Stephen Baxter – författare

Thousands of years ago, a massive colony ship arrived at the Hearth - the celestial birthplace of millions of planets, ranging from habitable earth-like worlds to unimaginable hellscapes of pressure and heat. Using lightsails to navigate, humanity has spread itself across dozens of these worlds. But they have also forgotten their beginnings, where they came from... and a terrible secret is about to be unveiled. For Commander Ulla Breen, on her first tour of duty aboard a patrol sail-ship, the universe is about to change around her. Attacked by an unknown and unthought-of enemy, she and her fellow crewmembers will face slavery, punishment and death - and so will their home planets. Because someone else has seen the richness of the inner Hearth, and plans to take it for themselves. A new enemy, but one who seems disturbingly familiar. And perhaps knows more about the history of the Hearth than even Ulla and her crew.Faced with a complete upheaval of all she thought she knew, Ulla must survive long enough to come up with a plan - one which will unite all the disparate elements of the Hearth, and perhaps discover the reason why humanity came to Hearthspace in the first place . . .

Stephen Baxter's epic sequence of Xeelee novels was introduced to a new generation of readers with his highly successful quartet, Destiny's Children, published by Gollancz between 2003 and 2006. But the sequence of novels began with RAFT in 1991.From there it built into perhaps the most ambitious fictitious universe ever created. Beginning with the rise and fall of sub-quantum civilisations in the first nano-seconds after the Big Bang and ending with the heat death of the universe billions of years from now the series charts the story of mankinds epic war against the ancient and unknowable alien race the Xeelee.Along the way it examines questions of physics, the nature of reality, the evolution of mankind and its possible future. It looks not just at the morality of war but at the morality of survival and our place in the universe.This is a landmark in SF.

Return to the eon-spanning and universe-crossing conflict between humanity and the unknowable alien Xeelee in this selection of uncollected and unpublished stories, newly edited and placed in chronological reading order.From tales charting the earliest days of man's adventure to the stars to stories of Old Earth, four billion years in the future, the range and startling imagination of Baxter is always on display. As humanity rises and falls, ebbs and flows, one thing is always needed - the ability to endure.Contains eleven short stories and novellas.

"Such realistic brilliance you can see a whole civilisation in it" - The Times"Simply amazing science fiction that will have me grabbing book two" - Goodreads Reviewer, 5 stars"one of the best scifi concepts out there" - Amazon Reviewer, 5 starsStephen Baxter's highly acclaimed first novel and the beginning of his stunning Xeelee Sequence.A spaceship from Earth accidentally survives the transition to a radically different universe. Five-hundred-years later, their descendants still struggle for existence. The Miners live on the Belt, a ramshackle ring of dwellings orbiting the core of a dead star. They trade for food from the Raft, a structure built from the wreckage of the ship, and where a small group of scientists preserve the ancient knowledge which makes survival possible.Rees is a Miner whose curiosity about his world makes him a stowaway on a flying tree. And what he finds will change his world...

The highly-acclaimed sequel to H G Wells’s The Time Machine, from the heir to Arthur C. Clarke.Written to celebrate the centenary of the publication of H G Wells’s classic story THE TIME MACHINE, Stephen Baxter’s stunning sequel is an outstanding work of imaginative fiction.The Time Traveller has abandoned his charming and helpless Eloi friend Weena to the cannibal appetites of the Morlocks, the devolved race of future humans from whom he was forced to flee. He promptly embarks on a second journey to the year AD 802,701, pledged to rescue Weena. He never arrives. The future was changed by his presence… and will be changed again. Hurling towards infinity, the Traveller must resolve the paradoxes building around him in a dazzling temporal journey of discovery. He must achieve the impossible if Weena is to be saved.

Half a million years in the future, on a dead, war-ravaged world at the centre of the Galaxy, there is a mile-high statue of Michael Poole.Poole, born on Earth in the fourth millennium, was one of mankind's most influential heroes. He was not a warrior, not an emperor. He was an engineer, a builder of wormhole transit systems. But Poole's work would ultimately lead to a vast and destructive conflict, a million-year war between humanity and the enigmatic, powerful aliens known as the Xeelee. The Xeelee won, but at a huge cost. And, defeated in a greater war, the Xeelee eventually fled the universe. Most of them.A handful were left behind, equipped with time travel capabilities, their task to tidy up: to reorder history more to the Xeelee's liking. That million-year war with humankind was one blemish. It had to be erased. And in order to do that, a lone Xeelee was sent back in time to remove Michael Poole from history . . .

