Xeelee Sequence
| Author | Stephen Baxter |
|---|---|
| Original title | Xeelee Sequence |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Hard science fiction |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover / Paperback) |
| No. of books | 12 (List of books) |
The Xeelee Sequence (/ˈziːliː/; ZEE-lee)[a][1][2] is a series of hard science fiction novels, novellas, and short stories written by British science fiction author Stephen Baxter. The series spans billions of years of fictional history, centering on humanity's future expansion into the universe, its intergalactic war with an enigmatic and supremely powerful Kardashev Type V alien civilization called the Xeelee (eldritch symbiotes composed of spacetime defects, Bose-Einstein condensates, and baryonic matter), and the Xeelee's own cosmos-spanning war with dark matter entities called Photino Birds. The series features many other species and civilizations that play a prominent role, including the Squeem (a species of group-mind aquatics), the Qax (beings whose biology is based on the complex interactions of convection cells), and the Silver Ghosts (colonies of symbiotic organisms encased in reflective skins). Several stories in the Sequence also deal with humans and posthumans living in extreme conditions, such as at the heart of a neutron star (Flux), in a separate universe with considerably stronger gravity (Raft), and within eusocial hive societies (Coalescent).[3][4][5]
The Xeelee Sequence deals with many concepts stemming from the fringe of theoretical physics and futurology, such as artificial wormholes, time travel, exotic-matter physics, naked singularities, closed timelike curves, multiple universes, hyperadvanced computing and artificial intelligence, faster-than-light travel, spacetime engineering, quantum wave function beings, and the upper echelons of the Kardashev scale. Thematically, the series deals heavily with certain existential and social philosophical issues, such as striving for survival and relevance in a harsh and unknowable universe, the effects of war and militarism on society,[6][7] and the effects that come from a long and unpredictable future for humanity with strange technologies.[8]
As of August 2018, the series is composed of 9 novels and 53 short pieces (short stories and novellas, with most collected in 3 anthologies), all of which fit into a fictional timeline stretching from the Big Bang's singularity of the past to the eventual heat death of the universe and Timelike Infinity's singularity of the future.[9] An omnibus edition of the first four Xeelee novels (Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux, and Ring), entitled Xeelee: An Omnibus, was released in January 2010.[10] In August 2016, the entire series of all novels and stories (up to that date) was released as one volume in e-book format entitled Xeelee Sequence: The Complete Series.[11] Baxter's Destiny's Children series is part of the Xeelee Sequence.
Conception
[edit]Baxter first conceived of the Xeelee while hobby writing a short story in the summer of 1986 (eventually published in Interzone as "The Xeelee Flower" the following year). He incorporated powerful off-stage aliens to explain the story's titular artifact, and in pondering the backstory began to flesh out the basics of what would later become the main players and setting of the Sequence: a universe full of intelligent species that live in the shadow of the incomprehensible and god-like Xeelee.[12]
Plot overview
[edit]The overarching plot of the Xeelee Sequence involves an intergalactic war between humanity and the Xeelee, and a cosmic war between the Xeelee and the Photino Birds, with the latter two being alien species that originated in the early universe. The technologically advanced Xeelee primarily inhabit supermassive black holes, manipulating their event horizons to create preferable living environments, construction materials, tools, and computing devices. The Photino Birds are a dark matter-based species that live in the gravity wells of stars, who are likely not aware of baryonic life forms due to dark matter's weak interactions with normal matter. Due to the inevitable risk of their habitats being destroyed by supernovae and other consequences of stellar evolution, the Photino Birds work to halt nuclear fusion in the cores of stars, prematurely aging them into stable white dwarfs. The resulting dwarfs provide them with suitable habitats for billions of times longer than other types of stars could, but at the expense of other forms of life on nearby planets. The Photino Birds' activities also effectively stop the formation of new black holes due to a lack of Type II supernovae, threatening the existence of the Xeelee and their cosmic projects.
