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.
Ironically, you'll probably appreciate
Vacuum Diagrams most after you've put it down. The prolific and acclaimed Stephen Baxter has always been praised for his imaginative and conscientious use of science, and
Vacuum Diagrams is no exception. This collection of short stories will leave you ruminating for days over the sprawl of ideas, worlds, and life forms Baxter has woven together.
Filling in the gaps on Baxter's ambitious, almost audacious, 10-million-year timeline called the "Xeelee Sequence," Vacuum Diagrams is a collection of revised, previously published short stories that bridges together his popular novels set in this same "future history"--Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux, and Ring. Baxter's universe is rotten with life, from strange tree-stump-like creatures with superfluid ice skeletons to dark matter "birds" to sentient beings composed of pure mathematics. And Baxter's reverence for life's beauty, for its voracious robustness, is hard to resist--especially when it comes to humanity and its tentative, eager rise. The cycling timeline follows humans as they come into their own as a star-faring race, from their first sporadic steps to their near dominance of the universe and beyond.
Vacuum Diagrams is a great introduction to Baxter for those unfamiliar with him and a good primer for the other "Xeelee Sequence" novels. If you already love Baxter or the other novels in the sequence, Vacuum Diagrams is certainly a safe bet. Besides, any book that sends you scurrying quizzically after your college physics text deserves a closer look. Check it out. --Paul Hughes
