Baxter's Xeelee Sequence Rant

Baxter's Xeelee Sequence

One of the elements that prompted us to compile the Huge Mangy Tome Project (HMTP), conventionally known as a reading list, was the problem of committing to a long series of books. The temptation, when reading a series of books, is to read them consecutively, one after the other for months on end. Inevitably enthusiasm wanes and it takes just one relatively weak book to trigger the rest to be abandoned; and one will never know if any of the latter books would have been worth reading. Back in the ante-HMTP days the Fictionados read Stephen Baxter's Timelike Infinity (TI) as part of a survey of Time Travel stories. And we all enjoyed it. When we later learned that TI was part of a science fiction future history (The Xeelee Sequence), some of the then membership was eager to tackle the series, but could not budge the rest who preferred to remain commitment challenged. Enter the HMTP empowering us to dare to plan the reading of entire series without fear of losing support from the membership. True, there was a risk that the rest of the books would not be worthwhile, and I would admit that Flux and Raft were a waste of my time, but I would never have gotten around to reading Ring were it not for the HMTP.

The Xeelee Sequence (XS) covers a broader time-span than does Larry Niven's Known Space series, covering a time from the near-future to more than five million years in the future when Sol has prematurely left the main sequence and humanity is fighting for survival in a universe where the Xeelee have escaped and all the stars are dying as a result of the working of dark-matter creatures. The XS is as hard as hard science fiction gets, delving into such arcane concepts as four dimensional hypercube prisons (The Shell), pure energy-to-matter conversion, (The Xeelee Flower), instantaneous communication (More Than Time or Distance), and artifacts massive enough to be called "The Great Attractor" (Ring). The strengths of the XS are not in the fictional elements characterization or style but in the grand scope of a future history.

The chief weakness of the XS is Baxter's comic simplification of the ease at which life is able to evolve and adapt in minimalist circumstances. The back cover of short story collection Vacuum Diagrams includes the words "And everywhere they went they found life." This succinctly sums up Baxter's depiction of the tenacity of life in this series. Three examples will suffice: (1) In Ring Photino Birds populate the universe made up of dark matter, even though the chemistry of the biology of Baryonic life is only possibly because the universe seems to be designed just for the self-folding of life essential proteins. Baxter leaves it up to conjecture as to just how dark matter chemistry works. But is indicative of his mindset that he postulates not only dark matter chemistry but dark matter evolution of life as well. (2) In Flux one group of spunky humans is able to eek out a living in a universe where the gravitational constant is too great to allow planets to form. Here people live in a gas cloud nebula, that just happens to be breathable (at least for a few hundred years), and one group of outcasts live on a planetoid ball of bones and rotting flesh from their dead ancestors, and somehow this festering ecology is sufficient to sustain life for untold generations. (3) In the novel Flux we humans reach a level of intelligence that allows us to design miniature neutron-star-human-beings that live off the "land" in the crust of neutronium. These human analogues have all the same desires and dreams that we conventional humans do, yet they are made of neutronium. Chemistry just does not work without electrons, let alone life chemistry. These few examples of the simple view Baxter takes of the miracle of life made it particularly difficult for me to get through some of the material in this series despite my overall admiration for the vast scale Baxter had created.

Unfortunately, the first novel, Timelike Infinity, is the best of the four in the series. Particularly memorable are the Friends of Wigner, a group who base their entire life on the fact that there must be an ultimate observer for anything in the universe to have any meaning. Flux and Raft would have been better if kept to short story length. Both are tedious accounts of the exploits of humans living in extreme situations; a neutron star (Flux) and a high gravity universe (Raft). The many short stories vary in quality from a mere outline of the grand plans of the Photino Birds and the Xeelee (Secret History) to a surprise ending gadget story worthy of Larry Niven (More Than Time or Distance). The capstone novel Ring covers the broadest chunk of time and refers to many of the other stories in passing, and as such provides the reader with a pleasant sense of completeness. I wouldn't have wanted to miss reading Ring, but without the commitment built into the HMTP I would not have had the mind picture of a million galaxies being pulled into an artifact made up of cosmic strings with a naked singularity portal to another universe at its center. Thanks Stephen Baxter for daring to think on such a scale.

I would recommend Timelike Infinity to any science fiction reader who likes time travel.
I wouldn't recommend Flux or Raft to anyone, except someone who had recommended Mercycle to me. That is someone whose tastes are diametrically opposed to mine.
Ring would appeal only to those who like to play with ideas on the largest possible scale, that is, the entire universe and the end of time.
The stories in Vacuum Diagrams are essential to the series, and many are more important to the structure of the series than are the novels. None rise to the level of greatness, but a few are quite fun.

Doug Eigsti February 16th, 2005


Now that we have finished reading the Xelee Sequence, I am removing the Baxter reading list from the home page. It is copied below for the record:

Stephen Baxter Xelee Series Reading List

Novels: ALL CAPS
Short Stories from Vacuum Diagrams: Upper and Lower case

The Xeelee Sequence –
Timeline 3
Prologue:
Eve 8
The Sun-People 11
The Logic Pool 15
TIMELIKE INFINITY 304
Gossamer 17
Cilia-of-Gold 23
Lieserl 19
Pilot 15
The Xeelee Flower 10
More Than Time or Distance 8
The Switch 9
Blue Shift 9
The Quagma Datum 18
Planck Zero 16
The Godel Sunflowers 16
Vacuum Diagrams 13
Stowaway 17
RAFT 303
The Tyranny of Heaven 12
FLUX 409
Hero 16
Secret History 14
Shell 11
The Eighth Room 20
The Baryonic Lords 54
RING 502
Epilogue: Eve 8


All stories are from the collection Vacuum Diagrams.
Page numbers are approximate, and are based on the HarperPrism trade edition of Vacuum Diagrams.