After overcoming a series of brutal occupations by extraterrestrial civilizations, humanity expands into the galaxy with an extremely xenophobic and militaristic outlook, with aims to exterminate other species they encounter. Humans eventually become the second-most advanced and widespread civilization in the Milky Way galaxy, after the Xeelee. Unaware of the Photino–Xeelee war and the existential ramifications of what is at stake, humanity come to the (unwarranted) conclusion that the Xeelee are a sinister and destructive threat to their hegemony and security. Through a bitter war of attrition, humans end up containing the Xeelee to the galactic core. Both humans and the Xeelee gain strategic intelligence by using time travel as a war tactic, through the use of closed timelike curves, resulting in a stalemate for thousands of years. Eventually, humanity develops defensive, movable pocket universes to compartmentalize and process information, and an exotic weapon able to damage the ecological stability of the core's supermassive black hole. Minutes after the first successful strike, the Xeelee withdraw from the galaxy, effectively ceding the Milky Way to fully human control. Humanity continued to advance technologically for a hundred thousand years afterwards, then attacked the Xeelee across the Local Group of galaxies. However, despite having annoyed the Xeelee enough to give up activities in the Milky Way, humans, having become an extremely powerful Type III civilization themselves at this point, prove only to be a minor distraction to the Xeelee on the whole, being ultimately unable to meaningfully challenge their dominance across the universe.
Although the Xeelee are masters of space and time capable of influencing their own evolution, they are ultimately unsuccessful in stopping the Photino Birds. They instead utilize cosmic strings to build an enormous ring-like structure (which comes to be known as Bolder's Ring, or simply the Ring) to permit easy travel to other universes, allowing them and other species to escape the Photino Birds' destruction of the universe. The Xeelee, despite their unapproachable aloofness and transcendent superiority, appear to be compassionate and charitable toward the younger and less advanced species that inhabit the universe, demonstrating this by doing such things as constructing a specially made universe suited to the Silver Ghosts, who humans had nearly driven to extinction. Humans are likewise shown compassion by them and allowed to use the Ring to escape, despite their relentless long war against the Xeelee.
Novels
[edit]Xeelee Sequence (1991–2018)
[edit]Not all printings included volume number.
| No. | Title | Publisher | Date | ISBN | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Raft | Grafton | July 1991 | 0-246-13706-1 | |
| 2 | Timelike Infinity | HarperCollins | December 1992 | 0-00-224016-5 | |
| 3 | Flux | December 1993 | 0-00-224025-4 | ||
| 4 | Ring | July 1994 | 0-00-224026-2 | ||
| 5 | Vacuum Diagrams | April 1997 | 0-00-225425-5 | Short story collection; Philip K. Dick Award winner, 1999[13] | |
| 6 | Xelee: Endurance | Gollancz | 17 September 2015 | 978-1-4732-1270-1 | Short story collection |
| 7 | Xelee: Vengeance | 15 June 2017 | 978-1-4732-1717-1 | ||
| 8 | Xelee: Redemption | 23 August 2018 | 978-1-4732-1721-8 |
Destiny's Children (2003–2006)
[edit]Series of thematically-linked novels set within the main Xeelee Sequence. Published by Gollancz.
| No. | Title | Date | ISBN | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Coalescent | 9 October 2003 | 0-575-07423-X | Arthur C. Clarke Award nominee, 2004[14] |
| 2 | Exultant | 23 September 2004 | 0-575-07428-0 | |
| 3 | Transcendent | 27 October 2005 | 0-575-07430-2 | John W. Campbell Memorial Award nominee, 2006[15] |
| 4 | Resplendent | 21 September 2006 | 0-575-07896-0 | Short story collection |
Short fiction
[edit]Short fiction set within the Xeelee Sequence. Below is an incomplete list.
| Title | Original publication | Issue date | Baxter collection |
|---|---|---|---|
| "The Xeelee Flower" | Interzone | Spring 1987 | Vacuum Diagrams |
| "More Than Time or Distance" | Opus Quarterly | Winter 1988 | |
| "The Eighth Room" | Dream Science Fiction | Summer 1989 | |
| "The Switch" | The Edge | March/April 1990 | |
| "Vacuum Diagrams" | Interzone | May 1990 | |
| "The Tyranny of Heaven" | Dream Science Fiction | July 1990 | |
| The Baryonic Lords, Part One | Interzone | June 1991 | |
| The Baryonic Lords, Part Two | July 199 | ||
| "The Gödel Sunflowers" | January 1992 | ||
| "Planck Zero" | Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction | January 1992 | |
| "The Sun Person"[b] | Interzone | March 1993 | |
| "Chiron"[c] | Novacon 23[d] | November 1993 | |
| "Lieserl" | Interzone | December 1993 | |
| "The Logic Pool" | Asimov's Science Fiction | June 1994 | |
| "Cilia-of-Gold" | August 1994 | ||
| "Hero" | January 1995 | ||
| "Gossamer" | Science Fiction Age | November 1995 | |
| "Soliton Star"[e] | Asimov's Science Fiction | May 1997 | |
| "Cadre Siblings" | Interzone | March 2000 | Resplendent |
| "Silver Ghost" | Asimov's Science Fiction | September 2000 | |
| "On the Orion Line" | October/November 2000 | ||
| "The Ghost Pit" | July 2001 | ||
| "The Cold Sink" | August 2001 | ||
| "The Dreaming Mound" | Interzone | May 2002 | |
| "Breeding Ground" | Asimov's Science Fiction | February 2003 | |
| "The Great Game" | March 2003 | ||
| "The Chop Line" | December 2003 | ||
| "Ghost Wars" | January 2005 |
Anthologies
[edit]Previously anthologized short fiction.
