Stephen Baxter Books In Order

Raft

Stephen Baxter’s highly acclaimed first novel and the beginning of his stunning Xeelee Sequence. A spaceship from Earth accidentally crossed through a hole in space time to a universe where the force of gravity is one billion times as strong as the gravity we know. Somehow the crew survived, aided by the fact that they emerged into a cloud of gas surrounding a black hole, which provided a breathable atmosphere. Five hundred years later, their descendants still struggle for existence, divided into two main groups. The Miners live on the Belt, a ramshackle ring of dwellings orbiting the core of a dead star, which they excavate for raw materials. These can be traded for food from the Raft, a structure built from the wreckage of the ship, on which a small group of scientists preserve the ancient knowledge which makes survival possible. Rees is a Miner whose curiosity about his world makes him stow away on a flying tree just one of the many strange local lifeforms carrying trade between the Belt and the Raft. Accepted as an apprentice scientist, he learns that their world is dying, and that in order to live these survivors must contemplate a journey even more perilous and fantastic than that of their ancestors.

Timelike Infinity

First there were good times: humankind reached glorious heights, even immortality. Then there were bad times: Earth was occupied by the faceless, brutal Qax. Immortality drugs were confiscated, the human spirit crushed. Earth became a vast factory for alien foodstuffs. Into this new dark age appears the end of a tunnel through time. Made from exotic matter, it is humanity’s greatest engineering project in the pre Qax era, where the other end of the tunnel remains anchored near Jupiter. When a small group of humans in a makeshift craft outwit the Qax to escape to the past through the tunnel, it is not to warn the people of Earth against the Qax, who are sure to follow them. For these men and women from the future are themselves dangerous fanatics in pursuit of their own bizarre quantum grail. Michael Poole, architect of the tunnel, must boldly confront the consequences of his genius. Timelike Infinity: the strange region at the end of time where the Xeelee, owners of the universe, are waiting…

Flux

Star Humans are microscopic, but their hopes and fears, and loves, are not. And the future of humans everywhere, on Earth and among the stars, depends on their courage in the face of attack by the mighty Xeelee, owners of the Universe. A novel of the Xeelee Sequence from the acknowledged heir to the visionary legacy of Clarke and Wells, heralding a new Golden Age in science fiction.

Ring

Michael Poole’s wormholes constructed in the orbit of Jupiter had opened the galaxy to humankind. Then Poole tried looping a wormhole back on itself, tying a knot in space and ripping a hole in time. It worked. Too well. Poole was never seen again. Then from far in the future, from a time so distant that the stars themselves were dying embers, came an urgent SOS and a promise. The universe was doomed, but humankind was not. Poole had stumbled upon an immense artifact, light years across, fabricated from the very string of the cosmos. The universe had a door. And it was open…

Vacuum Diagrams

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.

Anti-Ice

Discovering a new element, Anti Ice, a mysterious substance that unleashes vast energies when warmed, a millionaire industrialist dreams of power from an item that promises world peace or world destruction.

Voyage

The space mission of a lifetime An epic saga of America’s might have been, Voyage is a powerful, sweeping novel of how, if President Kennedy had lived, we could have sent a manned mission to Mars in the 1980s. Imaginatively created from the true lives and real events., Voyage returns to the geniuses of NASA and the excitement of the Saturn rocket, and includes historical figures from Neil Armstrong to Ronald Reagan who are interwoven with unforgettable characters whose dreams mirror the promise of a young space program that held the world in thrall. There is: Dana, the Na*zi camp survivor who achieves the dream of his hated masters; Gershon, the Vietnam fighter jock determined to be the first African American to land on another planet; and Natalie York, the brilliant geologist/astronaut who risks a career and love for the chance to run her fingers through the soil of another world.

Titan

Humankind’s greatest and last adventure! Possible signs of organic life have been found on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. A group of visionaries led by NASA’s Paula Benacerraf plan a daring one way mission that will cost them everything. Taking nearly a decade, the billion mile voyage includes a ‘slingshot’ transit of Venus, a catastrophic solar storm, and a constant struggle to keep the ship and crew functioning. But it is on the icy surface of Titan itself that the true adventure begins. In the orange methane slush the astronauts will discover the secret of life’s origins and reach for a human destiny beyond their wildest dreams.

