth, Sqeeum, Qax, photino birds; above all, with the Xeelee.`The most important living science-fiction writer in the country’
THE TIMES
`The best SF writer in Britain’
SFX
Praise for Stephen Baxter’s short fiction:
`The stories are the purest distillation of hard SFThey add up to an essential collection’
INTERZONE
`A luminous collection . . . Baxter can overwhelm you with a traditional SF “sense of wonder” until your jaw drops’
SFX
`Baxter sends into free-fall the most awesome ideas in science fiction today … [He] reveals the mortal host in the machine.’
THE TIMES
Born in Liverpool in 1957, Stephen Baxter has a mathematics degree from the University of Cambridge and a Ph.D from Southampton. Until recently he worked in information technology. He is married and lives in Buckinghamshire.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780006498124 |
| ISBN 10 | 0006498124 |
| Title | Vacuum Diagrams |
| Author | Stephen Baxter |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding type | Paperback |
| Publisher | HarperCollins Publishers |
| Year published | 1998-04-20 |
| Number of pages | 480 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |