Vacuum Diagrams: Stories of the Xeelee Sequence [Paperback]

Stephen Baxter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 9, 1998

"And everywhere the humans went they found life..."

This dazzling future history, the most ambitious and exciting since Asimov's classic Foundation novels, tells the story of Humankind--all the way to the end of the Universe itself.

Here, in luminous and vivid narratives spanning five million years, are the first Poole wormholes spanning the solar system; the conquest of Human planets by Squeem; GUTships that outrace light; the back-time invasion of the Qax; the mystery and legacy of the Xeelee, and their artifacts as large as small galaxies; photino birds and Dark Matter; and the Ring, where Ghost, Human, and Xeelee contemplate the awesome end of Time.

Stephen Baxter is the most acclaimed and accomplished of a brilliant new generation of authors who are expanding the vision of science fiction and taking it to a new golden age.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Ironically, you'll probably appreciate Vacuum Diagrams most after you've put it down. The prolific and acclaimed Stephen Baxter has always been praised for his imaginative and conscientious use of science, and Vacuum Diagrams is no exception. This collection of short stories will leave you ruminating for days over the sprawl of ideas, worlds, and life forms Baxter has woven together.

Filling in the gaps on Baxter's ambitious, almost audacious, 10-million-year timeline called the "Xeelee Sequence," Vacuum Diagrams is a collection of revised, previously published short stories that bridges together his popular novels set in this same "future history"--Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux, and Ring. Baxter's universe is rotten with life, from strange tree-stump-like creatures with superfluid ice skeletons to dark matter "birds" to sentient beings composed of pure mathematics. And Baxter's reverence for life's beauty, for its voracious robustness, is hard to resist--especially when it comes to humanity and its tentative, eager rise. The cycling timeline follows humans as they come into their own as a star-faring race, from their first sporadic steps to their near dominance of the universe and beyond.

Vacuum Diagrams is a great introduction to Baxter for those unfamiliar with him and a good primer for the other "Xeelee Sequence" novels. If you already love Baxter or the other novels in the sequence, Vacuum Diagrams is certainly a safe bet. Besides, any book that sends you scurrying quizzically after your college physics text deserves a closer look. Check it out. --Paul Hughes

Review

"Vacuum Diagrams is science fiction, but it has the feel and appeal of mythology... This is 'mind-stretching' SF at its boldest." -- -- The Hartford Courant

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Harper Voyager; First Edition edition (December 9, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061053953
• ISBN-13: 978-0061053955
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #582,439 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Uncommonly great, December 18, 2005

By 

Alejandro Contreras - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Vacuum Diagrams (Mass Market Paperback)

Baxter's main work is called the "Xeelee Sequence". It is a story of the future of the Universe, which Baxter tells in 4 books: Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux and Ring.

Vacuum Diagrams is the fifth book of the series. It is not a one-story book, but a set of 21 short stories chronologically placed. The first one is set on year 3,672 and the 21st happens some time after year 4 Million.

The 21 stories are snapshots of the future, logically linked to the main concepts of the Xeelee Sequence. In general, each story presents new and creative sci-fi concepts.

If you have read and enjoyed other works from Baxter, you will surely like this book. If you haven't read him but are a Clarke (or even an Asimov) fan, you will probably enjoy this, too.

Notwithstanding my 5 star rating, I must warn you of two issues I had with this book:
- Its style, with so many short stories, that are linked in time and in concept, can be tiring. On sci-fi terms, its like turning on a hyperdrive to move to a new galaxy, take a look at it and when you're beginning to understand what's it all about, you have to jump again. You are always left wondering about so many details and ramifications of each story. It can frustrating.
- Maybe because of this, I found the book became a little bit tedious when I got to story 18 (Shell). It took me a while to regain my energy and read the last 3 stories.

I don't think it will be fair to get into details about the Xeelee Sequence, but for those who are curious about it, here are some of its main concepts:

- Around 3000 AD, humankind develops new technologies that allow it to travel quickly through space. The solar system is colonized.
- As the human civilization expands, it finds many different and curious forms of life in planets and satellites.
- Eventually, humanity is "conquered" by other galactic races, for some time. However, Man is persistent and resilient and gets its freedom back.
- Through all the time, humankind and the other galactic races are somehow obsessed about the Xeelee, a mysterious, ancient and very powerful civilization that has technologies far beyond what the rest of races have.
- The Xeelee are so developed that they manipulate stars and planets and build a huge "Ring" somewhere in the Universe. The ring has such a gravity field that stars in its vicinity look blue.

These are just some of the basic premises of the Xeelee Sequence. I am surely missing some key elements. Hopefully just with what I wrote here you will be compelled to try any book of the Sequence. If you're into sci-fi, you wont be dissapointed.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great collection of related stories, October 17, 2001

By 

SF Signal "John D." (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Vacuum Diagrams (Mass Market Paperback)

PROS: Vast scope of ideas, steeply based in science, epic quality
CONS: Writing style is a bit dry
BOTTOM LINE: Great collection of related stories.

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: A collection of related stories set in Baxter's Xeelee Universe.

The memorable things about Baxter's stories are not so much his characters, nor his writing style, which is a somewhat stiff, but rather his ideas. Each story contained in this collection contains some form of scientific concept that defies any simple comprehension due to sheer scale, large and small. Sometimes travel spans universes, sometimes beings are microscopic in size, and sometimes artifacts are light years wide. Baxter's signature hard science is present here in a big way.

The stories average 14 pages in length but are packed with all these ideas. Many of the stories, spanning 5 million years, reference the same events or reference each other, which is always a secret thrill for a science fiction reader.

One huge plus in Vacuum Diagram's is the Xeelee Sequence Timelins listed at the back of the book. This makes it prerequisite reading for anyone wishing to dive into Baxter's 4 Xeelee novels (in Xeelee Universe order: Timelike Infinity, Raft, Flux and Ring).

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Best Way to Read Stephen Baxter, April 14, 2001

By 

Peter M Clark (Ann Arbor, Michigan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Vacuum Diagrams (Mass Market Paperback)

I have read several of Stephen Baxter's novels, and this collection of his short fiction (including sections from several of his novels) is by far the best way to be introduced to his ideas. Stephen has a real talent for formulating mind-blowing ideas based on hard science. What he doesn't have a talent for is developing characters. This book gives you an overview of his ideas, without boring you with his characters. It is all plot and exposition. The only way that I would improve this would be to lose the redundant stories about how marvelously adaptable life is.