Moonseed

It started the night Geena and Henry broke up. What was that strange light in the sky? A new star? A comet? Neither. It was the death of Venus. As if to commemorate the end of NASA’s golden couple, our neighbor planet exploded into a brilliant cloud of dust and debris, showering the Earth with radiation and bizarre particles as big as bacteriawiping out all the crops and half the life in the oceans, frying the ozone layer, forcing survivors to wear protective suits on city streets. Days later, a few specks of moon rock kicked up from the last Apollo mission fell upon a lava crag in Scotland. That was all it took. The ground itself began to shimmer, forming pools of luminous, almost liquid dust. Pools that grow larger every day, as the cultists of Infinite Egress drum and chant with apocalyptic joy…
So begins Stephen Baxter’s most ambitious, most exciting, and ultimately most fascinating novel: Moonseed, the story of a menace that falls to Earth from an unimaginably distant past, pushing us to the brink of an extinction event unparalleled in our planet’s history. For what has demolished Venus, and now threatens Earth itself, is part machine, part life form: a ten dimensional superstring nanovirus that literally eats rock, transforming it into liquid, and then into molecule size black holes that devour the very fabric of space time. Feasting on Edinburgh’s primeval basalt, Moonseed is steadily eating its way toward Earth’s core. The death toll rises by the hour as buildings collapse into streets that flow like water; as hundred foot tsunamis obliterate Seattle and Vancouver; as volcanoes sprout like weeds across the planet’s quickly decaying mantle. NASA ‘rock jockey’ Henry Meacher and his Japanese colleague, Blue, race to cut off the virus and save what is left of the Earth. Meanwhile Henry’s ex, Geena, straps in with a Russian cosmonaut for a daredevil Moon voyage, ultimately reuniting with Henry and searching for the lunar ice deposits that might make possible the greatest evacuation since Noah braved the Flood. And a mother and her young son clamber for the last solid ground in the liquefying Scottish Highlands, under the baleful stars of a dying universe…
Audacious beyond comparison, grand in conception, and gripping in execution, Moonseed is the first modern novel to do justice to the awesome terror and promise implicit in quantum physics. Like all of Baxter’s work, it blazes new paths from which science fiction will surely follow in the years to come, and becomes required reading for anyone wishing to understand the awesome promiseand threatrevealed by modern science.

Silverhair

In the grand tradition of Watership Down A saga of the great and gentle ones It is a harsh but beautiful world a remote fastness of shining tundra, rimmed by ice and sea and mountain. Silverhair and her kind have lived here from the earliest Rememberings, when Kilukpuk’s children first parted some for the jungle, some into the sea, and some into the rock and ice. Hear their song! For they are the last of the woolly mammoths, the great, shaggy gentle ones whose bones have greened Earth’s gras*ses through the Long Years, for fifty million springs. Hear their story. Silverhair is filled with the dreams of youth, and the warmth of Lop ear’s child growing in her belly. But even as her life begins, her world is ending around her. A new menace, more vicious than wolf or bear, is descending upon the snowlands a two legged creature that kills for joy, and fouls the Earth for greed. Silverhair and the matriarch, Owlheart, must escape across the glacial torrents, beyond the saw toothed mountains. They seek help and find it in unexpected sources, including the distant cousins who long ago found their destiny in the green arms of the sea, and from an enemy: an ice faced menace known as…
the Lost. Stephen Baxter, one of today’s most acclaimed writers of science fiction and fantasy, now turns his celebrated talents to a tale that has never before been told or even imagined. Silverhair begins a three part saga at once thrilling, heartwarming, and tragic of a small band of mammoth survivors on a remote arctic island, and what happens when they are discovered by a clever and unpredictable animal they call the Lost. Silverhair is a story for every age, a tale to remember as long as the footfalls of the great and gentle ones still echo in the shadow of the glaciers forever.

Long Tusk

Even as a young calf, Longtusk understood the hardships the few remaining of his ancient kind had encountered when the glaciers retreated and grassy forests stole over the vast tundra the herds called home. Worst of all was when the Fireheads came cruel, two legged beasts who kill for pleasure. At a tender age, Longtusk became their prisoner hobbled, abused, and stripped of his freedom. But through toil and terror, Longtusk never forgot his Clan and he learned crucial, intimate knowledge of the Fireheads’ ways, though at a terrible price. Now the time is rapidly approaching when he will have to clash with those who seek to destroy every living trace of his proud breed. And Longtusk must not shun the twisted path in front of him or what he is destined to become: the greatest hero of them all.

Icebones

3000 A.D. Years ago, humans colonized Mars, bringing with them specimens of long extinct Earth life for regeneration on this new frontier. But humankind has disappeared, and the animals have been left behind to fend for themselves. Icebones, daughter of Silverhair, had been the only adult mammoth taken to Mars. As such, she is now the only one of her kind who carries the accumulated knowledge of mammoth history, and it is up to her to teach her fellow mammoths how to survive and thrive without their human keepers. In the grand tradition of Watership Down, Stephen Baxter has created a complex society complete with elaborate myths and legends. With Icebones, he brilliantly and dramatically brings the acclaimed Mammoth trilogy to its resounding conclusion.

