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4.01 AVERAGE
4.01 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
adventurous
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Finished *Vacuum Diagrams* by Stephen Baxter. Like most sci-fi, it goes super big with very specific niches of knowledge (the author has a background in aeronautics and mathematics), extrapolating them until they’re casually throwing around words like “billions of light years”. I don’t really know what to make of it, it feels like the author wanted to make sci-fi that has an emotional core missing from most, but it’s such a basic and unsatisfying theme that I kept looking for the *actual* theme the book was going for? Maybe something with universal nihilism? 3.5/5, if you like sci fi you’ll like this, if you don’t you won’t.
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
challenging
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I wasn't all that interested in the framing story, and two of the stories were taken from earlier novels in the series that I had just recently finished. However, I did really enjoy the rest of the story. I was particularly fond of the stories from non-human POVs.
Much like reading Asimov's complete robot stories Vacuum Diagrams gives you a complete history of Stephen Baxter's world from the human point of view; not strictly a novel but not really just a collection of short stories either, this is an epic novel than spans millions (billions? I forget) of years in human evolution, focussing on small (not minor) actions taken by important individuals throughout the timeline and how their bravery or stupidity, failures and intelligence affected the evolution of the human species through war, exploration, expansion and the inevitable decline of civilisation instead of the contemporary popular style of space opera epic, of heroes of might and valour.
Written in a non-linear manner throughout his career, in between the astonishing novels that make up the bulk of the Xeelee Sequence, they have been reassembled in to a cohesive linear unit as witnessed by ageless entity and told to another ageless entity, a decent framing device but easily the weakest component of the whole. Baxter's scientific extrapolations are necessarily watered down in the short form (either that or I'm finally getting used to it) making it a much more accessible read whilst still encouraging a sense of wonder and imagination stimulating exploration of the far future. Potentially this would make an excellent start point for anyone interested in getting to grips with Baxter's hard science fiction.
Written in a non-linear manner throughout his career, in between the astonishing novels that make up the bulk of the Xeelee Sequence, they have been reassembled in to a cohesive linear unit as witnessed by ageless entity and told to another ageless entity, a decent framing device but easily the weakest component of the whole. Baxter's scientific extrapolations are necessarily watered down in the short form (either that or I'm finally getting used to it) making it a much more accessible read whilst still encouraging a sense of wonder and imagination stimulating exploration of the far future. Potentially this would make an excellent start point for anyone interested in getting to grips with Baxter's hard science fiction.
challenging
hopeful
mysterious
medium-paced
Although "hard" science fiction is not usually my cup of tea, I must acknowledge the excellence of this book.
It often got me pretty excited about concepts I don't have the background to understand.
It often got me pretty excited about concepts I don't have the background to understand.
I wish I could do justice to this book by writing it as beautiful review as it deserves, but I’m exhausted and feeling terrible after a bout of food poisoning from a terrible burger bought at three in the morning in Leeds at the end of a friend’s stag do over the weekend.
So apologies to Mr Baxter. I read Vacuum Diagrams during my honeymoon a couple of weeks ago and didn’t want to wait any longer to write happy words about it.
This is a wonderful book, exploring celestial history, from the universe’s birth to its premature death in four million years time. It’s effectively a collection of short stories, bound together by a framing narrative set in the sixth millennium; a bit of a history-through-characters sort of a thing. Frankly, I found the ideas more engaging than the characters for the most part, with a few major exceptions, and I was happy to immerse myself in the world-building, to the extent that one or two of the character-based stories rather felt like they got in the way.
The world-building though, good grief. It was an absolute delight being led through Baxter’s infinite universe(s), endlessly inhabited, endlessly textured. Some of the ideas put forward are genuinely stunning: alien civilisations in the first microseconds of the universe, before physics as we know it have come into being, humans living at the extremities of collapsed stars, planets folded into themselves through further dimensions… That’s not even the weirdest or most shocking stuff in there. Despite the horror and dread of the xeelee and the photino birds, it’s a universe I’d love to spend exploring forever in a spaceship, but I’ll have to make do with exploring it on paper.
I read this book before the main body of the Xeelee sequence on recommendation, so I’ve got all that to come. Awesome times!
So read this book. I’m sorry this review wasn’t more elegant, (apologies again to Stephen Baxter). Read the book. Read it. I love it. You will too.
Now I’m off to fall asleep on the couch. Goodnight.
So apologies to Mr Baxter. I read Vacuum Diagrams during my honeymoon a couple of weeks ago and didn’t want to wait any longer to write happy words about it.
This is a wonderful book, exploring celestial history, from the universe’s birth to its premature death in four million years time. It’s effectively a collection of short stories, bound together by a framing narrative set in the sixth millennium; a bit of a history-through-characters sort of a thing. Frankly, I found the ideas more engaging than the characters for the most part, with a few major exceptions, and I was happy to immerse myself in the world-building, to the extent that one or two of the character-based stories rather felt like they got in the way.
The world-building though, good grief. It was an absolute delight being led through Baxter’s infinite universe(s), endlessly inhabited, endlessly textured. Some of the ideas put forward are genuinely stunning: alien civilisations in the first microseconds of the universe, before physics as we know it have come into being, humans living at the extremities of collapsed stars, planets folded into themselves through further dimensions… That’s not even the weirdest or most shocking stuff in there. Despite the horror and dread of the xeelee and the photino birds, it’s a universe I’d love to spend exploring forever in a spaceship, but I’ll have to make do with exploring it on paper.
I read this book before the main body of the Xeelee sequence on recommendation, so I’ve got all that to come. Awesome times!
So read this book. I’m sorry this review wasn’t more elegant, (apologies again to Stephen Baxter). Read the book. Read it. I love it. You will too.
Now I’m off to fall asleep on the couch. Goodnight.