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4.01 AVERAGE
4.01 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
informative
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
adventurous
challenging
hopeful
mysterious
adventurous
informative
inspiring
reflective
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
This was a great collection of stories, some of which were fairly similar, but otherwise full of absolutely insane and creative ideas. Sometimes Baxter just dumps a lot of science on you with little actual story, but his info dumps are often enjoyable for me and I come away feeling like I learned a lot. The scale of this future history is crazy and awe-inspiring, going to the deep deep future, and it all feels very believable and based in real science. I never felt like Baxter was reaching too far out of the realm of possibility while somehow keeping his ideas huge and mind-numbing.
4.5/5
A classic.
Reading a short stories book can be a roller coaster. The very nature of this kind of books is that more than 50% of the stories must be excellent to keep you reading, otherwise if 2 continuous stories are boring, then is easy to give up on the book.
The thing is, here we have a few weak stories for sure but they are still good, and the good ones, are just top quality SF and I'll eventually read them again. There was not a single one that did not put my brain to work , I liked that.
This one and Timelike Infinity are my favorites from Baxter.
A classic.
Reading a short stories book can be a roller coaster. The very nature of this kind of books is that more than 50% of the stories must be excellent to keep you reading, otherwise if 2 continuous stories are boring, then is easy to give up on the book.
The thing is, here we have a few weak stories for sure but they are still good, and the good ones, are just top quality SF and I'll eventually read them again. There was not a single one that did not put my brain to work , I liked that.
This one and Timelike Infinity are my favorites from Baxter.
adventurous
challenging
dark
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Huge, mind-bending setting and bold ideas, as expected from Baxter. Individual characters were sometimes lacking depth, but in some cases I was pleasantly surprised.
What made me give this 4 instead of 5 stars is the lack of change in humans. When you are telling a story covering such a large time-span, it looks ridiculous that humans still sound like us.
What made me give this 4 instead of 5 stars is the lack of change in humans. When you are telling a story covering such a large time-span, it looks ridiculous that humans still sound like us.
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.
Sigh......these books are so amazing it actually makes me a little sad when I finish one! Soon there won't be a Xeelee universe for me to read!
Aaaah! Soo good the book is!
Aaaah! Soo good the book is!