Time

Hailed by Arthur C. Clarke as ‘a major new talent,’ Stephen Baxter is one of the most gifted writers to appear in the last decade. His stunning novels combine state of the art scientific speculation with nonstop adventure on a cosmic scale, continuing the grand tradition of science fiction pioneered by such giants as Isaac Asimov and Robert E. Heinlein. Now the multi award winning author gives us his most ambitious and accomplished novel yet. Audaciously conceived, brilliantly executed, it is nothing less than a masterpiece an unforgettable race through and against time itself, with the fate of the universe and all mankind hanging in the balance. The year is 2010. More than a century of ecological damage, industrial and technological expansion, and unchecked population growth has left the Earth on the brink of devastation. But as the world’s governments turn inward, one man dares to gamble on a bolder, brighter future. That man Reid Malenfant has a very different solution to the problems plaguing the planet: the exploration and colonization of space. Battling national sabotage and international outcry, Malenfant’s bootstrap company builds a spacecraft, plots its course, and trains the genetically enhanced Sheena 5 for her one way journey. As apocalyptic riots sweep the globe, Malenfant launches the rocket. But Sheena has plans of her own. And even as she sets them in motion, the situation on Earth grows more desperate and violent. Now Malenfant together with a brilliant but disturbed mathematician, a child prodigy, and his ex wife must gamble the very existence of time and space on a single desperate throw of the dice. The odds are a trillion to one against him…
Or are they?

Space

Few writers can combine mind bending scientific speculation with breathtaking adventure like award winning author Stephen Baxter. In Manifold: Time, Baxter told a thrilling story in which the fate of the universe hung in the balance. It followed visionary Reid Malenfant, a man who willed humankind to explore Space, and ultimately was faced with a harrowing choice between a past that never was and a future that must never be. Now, in Manifold: Space, Reid Malenfant is back. But this is a different Malenfant. And a different universe. Fueled by an insatiable curiosity, Malenfant ventures to the far edge of the solar system, where he discovers a strange artifact left behind by an alien civilization: A gateway that functions as a kind of quantum transporter, allowing virtually instantaneous travel over the vast distances of interstellar Space. What lies on the other side of the gateway? Malenfant decides to find out. Yet as Malenfant embarks on a grand tour of the universe, back on Earth the Japanese scientist Nemoto fears her worst nightmares are coming true. Startling and chilling discoveries reveal that the Moon, Mars, Venus, even the Jovian moons, once thrived with life…
life that was snuffed out in the distant past by starfaring races. Snuffed out not just once but many times, in cycles of birth and destruction as plain as they are inexplicable. One fact is clear. The recent, Earthbound arrival of the Gaijin portend the first alien visitors in a new cycle. And behind them, looms another a species with an ominous predilection for blowing up suns. In desperation, Nemoto searches for a means of survival. Or failing that, revenge. Meanwhile Malenfant, having traveled millions of light years, is once more faced with a choice both impossible and necessary a choice that will push him beyond terror, beyond sanity, beyond humanity itself.

Origin

Stephen Baxter’s Manifold novels have struck the world of science fiction like a meteor. Heralded by Arthur Clark as a major new talent, Baxter stands time and space on their collective heads, envisions the future reflected in the past, and the past in the galaxy s most distant reaches and unformed speculations. Claiming the legacy of Heinlein and Asimov, Baxter now returns with his third Manifold novel in which he uses an astounding adventure story to posit a breathtaking vision of the Origin of species…
on earth and beyond. In the year 2015 a red moon appears in the Earth s orbit: brooding, multitextured, beautiful, and alive. Catastrophe follows. While coastlands flood by the new gravitational forces, millions of people die. Scientists scramble desperately to understand what is on the big red moon and how it got there. And NASA astronaut Reid Malenfant, and his wife Emma, are hurtling through the African sky in a training jet, when everything changes forever. For Malenfant and Emma, a reckless flight in a T 38 above the sun baked continent sends them colliding with a great wheel in the sky. Now Emma has awakened in a strange, Earthlike world, among physically powerful, primitive creatures who share humankind s features and desires but lack the human mind. And Reid Malenfant is back in Texas, reliving the plane crash, looking up at the red moon, and knowing in his heart that Emma is there. Emma is there, beginning a journey of survival that is both horrific and fascinating, utterly familiar and totally beyond comprehension. Malenfant, teamed with a Japanese scientist named Nemoto, will get his chance to rescue his wife. But neither can foresee the extraordinary adventures that await them. Neither can imagine the small and immense evolutionary secrets cloaked in the atmosphere of the red moon, or guess at how a vast, living, tightly woven cosmos has shaped our planet as we know it and how it will shape it again.

