Vacuum Diagrams

Stephen Baxter

Oct 2009 · Harper Collins

About this ebook

The Philip K. Dick Award-winning saga of humankind’s next five million years: “Mind-stretching science fiction at its boldest.” —Orlando Sentinel

And everywhere the Humans went, they found life . . .

This dazzling future history, the most ambitious and exciting since Asimov’s classic Foundation saga, 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.

“It’s old-fashioned 1950s-style science fiction . . . and it’s also lots of fun.” —Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Enormously impressive.” —Locus

Ratings and reviews

A great read, this book is a synopsis of sorts that summerizes a few of Baxter's other novels while maintaining a sense of continuity. At times the vebage can get a bit technical, and those not familiar with science and it terms may be a bit over their head with this one. However, lovers of hard sci-fi will be in their element. I highly recommend.

Quoted acclaims compare Baxter's writing to classics like Asimov/Clarke/Heinlein, but this book is closer to Poul Anderson's Tau Zero: a story deeply rooted in hardcore science, you better be up-to-date with your popular quantum physics reading (eg., Brian Greene et al). The comparison to Foundation is obvious, except that Vacuum Diagrams goes even deeper and tells a story of human kind over the entire life of the Universe, which obviously is only possible as a series of mostly-independent anecdotes; but have patience, many pieces of the puzzle will be connected in the final chapters. A single start taken because, while the SF part is awesome, the author is good but not stellar in other aspects of storytelling. Though if you love other classic, "dry" hard-SF authors like Asimov, you may not even notice that :)

Fantastic book, I would definitely recommend it to ant sci-fi fan. Baxter really takes things to strange and thought-provoking places

About the author

Stephen Baxter is an acclaimed, multiple-award-winning author whose many books include the Xeelee Sequence series, the Time Odyssey trilogy (written with Arthur C. Clarke), and The Time Ships, a sequel to H. G. Wells's classic The Time Machine. He lives in England.