Michael Poole finds himself in a very strange landscape . . . This is the centre of the Galaxy. And in a history without war with the humans, the Xeelee have had time to built an immense structure here. The Xeelee Belt has a radius ten thousand times Earth's orbital distance. It is a light year in circumference. If it was set in the solar system it would be out in the Oort Cloud, among the comets - but circling the sun. If it was at rest it would have a surface area equivalent to about thirty billion Earths. But it is not at rest: it rotates at near lightspeed. And because of relativistic effects, distances are compressed for inhabitants of the Belt, and time drastically slowed.The purpose of the Belt is to preserve a community of Xeelee into the very far future, when they will be able to tap dark energy, a universe-spanning antigravity field, for their own purposes. But with time the Belt has attracted populations of lesser species, here for the immense surface area, the unending energy flows. Poole, Miriam and their party, having followed the Ghosts, must explore the artefact and survive encounters with its strange inhabitants - before Poole, at last, finds the Xeelee who led the destruction of Earth...

How would you survive on a planet that doesn't spin?An awe-inspiring Planetary Romance from Terry Pratchett's co-author on the Long Earth BooksThe very far future: The Galaxy is a drifting wreck of black holes, neutron stars, chill white dwarfs. The age of star formation is long past. Yet there is life here, feeding off the energies of the stellar remnants, and there is mind, a tremendous Galaxy-spanning intelligence each of whose thoughts lasts a hundred thousand years. And this mind cradles memories of a long-gone age when a more compact universe was full of light ...The 27th century: Proxima Centauri, an undistinguished red dwarf star, is the nearest star to our sun - and (in this fiction), the nearest to host a world, Proxima IV, habitable by humans. But Proxima IV is unlike Earth in many ways. Huddling close to the warmth, orbiting in weeks, it keeps one face to its parent star at all times. The 'substellar point', with the star forever overhead, is a blasted desert, and the 'antistellar point' on the far side is under an ice cap in perpetual darkness. How would it be to live on such a world?Yuri Jones, with 1,000 others, is about to find out ...PROXIMA tells the amazing tale of how we colonise a harsh new eden, and the secret we find there that will change our role in the Universe for ever.Readers love Proxima:'The plot was very interesting and I really liked how the narrative alternated from the past to the future to give a better understanding of the setting . . . a thought provoking and compelling read' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐'Some damn fine science fiction . . . There's a strong blend of characters here, including human and AI' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐'I highly recommend it for fans of hard sci-fi, time dilation, space exploration, colonisation and first contact . . . Baxter has gone to a lot of bother to do his scientific, ecological research to serve you an entire planet on a platter' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐'Half hard sci-fi about surviving on a new planet, half an almost-2001 sense of mysterious alien force. It all comes together really well' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

In the most exciting SF collaboration ever, Arthur C. Clarke and his universally acknowledged heir Stephen Baxter pool talent, fantastic ideas, unprecedented cosmic insights as well as page-turning plotting skills and breathlessly good writing to produce the most awesome novel of the future since 3001.’Space is what keeps everything from being in the same place. Right?’ With these words Hiram Patterson, head of the giant media corporation OurWorld, launches the greatest communications revolution in history. With OurWorld’s development of wormhole technology, any point in space can be connected to any other, faster than the speed of light. Realtime television coverage is here: earthquakes and wars, murders and disasters can be watched, exactly as they occur, anywhere on the planet.Then WormCams are made to work across time as well as space. Humanity encounters itself in the light of other days. We witness the life of Jesus, go to the premiere of Hamlet, solve the enigmas that have baffled generations. Blood spilled centuries ago flows vividly once more – and no personal treachery or shame can be concealed.But when the world and everything in it becomes as transparent as glass and there are no more secrets, people find new ways to gain vengeance and commit crime, and Hiram Patterson finds new ways to keep his Machiavellian schemes secret.