Time’s Eye

Sir Arthur C. Clarke is a living legend, a writer whose name has been synonymous with science fiction for more than fifty years. An indomitable believer in human and scientific potential, Clarke is a genuine visionary. If Clarke has an heir among today’s science fiction writers, it is award winning author Stephen Baxter. In each of his acclaimed novels, Baxter has demonstrated dazzling gifts of imagination and intellect, along with a rare ability to bring the most cerebral science dramatically to life. Now these two champions of humanism and scientific speculation have combined their talents in a novel sure to be one of the most talked about of the year, a 2001 for the new millennium. TIME S EYEFor eons, Earth has been under observation by the Firstborn, beings almost as old as the universe itself. The Firstborn are unknown to humankind until they act. In an instant, Earth is carved up and reassembled like a huge jigsaw puzzle. Suddenly the planet and every living thing on it no longer exist in a single timeline. Instead, the world becomes a patchwork of eras, from prehistory to 2037, each with its own indigenous inhabitants. Scattered across the planet are floating silver orbs impervious to all weapons and impossible to communicate with. Are these technologically advanced devices responsible for creating and sustaining the rifts in time? Are they cameras through which inscrutable alien eyes are watching? Or are they something stranger and more terrifying still?The answer may lie in the ancient city of Babylon, where two groups of refugees from 2037 three cosmonauts returning to Earth from the International Space Station, and three United Nations peacekeepers on a mission in Afghanistan have detected radio signals: the only such signals on the planet, apart from their own. The peacekeepers find allies in nineteenth century British troops and in the armies of Alexander the Great. The astronauts, crash landed in the steppes of Asia, join forces with the Mongol horde led by Genghis Khan. The two sides set out for Babylon, each determined to win the race for knowledge…
and the power that lies within. Yet the real power is beyond human control, perhaps even human understanding. As two great armies face off before the gates of Babylon, it watches, waiting…
. From the Hardcover edition.

Sunstorm

When Sir Arthur C. Clarke, the greatest science fiction writer ever, teams up with award winning author Stephen Baxter, who shares Clarke’s bold vision of a future where technology and humanism advance hand in hand, the result is bound to be a book of stellar ambition and accomplishment. Such was the case with Time s Eye. Now, in the highly anticipated sequel, Clarke and Baxter draw their epic to a triumphant conclusion that is as mind blowing as anything in Clarke s famous Space Odyssey series. SunstormReturned to the Earth of 2037 by the Firstborn, mysterious beings of almost limitless technological prowess, Bisesa Dutt is haunted by the memories of her five years spent on the strange alternate Earth called Mir, a jigsaw puzzle world made up of lands and people cut out of different eras of Earth s history. Why did the Firstborn create Mir? Why was Bisesa taken there and then brought back on the day after her original disappearance?Bisesa s questions receive a chilling answer when scientists discover an anomaly in the sun s core an anomaly that has no natural cause is evidence of alien intervention over two thousand years before. Now plans set in motion millennia ago by inscrutable watchers light years away are coming to fruition in a Sunstorm designed to scour the Earth of all life in a bombardment of deadly radiation. Thus commences a furious race against a ticking solar time bomb. But even now, as apocalypse looms, cooperation is not easy for the peoples and nations of the Earth. Religious and political differences threaten to undermine every effort. And all the while, the Firstborn are watching…
From the Hardcover edition.

Firstborn

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.

Coalescent

Now, joined by his boyhood friend Peter McLachlan, who arrives in Rome with a dark secret of his own, George uncovers evidence suggesting that the women of the Order have embarked on a divergent evolutionary path. But they are not just a new kind of human. They are a better kind, genetically superior, equipped with all the tools necessary to render ho*mo sapiens as extinct as the Neanderthals. And, chillingly, George and Peter soon have reason to fear that this colony is preparing to leave its overcrowded underground nest…
. Stephen Baxter possesses one of the most brilliant minds in modern science fiction. His vivid storytelling skills have earned him comparison to the giants of the past: Clarke, Asimov, Stapledon. Like his great predecessors, Baxter thinks on a cosmic scale, spinning cutting edge scientific speculation into pure, page turning gold. Now Baxter is back with a breathtaking adventure that begins during the catastrophic collapse of Roman Britain and stretches forward into an unimaginably distant, war torn future, where the fate of humanity lies waiting at the center of the galaxy…
. Destiny’s ChildrenCoalescentGeorge Poole isn t sure whether his life has reached a turning point or a dead end. At forty five, he is divorced and childless, with a career that is going nowhere fast. Then, when his father dies suddenly, George stumbles onto a family secret: a sister he never knew existed. A twin named Rosa, raised in Rome by an enigmatic cult. Hoping to find the answers to the missing pieces of his life, George sets out for the ancient city. Once in Rome, he learns from Rosa the enthralling story of their distant ancestor, Regina, an iron willed genius determined to preserve her family as the empire disintegrates around her. It was Regina who founded the cult, which has mysteriously survived and prospered below the streets of Rome for almost two millennia. The Order, says Rosa, is her real family and, even if he doesn t realize it yet, it is George s family, too. When she takes him into the vast underground city that is the Order s secret home, he feels a strong sense of belonging, yet there is something oddly disturbing about the women he meets. They are all so young and so very much alike. Stephen Baxter possesses one of the most brilliant minds in modern science fiction. His vivid storytelling skills have earned him comparison to the giants of the past: Clarke, Asimov, Stapledon. Like his great predecessors, Baxter thinks on a cosmic scale, spinning cutting edge scientific speculation into pure, page turning gold. Now Baxter is back with a breathtaking adventure that begins during the catastrophic collapse of Roman Britain and stretches forward into an unimaginably distant, war torn future, where the fate of humanity lies waiting at the center of the galaxy…
. Destiny s ChildrenCoalescentGeorge Poole isn t sure whether his life has reached a turning point or a dead end. At forty five, he is divorced and childless, with a career that is going nowhere fast. Then, when his father dies suddenly, George stumbles onto a family secret: a sister he never knew existed. A twin named Rosa, raised in Rome by an enigmatic cult. Hoping to find the answers to the missing pieces of his life, George sets out for the ancient city. Once in Rome, he learns from Rosa the enthralling story of their distant ancestor, Regina, an iron willed genius determined to preserve her family as the empire disintegrates around her. It was Regina who founded the cult, which has mysteriously survived and prospered below the streets of Rome for almost two millennia. The Order, says Rosa, is her real family and, even if he doesn t realize it yet, it is George s family, too. When she takes him into the vast underground city that is the Order s secret home, he feels a strong sense of belonging, yet there is something oddly disturbing about the women he meets. They are all so young and so very much alike. Now, joined by his boyhood friend Peter McLachlan, who arrives in Rome with a dark secret of his own, George uncovers evidence suggesting that the women of the Order have embarked on a divergent evolutionary path. But they are not just a new kind of human. They are a better kind, genetically superior, equipped with all the tools necessary to render ho*mo sapiens as extinct as the Neanderthals. And, chillingly, George and Peter soon have reason to fear that this colony is preparing to leave its overcrowded underground nest…
. From the Hardcover edition.