| Title | Original collection | Editor(s) | Publisher | Date | ISBN | Baxter collection |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| "Blue Shift" | Writers of the Future, Vol. V | Algis Budrys | Bridge Publications | May 1989 | 0-88404-379-7 | Vacuum Diagrams |
| "The Quagma Datum" | Interzone: The 4th Anthology | John Clute, et al.[f] | Simon & Schuster | August 1989 | 0-671-69707-2 | |
| "In the Un-Black" | Redshift Extreme | Al Sarrantonio | Roc Books | December 2001 | 0-451-45859-1 | Resplendent |
| "Conurbation 2473" | Live Without a Net | Lou Anders | Roc Books | July 2003 | 0-451-45925-3 | |
| "All in a Blaze" | Stars | Janis Ian and Mike Resnick | DAW Books | 5 August 2003 | 0-7564-0177-1 | |
| Between Worlds | Between Worlds | Robert Silverberg | SFBC | August 2004 | 1-58288-108-1 | |
| "Lakes of Light" | Constellations | Peter Crowther | DAW Books | 4 January 2005 | 0-7564-0234-4 | |
| "Remembrance" | The New Space Opera | Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan | HarperCollins | 12 June 2007 | 978-0-06-084675-6 | Endurance |
| The Seer and the Silverman | Galactic Empires | Gardner Dozois | SFBC | February 2008 | 978-1-58288-291-8 | |
| The Return to Titan | Godlike Machines | Jonathan Strahan | SFBC | November 2010 | 978-1-61664-759-9 | |
| "The Venus Generations" | Bridging Infinity [g] | Games Workshop | 20 October 2016 | 978-1-78108-418-2 | — |
Limited edition novellas
[edit]Limited editions distributed by UK-based PS Publishing. Mayflower II won the 2004 BSFA Award for Best Short Fiction.[16]
| Title | Date | ISBN[h] | Baxter collection |
|---|---|---|---|
| Realty Dust | 31 March 2000 | 1-902880-11-0 | Resplendent |
| Riding the Rock | 30 November 2002 | 1-902880-60-9 | |
| Mayflower II | 1 April 2004 | 1-904619-17-7 | |
| Starfall | 12 January 2009 | 978-1-906301-59-0 | Endurance |
| Gravity Dreams | 15 April 2011 | 978-1-84863-190-8 |
Old Earth (2004–2009)
[edit]Short stories published as "A Tale of Old Earth". Stories are collected in Xelee: Endurance (2015)
| Title | Original publication | Issue date |
|---|---|---|
| "PeriAndry's Quest" | Analog Science Fiction and Fact | June 2004 |
| "Climbing the Blue" | July/August 2005 | |
| "The Time Pit" | October 2005 | |
| "The Lowland Expedition" | April 2006 | |
| "Formidable Caress" | December 2009 |
Chronology and reading order
[edit]The novels in chronological order (as opposed to publication order) are given below. Some of the novels contain elements occurring at different points in the timeline. The story anthologies (Vacuum Diagrams, Resplendent, and Xeelee: Endurance) each contain stories taking place across the entire chronology.