In the millennium’s last great sf novel, Stephen Baxter takes us a short step byond Y2K. The year is 2010. We have survived … so far.Cornelius Taine of Eschatology, Inc., mathematical genius, predicts that in just 200 years our species will be wiped out. Even evacuation from Earth will not save us from extinction.Reid Malenfant, entrepreneur, has Big Dumb Boosters ready to fly from the California desert, to be piloted by an enhanced squid named Sheena 5. When Taine offers Malenfant the ultimate dream of saving the species, Sheena’s mission is diverted to investigate Earth’s recently discovered – and very remote – second moon.What Sheena 5 discovers there is nothing less than a revelation: the secret reason for our existence visible at last beneath the rippled surface of Time’s river. Malenfant and Taine must follow Sheena… but they are pursued by an enraged US Air and Space Force, and a mighty battle in space may cut short their hopes for the ultimate transformation of mankind.

2010. More than a century of ecological damage, industrial and technological expansion, and unchecked population growth has left the Earth on the brink of devastation.As the world's governments turn inward, one man dares to envision a bolder, brighter future. That man, Reid Malenfant, has a very different solution to the problems plaguing the planet: the exploration and colonization of space.Now Reid gambles the very existence of time on a single desperate throw of the dice. Battling national sabotage and international outcry, as apocalyptic riots sweep the globe, he builds a spacecraft and launches it into deep space. The odds are a trillion to one against him. Or are they?

2015: Astronaut Reid Malenfant is flying over the African continent, intent on examining a mysterious glowing construct in Earth’s orbit.But when the very fabric of the sky tears open, spilling living creatures to the ground and pulling others inside, including Reid’s wife, Emma, his quest to uncover the unknown becomes personal.While desperately searching to discover what happened to the woman he loves, Reid embarks upon an adventure to the very fount of human development . . . on earth and beyond.

2025. Tied in to Baxter’s masterful Manifold trilogy, these thematically linked stories are drawn from the vast graph of possibilities across which the lives of hero Reid Malenfant have been scattered.Reid Malenfant is the commander of a NASA earth-orbiting science platform. The platform is intended to probe the planets of the nearest star system by bouncing laser pulses off them. But no echoes are returned … and Reid's reality begins to crumble around him. Huddling with his family, awaiting the end – or an unknown new beginning – Reid tells stories of other possibilities, other realities.The linked stories encompass the myriad possibilities that might govern our relationship with the universe: are we truly alone, or will we eventually meet other lifeforms? The final possibility – that the Universe as we know it is in fact an elaborate illusion designed to protect us from the fearful reality – is brilliantly explored in the tour de force novella that ends the volume.

What if John F. Kennedy survived?President Nixon, with the help of former president JFK, has just green-lit NASA’s first manned expedition to Mars.Aboard, Natalie York, a geologist who risks everything she loves for the chance to go to space; Phil Stone, former X-15 test pilot; and Ralph Gershon, a Vietnam War hero intent on being the first African American to reach another planet.Exploring mankind’s presence in the extra-terrestrial expanse, VOYAGE chronicles the incredible story of what could have been.

Signs of life have been found on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon.A group of visionaries led by NASA’s Paula Benacerraf plan a daring one-way mission that will cost them everything. Taking nearly a decade, the billion-mile voyage includes a ‘slingshot’ transit of Venus, a catastrophic solar storm, and a constant struggle to keep the ship and crew functioning.But it is on the icy surface of Titan itself that the true adventure begins. In the orange methane slush the astronauts will discover the secrets of life’s origins and reach for a human destiny beyond their wildest dreams.

Venus has exploded.Showering Earth with radiation and bizarre particles that wipe out all the crops and half the life in the oceans.Suddenly, the ground itself begins melting into pools of dust that grow larger every day. For what has demolished Venus, and now threatens Earth itself, is part machine, part life-form – a nano-virus, dubbed Moonseed.Four scientists are all that stand between Moonseed and Earth’s extinction, four brilliant minds that must race to cut off the virus and save what’s left of the planet.

