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tfitoby 's review for:
Vacuum Diagrams
by Stephen Baxter
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.