Alternate-cover edition can be found here 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.

2000 years in the future, the solar system has fallen under the domination of an alien species, the Qax. But into this world appears a spaceship launched over 1500 years ago, intended to establish a link through which time travel is possible. To the humans this is a chance to reverse time.

Imagine a race of submicroscopic humans, genetically engineered to live in the universe's most hostile environment, the turbulent superfluid mantle of a neutron star Imagine that the memory of the superbeings who created them has been kept alive from generation to generation. Now imagine the most incredible family reunion in history—and you're ready for the latest mind-expanding adventure Star humans were engineered to exist within the mantle of a star, mere tools of their Earth-evolved makers in a war against the Xeelee, owners of the universe. Stephen Baxter's third novel in his magnificent Xeelee Sequence is an exotic and endearing story of an abandoned people.

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...

"And everywhere the Humans went, they found life..." This dazzling future history, winner of the 2000 Philip K. Dick Award, is the most ambitious and exciting since Asimov's classic Foundation saga. It tells the story of Humankind - all the way to the end of the Universe itself. Here, in luminous and vivid narratives spanning five million years, are the first Poole wormholes spanning the solar system; the conquest of Human planets by Squeem; GUTships that outrace light; the back-time invasion of the Qax; the mystery and legacy of the Xeelee, and their artifacts as large as small galaxies; photino birds and Dark Matter; and the Ring, where Ghost, Human, and Xeelee contemplate the awesome end of Time. Eve (1997) The Sun-People (1993) The Logic Pool (1994) Gossamer (1995) Cilia-of-Gold (1994) Lieserl (1993) Pilot (1993) The Xeelee Flower (1987) More Than Time or Distance (1988) The Switch (1990) Blue Shift (1989) The Quagma Datum (1989) Planck Zero (1992) The Gödel Sunflowers (1992) Vacuum Diagrams (1990) Stowaway (1991) The Tyranny of Heaven (1990) Hero (1995) Secret History (1991) Shell (1987) The Eighth Room (1989) The Baryonic Lords (1991) Eve (1997)

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.

Eighteen thousand years have passed since the birth of the Third Expansion. Humanity spans the Galaxy ­ and has become locked in a titanic, unending battle with their ultimate foe, the Xeelee. Luca is a novice at the Commission for Historical Truth. Based on E arth, young Luca is at the heart of the mesh of intelligence that controls and drives the Galaxy-wide war. But now into his life comes Captain Teel ­ a woman as young as he is, enigmatic, compellingly beautiful ­ but also a serving officer from the Front itself. Luca is immediately captured by an infatuation for Teel. But Luca's duty to the Expansion sends him on an extraordinary journey to the deadly core of the Galaxy, where he must confront the truth of an interstellar war, a war that spans a hundred thousand light years and has endured for millennia. In the midst of this superhuman conflict ­ even as he 'rides the rock' with Teel into the jaws of the ultimate darkness ­ Luca must strive to protect his own humanity from being crushed by the great events in which he is enmeshed. This new story is set in Stephen Baxter's acclaimed future history The Xeelee Sequence. A remote sequel to Reality Dust (PS Publishing 2000), Riding the Rock is a story of love, war, and the destiny of mankind.

The sixth millennium: An alien occupation of Earth has been thrown off. Now a ferocious new government called the Coalition is sweeping through the solar system, seeking out those who collaborated with the hated enemy. A handful of immortals, once collaborators, live on an ice moon called Port Sol, far from the sun. They govern a community of thousands of short-lived adherents. The Coalition's grasp will soon reach this remote place. The immortals must flee the solar system on vast starships - but they can take with them only a few of their followers. A young man called Rusel must choose between his lover, and his life; he chooses to flee. But Rusel faces a long journey, a journey that will last tens of millennia before the great ships reach their destination. Generations will live out their lives knowing nothing but the journey. Rusel agrees to accept an immortality of his own, to guide the ship and its evanescent crew across this desert of time. But as the years stretch to centuries and to millennia, the origins of the journey are lost in legend - and then the cruel scalpel of evolution begins to work on the crew. And Rusel lies on and on. This new story is set in Stephen Baxter's acclaimed future history The Xeelee Sequence, as were RIDING THE ROCK (PS Publishing 2002) and REALITY DUST (PS Publishing 2000), whose events precede this new story.

When his father dies suddenly, George Poole stumbles onto a family secret: He has a twin sister he never knew existed, who was raised by an enigmatic cult called the Order. The Order is a hive - a human hive with a dominant queen—that has prospered below the streets of Rome for almost two millennia. After Poole enters the Order's vast underground city and meets the disturbing inhabitants, he uncovers evidence that they have embarked on a divergent evolutionary path. These genetically superior humans are equipped with the tools necessary to render modern Homo sapiens as extinct as the Neanderthals. And now they are preparing to leave their underground realm.