In the most exciting SF collaboration ever, Arthur C. Clarke and his universally acknowledged heir Stephen Baxter pool talent, fantastic ideas, unprecedented cosmic insights as well as page-turning plotting skills and breathlessly good writing to produce the most awesome novel of the future since 3001.’Space is what keeps everything from being in the same place. Right?’ With these words Hiram Patterson, head of the giant media corporation OurWorld, launches the greatest communications revolution in history. With OurWorld’s development of wormhole technology, any point in space can be connected to any other, faster than the speed of light. Realtime television coverage is here: earthquakes and wars, murders and disasters can be watched, exactly as they occur, anywhere on the planet.Then WormCams are made to work across time as well as space. Humanity encounters itself in the light of other days. We witness the life of Jesus, go to the premiere of Hamlet, solve the enigmas that have baffled generations. Blood spilled centuries ago flows vividly once more – and no personal treachery or shame can be concealed.But when the world and everything in it becomes as transparent as glass and there are no more secrets, people find new ways to gain vengeance and commit crime, and Hiram Patterson finds new ways to keep his Machiavellian schemes secret.

Stories set in a variety of futures from the award-winning heir of Arthur C. Clarke: Traces gives a kaleidoscopic vision of the possibilities for humankind.There are visions of histories which differ from our own, either through small changes – what if Germany had won WWI (‘Mittelwelt’) – or through a fundamental difference in physical laws – what if Archimedes had been right in his clockwork-like cosmological vision (‘No Longer Touch the Earth’).There are visions of futures in which people struggle to survive in a variety of bizarre environments (‘Downstream’, ‘The Blood of Angels’), or, weakened and powerless, inhabit the end of worlds (‘Inherit the Earth’, ‘George and the Comet’).There are explorations of astonishing events of our own lifetimes, in particular the grand expansion into space (‘Zemlya’, ‘Moon Six’, ‘Pilgrim 7’).These visions give an impression of the contingency of our everyday here-and-now, surrounded as it is by an infinite array of possible pasts, presents, and futures.

Making Domesday presents a fresh interpretation of William the Conqueror's survey of England, made possible by a major collaborative study and a new online edition of Exon Domesday, the earliest of the three original manuscripts to survive from the Domesday survey. The book addresses big questions about pre-modern government, written records, and the use of intelligence in both senses: the minds behind the planning and execution of Domesday, and the information about England that Domesday gathered. It characterizes Exon as the surviving part of the 'working papers' of one of the writing offices that over a period of ten weeks in summer 1086 dealt with all seven 'circuits' (regional groupings of shires) of the Domesday survey. The circuit offices had the task of recasting the manorial descriptions assembled in an earlier stage of the survey into an interim form intended for further redaction as Great Domesday Book by rearrangement, rewording, and abbreviation. A new deep understanding of the codicology and palaeography of Exon underpins every part of the analysis, and offers a model of documentary production for royal government at an exceptionally early period in western Europe. Part I describes and analyses each Exon text in unprecedented detail; Part II places Domesday in context and in broad comparative perspective, ranging across and beyond the Latin West. The dual approach provides a new interpretation of Domesday and a deeper understanding of both the Domesday survey and Domesday Book. It emerges that the survey was even more complex than we had dared to imagine, involving the production of different kinds of text intended to meet a range of fiscal and political needs. It is also clear that the survey was immediately effective, transforming the politics of land in a newly conquered society. Domesday has always been thought awesome, as its very name shows; Making Domesday contends that it was also a feat of intelligent government deployed by an aggressive and ambitious regime. As such it speaks to broader concerns with the colonial domination of conquered societies through the purposeful collection of systematic statistical information.

This book constitutes a major reappraisal of the late Anglo-Saxon state on the eve of its demise. Its principal focus is the family of Ealdorman Leofwine, which obtained power in Mercia and retained it throughout an extraordinary period of political upheaval between 994 and 1071. In doing so it explores a paradox: that earls were extraordinarily wealthy and powerful yet distinctly insecure. The book contains the first extended treatment of earls' powers in late Anglo-Saxon England and shows that although they wielded considerable military, administrative and political powers, they remained vulnerable to exile and other forms of political punishment including loss of territory. The book also offers a path-breaking analysis of land tenure and the mechanics of royal patronage, and argues that the majority of earls' estates were held from the king on a revocable basis for the duration of their period in office. In order to compensate for such insecurities, earls used lordship and religious patronage to construct local networks of power. The book uses innovative methods for interpreting the representation of lordship in Domesday Book to reconstruct the affinity of the earls of Mercia. It also examines how the house of Leofwine made strategic use of religious patronage to cement local power structures. All this created intense competition between the earls of Mercia and their rivals for power, both at court and in the localities, and the book explores how factional rivalry determined the course of politics, and ultimately the fate of the late Anglo-Saxon state.