Exultant

When it comes to cutting edge science fiction, Stephen Baxter is in a league of his own. His mastery of hard science, his fearlessly speculative imagination, and his ability to combine grand philosophical questions with tales of rousing adventure make him essential reading for anyone concerned with the future of humankind. Now, in Exultant, Baxter takes us to a distant future of dazzling promise and deadly threat, in which a far flung humanity battles for survival against an implacable alien foe. Destiny’s ChildrenExultantFor more than twenty thousand years, humans have been at war with the alien race of Xeelee. It is a war fought with armaments so advanced as to be godlike, a war in which time itself has become an ever shifting battleground. At the cost of billions of lives, and with ruthless and relentless efficiency, the ruling Coalition has pushed the Xeelee back to the galactic core, where the supermassive black hole known as Chandra serves the Xeelee as both fortress and power source. There, along a front millions of light years long, a grisly stalemate reigns,until a young pilot, Pirius, faced with certain death, disobeys orders and employs an innovative time travel maneuver that, for the first time in the history of the war, results in the capture of a Xeelee fighter. But far from being hailed as a hero when he returns to base with his prize, Pirius is court martialed, disgraced, and sentenced to penal servitude on a bleak asteroid. It is not only Pirius who pays the price. In flying into the future and back again, Pirius returned to a time before he d left, a time inhabited by his younger self. And that younger self, by the pitiless logic of Coalition justice, shares the older Pirius guilt and must be punished. Not everyone in the Coalition agrees. Commissary Nilis believes that the elder Pirius, whom he dubs Pirius Blue, may have found a way to defeat the Xeelee. But Nilis can do nothing for Pirius Blue. Instead, he takes charge of the younger Pirius Pirius Red, and brings him back to Earth, the capital of a vast empire seething with intrigue. There Pirius Red will discover truths that will shatter his preconceived notions of all that he is fighting for, even of what it means to be human. Pirius Blue, meanwhile, will learn truths harsher and more discomfiting still. Yet the most shocking revelation of all is still to come, waiting for them at a place called Chandra…
. From the Hardcover edition.