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 Children EXULTANT For 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...

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 CHILDREN TRANSCENDENT It 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: Destiny's Children Book Four "Cadre Siblings" (2000) "Conurbation 2473" (2003) "Reality Dust" (2000) "Mayflower II" (2004)[b] "All in a Blaze" (2003) "Silver Ghost" (2000) "The Cold Sink" (2001) "On the Orion Line" (2000) "Ghost Wars" (2006) "The Ghost Pit" (2001) "Lakes of Light" (2005) "Breeding Ground" (2003) "The Dreaming Mould" (2002) "The Great Game" (2003) "The Chop Line" (2003) "In the Un-Black" (2001) "Riding the Rock" (2002) "Between Worlds" (2004) "The Siege of Earth" (2006)

From Stephen Baxter, an exciting new episode in his acclaimed Xeelee future Starfall, a tale if war between the Empire of Sol and its scattered stellar colonies, with sinister turns of fate waiting in the wings . . . For nine hundred years, a dynasty of Empresses all named Shira apparent descendants of a refugee from a nightmarish future epoch has governed Earth and all the new worlds of humankind. But now rebellion looms last. In Alpha Centauri System, a visionary named Flood has assembled a fleet, armed with ferocious weapons, its mission to attack the Empire and force its surrender. Flood is prepared to bombard Earth in submission if need be, smashing its cities, killing billions . . . Why? What is at the root of his singular fanaticism?

(Unsigned Hardcover Novella) Gravity Dreams is a notable new chapter in Stephen Baxter s Xeelee future history, accompanied here by a new Introduction from the author and Raft, the short story that twenty years ago began the tale so compellingly continued here. A million years from now, humankind is in full retreat before the onslaught of the Xeelee, enigmatic aliens whose influence pervades the entire cosmos. Once rulers of the galaxy, our descendants must abandon planet after planet as their implacable foes seal off those worlds fromthe light of their parent stars. The Second Coalition is organising desperate evacuations, and frantically looking for exotic weapons fromthe far past to combat the Xeelee.Yet in this age of panic and decline, an unlikely grouping a high-ranking Coalition officer, an aged savant, a teenage boy, and a dealer in antiquities of extraordinary kinds strives to carry out the strangest of rescues, keeping alive the dimming flames of altruism and hope.

Return to the eon-spanning and universe-crossing conflict between humanity and the unknowable alien Xeelee in this selection of uncollected and unpublished stories, newly edited and placed in chronological reading order. From tales charting the earliest days of man's adventure to the stars to stories of Old Earth, four billion years in the future, the range and startling imagination of Baxter is always on display. As humanity rises and falls, ebbs and flows, one thing is always needed - the ability to endure. Contains eleven short stories and novellas.

Half a million years in the future, on a dead, war-ravaged world at the centre of the Galaxy, there is a mile-high statue of Michael Poole. Poole, born on Earth in the fourth millennium, was one of mankind's most influential heroes. He was not a warrior, not an emperor. He was an engineer, a builder of wormhole transit systems. But Poole's work would ultimately lead to a vast and destructive conflict, a million-year war between humanity and the enigmatic, powerful aliens known as the Xeelee. The Xeelee won, but at a huge cost. And, defeated in a greater war, the Xeelee eventually fled the universe. Most of them. A handful were left behind, equipped with time travel capabilities, their task to tidy up: to reorder history more to the Xeelee's liking. That million-year war with humankind was one blemish. It had to be erased. And in order to do that, a lone Xeelee was sent back in time to remove Michael Poole from history . . .

Michael Poole finds himself in a very strange landscape . . . This is the centre of the Galaxy. And in a history without war with the humans, the Xeelee have had time to built an immense structure here. The Xeelee Belt has a radius ten thousand times Earth's orbital distance. It is a light year in circumference. If it was set in the solar system it would be out in the Oort Cloud, among the comets - but circling the sun. If it was at rest it would have a surface area equivalent to about thirty billion Earths. But it is not at rest: it rotates at near lightspeed. And because of relativistic effects, distances are compressed for inhabitants of the Belt, and time drastically slowed. The purpose of the Belt is to preserve a community of Xeelee into the very far future, when they will be able to tap dark energy, a universe-spanning antigravity field, for their own purposes. But with time the Belt has attracted populations of lesser species, here for the immense surface area, the unending energy flows. Poole, Miriam and their party, having followed the Ghosts, must explore the artefact and survive encounters with its strange inhabitants - before Poole, at last, finds the Xeelee who led the destruction of Earth...

The Xeelee Sequence is a series of novels and short stories by British science fiction author Stephen Baxter. The novels span several billions of years, describing the future expansion of Mankind, its war with its arch-nemesis (an alien race called the Xeelee), and the Xeelee's own war with dark matter entities called photino birds.