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. As the world’s governments turn inward, one man dares to envision 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. Now Malenfant gambles the very existence of time on a single desperate throw of the dice. Battling national sabotage and international outcry, as apocalyptic riots sweep the globe, he builds a spacecraft and launches it into deep space. The odds are a trillion to one against him. Or are they?

The Japanese are in space, the US has turned inward - flights into space have become dreams of old men and women, dreams of an age of sublimated warfare which have left behind only images of charmingly antique rocket craft. Malenfant in this universe is not the reckless adventurer of TIME. He has stayed on Earth to invest in research into what he regards as long-term thinking: SETI, using gravitational lensing to hunt for planets and Eetie signals, exploring the venerable Fermi paradox, 'If they existed, they would be here'. When Nemoto, a Japanese researcher on the Moon, discovers evidence of the activity of extraterrestrial intelligences in the solar system, she is unable to reconcile her observations with the accepted paradigm. Instead of publishing her findings, she seeks Malenfant's opinion: he travels to the Moon, ostensibly to lecture on SETI, in fact to answer Nemoto's question: WHY NOW? Nemoto and Malenfant share the certainty that the resources of all nations on Earth are needed to respond to this, and this was her reason for summoning Malenfant. But deeper layers of Fermi's paradox unravel against a backdrop of violently mixed reactions to the revelation that alien beings, dubbed the Gaijin, also inhabit the solar system. It's like the Gaijin are e-mailing themselves from star to star, and are not really there at all - though others might be. In this confusion Malenfant disappears in space and Nemoto becomes a recluse in a Lunar cave - both are hatching plans to confront a threat only they can bring themselves to fully believe in...

"ONE OF THE BEST SF WRITERS IN THE BUSINESS . . . [Manifold: Origin is] filled with marvelous scientific speculations, strange events, novel concepts, and an awe-inspiring sense of the wonders of the universe." -Science Fiction Chronicle In the year 2015, astronaut Reid Malenfant is flying over the African continent, intent on examining a mysterious glowing construct in Earth's orbit. But when the very fabric of the sky tears open, spilling living creatures to the ground and pulling others inside (including his wife, Emma), Malenfant's quest to uncover the unknown becomes personal. While desperately searching to discover what happened to the woman he loves, Malenfant embarks upon an adventure to the very fount of human development . . . on earth and beyond.

Phase Space: Stories from the Manifold and Elsewhere. A collection of 25 SF stories by Stephen Baxter, many thematically linked to his "Manifold" trilogy (Time, Space and Origin) and other novels of cosmic scope. "The phase space of a system is the set of all conceivable states of that system", says the first page. As with "Manifold" these stories explore possible (and significantly linked) states of Earth and the universe, alternate timelines offering different solutions to Baxter's favourite cosmological question—the Fermi Paradox. It's a simple idea. According to our best scientific theories there's nothing special about Earth or the Solar System. Intelligent life has evolved here, ourselves. It's likely to evolve elsewhere. The skies should be full of other intelligences. Where are they? Perhaps our theories are wrong and we're in a galactic quarantine. Perhaps what we see through our telescopes is a clever fake, but supposing we overload the capabilities of the fakers? Maybe intelligence always destroys itself before crossing interstellar space, or something kindly takes emerging life away to a safer place. Perhaps there's teeming intelligence out there, but we're not listening on the right wavelength. Perhaps they're hiding...? Contents: \* Prologue (Phase Space) / short story by Stephen Baxter \* Moon-Calf (1998) / short story by Stephen Baxter \* Open Loops (2000) / novelette by Stephen Baxter \* Glass Earth, Inc. (1997) / novelette by Stephen Baxter \* Poyekhali 3201 (1997) / short story by Stephen Baxter \* Dante Dreams (1998) / short story by Stephen Baxter \* War Birds (1997) / short story by Stephen Baxter \* Sun-Drenched (1998) / short story by Stephen Baxter \* Martian Autumn (2002) / short story by Stephen Baxter \* Sun God (1997) / novelette by Stephen Baxter \* Sun-Cloud (2001) / short story by Stephen Baxter \* Sheena 5 [Manifold] (2000) / short story by Stephen Baxter \* The Fubar Suit [Manifold] (1997) / short story by Stephen Baxter \* Grey Earth [Manifold] (2001) / short story by Stephen Baxter \* Huddle [Manifold] (1999) / novelette by Stephen Baxter \* Refugium (2002) / short story by Stephen Baxter \* Lost Continent (2001) / short story by Stephen Baxter \* Tracks (2001) / short story by Stephen Baxter \* Lines of Longitude (1997) / short story by Stephen Baxter \* Barrier (1998) / novelette by Stephen Baxter (variant of The Barrier) \* Marginalia (1999) / short story by Stephen Baxter \* The We Who Sing (2002) / short story by Stephen Baxter \* The Gravity Mine (2000) / short story by Stephen Baxter \* Spindrift (1999) / short story by Stephen Baxter \* Touching Centauri (2002) / novelette by Stephen Baxter \* The Twelfth Album (1998) / short story by Stephen Baxter \* Afterword (Phase Space) • essay by Stephen Baxter .