Transcendent

Stephen Baxter’s gripping page turners are feats of bold speculation and big ideas that, for all their time and space spanning grandeur, remain firmly rooted in scientific fact and cutting edge theory. Now Baxter is back with the final volume in his monumental Destiny s Children trilogy, a tour de force in which parallel stories unfold and then meet as humanity stands poised on the brink of divine providence…
or extinction. DESTINY S CHILDRENTranscendentIt is the year 2047, and nuclear engineer Michael Poole is still in the throes of grief. His beloved wife, Morag, died seventeen years ago, along with their second child. Yet Michael is haunted by more than just the memory of Morag. On a beach in Miami, he sees his dead wife. But she vanishes as suddenly as she appears, leaving no clue as to her mysterious purpose. Alia was born on a starship, fifteen thousand light years from Earth, five hundred thousand years after the death of Michael Poole. Yet she knows him intimately. In this distant future, when humanity has diversified as a species and spread across the galaxy, every person is entrusted with the duty of Witnessing the life of one man, woman, or child from the past, recovered by means of a technology able to traverse time itself. Alia s subject is Michael Poole. When his surviving, estranged son is injured, Michael tries to reconnect with him and to stave off a looming catastrophe. Vast reservoirs of toxic gases lie buried beneath the poles, trapped in crystals of ice. Now that ice is melting. Once it goes, the poisons released will threaten all life on Earth. A bold solution is within reach, if only Michael can convince a doubting world. Yet as Morag s ghostly visitations continue, Michael begins to doubt his own sanity. In the future, Alia is chosen to become a Transcendent, an undying member of the group mind that is shepherding humanity toward an evolutionary apotheosis. The Witnessings are an integral part of their design, for only by redeeming the pain of every human who has lived and died can true Transcendence be achieved. Yet Alia discovers a dark side to the Transcendents plans, a vein of madness that may lead to an unthinkable renunciation. Somehow, Michael Poole holds the fate of the future in his hands. Now, to save that future, Alia must undertake a desperate journey into the past…
. From the Hardcover edition.

Resplendent

Resplendent is a collection of stories that encompas*ses mankind’s epic fight for survival against the Xeelee, a narrative of how man will change and evolve over our epic journey out into the universe. These tales will encompass the rise of sub molecular empires in the first nanoseconds after the Big Bang to mankind’s final transformation. Full of cutting edge science, descriptions of time and space on a mind boggling scale and memorable, all too human characters. It is both the capstone to one of the most significant series in the history of SF and a remarkable achievement in its own right. This is a mature and uniquely talented writer at the height of his powers.

Emperor

Inscribed in Latin, The Prophecy has resided in the hands of a single family for generations, revealing secrets about the world that is to come, and guiding them to wealth and power…

It begins when a Celtic noble betrays his people at the behest of his mother’s belief in The Prophecy and sides with the conquering Roman legions. For the next 400 years, Britannia thrives as does the family that contributed to Rome’s reign over the island with the construction of Emperor Hadrian’s Wall and the protection of Emperor Constantine from a coup d’ tat.

And even when the sun begins to set on the Roman Empire, The Prophecy remains. For those capable of deciphering its signs and portents, the future of Earth is in their hands

Conqueror

The second novel in a thrilling alternate history series from national bestselling author Stephen Baxter. Three centuries have passed since Rome fell, as The Prophecy foretold. Now The Prophecy’s scroll is in the hands of a young girl, the last surviving member of the family who received The Prophecy. She lives in tranquility, disguisd as a boy among the monks on the isle of Lindisfarne until the Vikings come, deliberately destroying the final copies of the scroll. But it remains in her memory, and when William of Normandy, who history will call the Conqueror, rises to power, once more the fate of the land rests on actions inspired by those age old words. But as time pas*ses, memory of The Prophecy dims and the veiled girl struggles to understand her heritage before all knowledge of the future will be lost to the past.

Navigator

As William the Conqueror’s men attempt to stamp out the flames of rebellion, a prophecy is uttered. A bedraggled woman in a ruined chapel speaks of civilizations in conflict, armed by the engines of God…

And that prophecy proves to be true as the fearsome war between Christianity and Islam leaves its mark across the land. In Spain, a rogue priest dreams of the final defeat of Islam, for he has found a rent in the tapestry of time, a point where agents from the future used diabolical weapons of destruction to change history. Centuries later, in 1492, as men of vision weary of the strife and are drawn to the unknown West, one such explorer seeks the funding for his voyage while a mysterious Weaver plots to unravel the strands of time and stop him.

Weaver

The Weaver of Time’s Tapestry has finally suceeded in twisting the threads of history into a new shape; the Luftwaffe have pushed the RAF to the brink, and the invasion barges have reached the beaches of Sussex and Kent. Britain wakes up to the nightmare of the Wermacht unleashed in Southern England. As the desperate battle to hold up the invasion rages it is left to a few indivuals caught up in the panic and chaos to piece together what has really happened is this the culmination of a plan that has taken centuries to play out, a plot from the future to change the past forever? Stephen Baxter’s historical thriller series crashes into the 20th century with a terrfying vision of mechanised war and political atrocity unleashed on English soil. This is the climax of one of the most thoughful and involving series of novels that have brought history alive like no other.

Flood

Next year. Sea levels begin to rise. The change is far more rapid than any climate change predictions; metres a year. Within two years London, only 15 metres above the sea, is drowned. New York follows, the Pope gives his last address from the Vatican, Mecca disappears beneath the waves. Where is all the water coming from? Scientists estimate that the earth was formed with seas 30 times in volume their current levels. Most of that water was burnt off by the sun but some was locked in the earth’s mantle. For the tip of Everest to disappear beneath the waters would require the seas to triple their volume. That amount of water is still much less than 1% of the earth’s volume. And somehow it is being released. The world is drowning. The biblical Flood has returned. And the rate of increase is building all the time. Mankind is on the run, heading for high ground. Nuclear submarines prowl through clouds of corpses rising from drowned cities, populations are decimated and finally the dreadful truth is known. Before 50 years have passed there will be nowhere left to run. Flood tells the story of mankind’s final years on earth. The stories of a small group of people caught up in the struggle to survive are woven into a tale of unimaginable global disaster. And the hope offered for a unlucky few by a second great ark…

Ark

As the waters rose in FLOOD, high in the Colorado mountains the US government was building an ark. Not an ark to ride the waves but an ark that would take a select few hundred people out into space to start a new future for mankind. Sent out into deep space on an epic journey centuries, generations of crew members carry the hope of a new beginning on a new, incredibly distant, planet. But as the decades pass knowledge and purpose is lost and division and madness grows. And back on earth life, and man, find a new way. This is the epic sequel to the acclaimed FLOOD; a stirring tale of what mankind will do to survive and the perfect introduction for new readers to one of SF’s greatest tropes; the generation ship. Written by one of the most significant SF writers of the last 30 years, a man considered to be the heir of Arthur C. Clarke as a writer with a unique ability to popularize science and science fiction for the largest possible audience FLOOD and ARK together form a landmark in modern SF.

Stone Spring

Alternate history at its most mindblowing from the national bestselling author of Flood and Ark. Ten thousand years ago, a vast and fertile plain exists linking the British Isles to Europe. Home to a tribe of simple hunter gatherers, Northland teems with nature’s bounty, but is also subject to its whims. Fourteen year old Ana calls Northland home, but her world is changing. The air is warming, the ice is melting, and the seas are rising. Then Ana meets a traveler from a far distant city called Jericho a city that is protected by a wall. And she starts to imagine the impossible…

The Time Ships

The highly acclaimed sequel to H G Wells’s The Time Machine, from the heir to Arthur C. Clarke. Written to celebrate the centenary of the publication of H G Wells’s classic story The Time Machine, Stephen Baxter’s stunning sequel is an outstanding work of imaginative fiction. The Time Traveller has abandoned his charming and helpless Eloi friend Weena to the cannibal appetites of the Morlocks, the devolved race of future humans from whom he was forced to flee. He promptly embarks on a second journey to the year AD 802,701, pledged to rescue Weena. He never arrives! The future was changed by his presence! and will be changed again. Hurled towards infinity, the Traveller must resolve the paradoxes building around him in a dazzling temporal journey of discovery. He must achieve the impossible if Weena is to be saved.

Cilia-Of-Gold

Irina Larionova had had no intention of visiting Mercury herself. Why would anyone come to Mercury, unless they had to? The planet was a piece of junk, a desolate ball of iron and rock too close to the Sun to be interesting, or remotley habitable. But, within days of landing two exploratory teams on the planet, both had reported anomalies. This story takes place in the author’s Xeelee sequence.

The Light of Other Days

From Arthur C. Clarke, the brilliant mind that brought us 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Stephen Baxter, one of the most cogent SF writers of his generation, comes a novel of a day, not so far in the future, when the barriers of time and distance have suddenly turned to glass. When a brilliant, driven industrialist harnesses cutting edge physics to enable people everywhere, at trivial cost, to see one another at all times around every corner, through every wall the result is the sudden and complete abolition of human privacy, forever. Then the same technology proves able to look backward in time as well. The Light of Other Days is a story that will change your view of what it is to be human.

Reality Dust

A brand new short novel, lavishly praised by Greg Bear, from the internationally bestselling author of THE TIME SHIPS; an epic story of a far future war that shows Baxter at the top of his game. Paired with MAKING HISTORY, a new short novel from the Arthur C. Clarke award winning Paul McAuley.

Evolution

It’s the job of a science fiction writer to visualize extrapolations of the future. But there are those who go far beyond, venturing into realms of breathtaking science. That kind of cutting edge talent is as rare as a supernova and, in its own way, just as powerful. Arthur C. Clarke had it. So did William Gibson. Now, with Evolution, Stephen Baxter delivers what is sure to be one of the most talked about books of the year and shows once again why he belongs among the select company of science fiction writers who matter. Stretching from the distant past into the remote future, from primordial Earth to the stars, Evolution is a soaring symphony of struggle, extinction, and survival, a dazzling epic that combines a dozen scientific disciplines and a cast of unforgettable characters to convey the grand drama of Evolution in all its awesome majesty and rigorous beauty. Sixty five million years ago, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, lived a small mammal, a proto primate of the species Purgatorius. From this humble beginning, Baxter traces the human lineage forward through time. The adventure that unfolds is a gripping odyssey governed by chance and competition, a perilous journey to an uncertain destination along a route beset by sudden and catastrophic upheavals. It is a route that ends, for most species, in stagnation or extinction. Why should humanity escape this fate?A generation from today, a group of concerned scientists distant descendants of that primitive Purgatorius gathers on a remote island to discuss this very question. The ceaseless expansion of human civilization has triggered an urgent environmental crisis that must be solved now if the Earth is to survive as a place hospitable to human life. But just when a peaceful solution seems within reach, two acts of shocking violence set in motion a cataclysmic chain of events that will expose the limitations of human intellect and adaptability in the face of the blind and implacable processes of Darwin s dangerous idea.

The H-bomb Girl

October, 1962: Liverpool A time of Teddy Boys and Beat Girls, Mods and Rockers. Dr. No is in the cinemas and the Beatles are playing the Cavern. Teens fill the streets, the clubs, the shops, thrilling to the new electric music and fashions, as their parents pine for the simplicity and structure of the War Years. A world away, Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro are playing an atomic chess game. And a newcomer named Laura Mann carries the key that will unlock the difference between the future and the end of the world. For Laura Mann is…
The H Bomb Girl! Pursued by futuristic forces beyond her wildest imagination, Laura must find answers before time runs out. Who is the mysterious and familiar Miss Wells? Who is the menacing Minuteman? And just what is the secret that Laura’s father has been keeping from her?

Phase Space

Tied in to Baxter’s masterful Manifold trilogy, these thematically linked stories are drawn from the vast graph of possibilities across which the lives of hero Reid Malenfant have been scattered. It is the year 2025. Reid Malenfant is the commander of a NASA earth orbiting science platform. The platform is intended to probe the planets of the nearest star system by bouncing laser pulses off them. But no echoes are returned! and Malenfant’s reality begins to crumble around him. Huddling with his family, awaiting the end or an unknown new beginning Malenfant tells stories of other possibilities, other realities. The linked stories encompass the myriad possibilities that might govern our relationship with the universe: are we truly alone, or will we eventually meet other lifeforms? Perhaps intelligent species decide to turn their back on the stars, or maybe expansionist species are destined to fail. The final possibility that the Universe as we know it is in fact an elaborate illusion designed to protect us from the fearful reality is brilliantly explored in the tour de force novella that ends the volume.

The Hunters of Pangaea

The Boskone 41 GoH book contains 18 stories, 5 essays, and an afterword. Introduction by John G. Cramer & Kathryn Cramer,

Revolutions in the Earth

In the eighteenth century, the received wisdom, following Ussher’s careful biblical calculations, was that the Earth was just six thousand years old. James Hutton, a gentleman farmer with legal and medical training and a passion for rocks, knew that this could not be the case. Looking at the formation of irregular strata in the layers of the earth he deduced that a much deeper abyss of time would be required for the landscape he saw to have evolved. In the turbulent world of Enlightenment Scotland he set out to prove it. He could not have achieved this without his friends. Hutton’s entourage in Edinburgh would turn out to be the leading thinkers of the age. His close circle consisted of such luminaries as Erasmus Darwin, Adam Smith, James Watt and David Hume. These brilliant men would work together to develop the nascent science of geology but would also make spectacular advances in agriculture, chemistry, philosophy, economy and engineering; as well as devising steam engines and military tactics. Hutton’s geological theory of the Earth would cause a profound religious debate as well as provoking decades of criticism. His revelation, however, was ultimately one of the most extraordinary and essential moments in scientific history. This is the little known story of a man who fought hard against orthodox beliefs to prove the antiquity of the earth and of the dedicated loyalty of an enlightened circle of friends.

Ages in Chaos

‘This book, then, is the story of how a farmer’s son from Scotland learned to peer into the deepest abysses of time. It is a drama of personality, landscape and ideas, of an intellectual revolution that shaped our world and of a man whose vision, rooted in antiquity yet tinged with modern philosophies, was not only ahead of his own time but speaks to our new century.’ From the ForewordIn the eighteenth century, the received wisdom, following Bishop Ussher’s careful biblical calculations, was that the Earth was just six thousand years old. James Hutton, a gentleman farmer with a passion for rocks, knew that could not be the case. Looking at the formation of irregular strata in the layers of the Earth he boldly deduced that a much longer span of time would be required for the landscape he saw to have evolved. In the lusty and turbulent world of Enlightenment Scotland, he set out to prove it. He could not have achieved this without the help of his friends. Hutton’s entourage in Edinburgh would turn out to be the leading thinkers of the age, including Erasmus Darwin, Adam Smith, James Watt, David Hume, and Joseph Black. But Hutton had his enemies, too. His geological theories would ignite profound religious debate and was condemned as ‘a wild and unnatural notion’ that would lead to ‘skepticism, and at last to downright infidelity and atheism.’Ultimately, however, his revelation was one of the most extraordinary and essential moments in scientific history. Hutton’s discovery of deep time changed our view of humanity’s place in the universe forever. Like Dava Sobel’s bestselling Longitude, Ages in Chaos vividly captures a transcendent moment in the history of human accomplishment.