| Title | Publication | Chronology (C.E.) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coalescent | 2003 | 476–2005 | Part 1 of Destiny's Children |
| Transcendent | 2005 | 2047 | Part 3 of Destiny's Children ; the world of Michael Poole Bazalget |
| Xeelee: Vengeance | 2017 | 3646–3665 | Set in an alternate timeline |
| Timelike Infinity | 1992 | 3717 | Majority of the plot concerns events that begin here, with later major events occurring in 3829 and the 5000s. The final chapter takes place mainly in c. 5,000,000. |
| Ring | 1994 | 3951 | Before Great Northern launches |
| Xeelee: Redemption | 2018 | 4106 – c. 5,000,000,000 | Set in the same alternate timeline as Xeelee: Vengeance |
| Exultant | 2004 | c. 24,973 | Part 2 of Destiny's Children |
| Raft | 1991 | c. 104,858 | |
| Flux | 1993 | c. 193,700 | |
| Transcendent | 2005 | c. 500,000 | Part 3 of Destiny's Children; the world of Alia |
| Ring | 1994 | c. 5,000,000 | After Great Northern returns |
In 2009, Baxter posted a detailed chronology of the Xeelee Sequence explaining the proper chronological reading order of all the novels, novellas, and short stories up to that year. The timeline was updated in September 2015.[17]
When asked directly for a suggested reading order, the author wrote: "I hope that all the books and indeed the stories can be read stand-alone. I'm not a great fan of books that end with cliff-hangers. So you could go in anywhere. One way would be to start with Vacuum Diagrams, a collection that sets out the overall story of the universe. Then Timelike Infinity and Ring which tell the story of Michael Poole, then Raft and Flux which are really incidents against the wider background, and finally Destiny's Children."[18]
Reception
[edit] |
Science fiction author Paul J. McAuley has praised Baxter and the series, saying:
Baxter doesn't shrink from tackling the dismayingly inhuman implications of vast abysses of past or future time, but the universality of life introduces perspective, motion and plot into every part of his Stapledonian cosmological framework.
It is great, heady, mind-bending stuff, meticulously mapped onto cutting edge speculations about the birth pangs of the universe and the ultimate fate of all known time and space, constantly enlivened and driven forward by the narratives that its vast range of life generates.
[It represents an] accomplished and imaginative exploration, expansion and reworking of SF's core themes. His characters contest for living space with a panoply of bizarre aliens in a galaxy crammed with ancient wonders and secret histories; his stories reinvent the baroque excesses of space opera and brace them with imaginative exploration of ideas from stellar zoology, cosmology, quantum theory, exotic mathematics, and much else. Narratives froth with moments of shock and awe, and those sudden reversals of scale that induce the metaphysical dizziness sometimes called sense of wonder. Sentences stride confidently across centuries; paragraphs encompass millennia. Individual voices carry the story forwards, but the story is always bigger than the individuals that are caught up in it.[19]
See also
[edit]Notes
[edit]- ^ Baxter cites the pronunciation "ch-ee-lee" in Xeelee: Vengeance (2007).
- ^ Variant title: "The Sun-People"
- ^ Revised as "Pilot" (1997).
- ^ Convention program
- ^ Revised as "Epilogue: Eve" (1997)
- ^ John Clute, Simon Ounsley and David Pringle
- ^ The Infinity Project, Vol. 5.
- ^ Several ISBNs are assigned to each title.
References
[edit]- ^ "Stephen Baxter Lecture". Youtube.com. Archived from the original on 21 December 2021.
- ^ "Stephen Baxter Interview". Youtube.com. Archived from the original on 21 December 2021.
- ^ "Flux". FantasticFiction.com. Archived from the original on 23 June 2019. Retrieved 22 June 2019.
- ^ "Raft". FantasticFiction.com. Retrieved 22 June 2019.
- ^ "Coalescent". Penguin Random House. Retrieved 22 June 2019.
- ^ Orionbooks.co.uk – Xeelee Sequence. Gollancz. 11 August 2016. ISBN 9781473217126. Archived from the original on 3 February 2017. Retrieved 22 March 2017.
- ^ "The origin of the Destiny's Children series". stephen-baxter.com. Archived from the original on 31 August 2016. Retrieved 28 August 2016.
- ^ Herrick, James A. (2008). Scientific Mythologies: How Science and Science Fiction Forge New Religious Beliefs. Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic. p. 131. ISBN 978-0-8308-2588-2.
- ^ "The Xeelee Sequence – Timeline". stephen-baxter.com. Retrieved 29 September 2011.
- ^ "Books". stephen-baxter.com. Retrieved 1 March 2012.
- ^ Orionbooks.co.uk – Xeelee Sequence. Gollancz. 11 August 2016. ISBN 9781473217126. Archived from the original on 3 February 2017. Retrieved 29 January 2017.
- ^ "The Origin of the Xeelee Universe". stephen-baxter.com. Archived from the original on 31 March 2016. Retrieved 1 April 2016.
- ^ "1999 PKD Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 28 August 2016.
- ^ "2004 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Archived from the original on 28 May 2021. Retrieved 3 August 2009.
- ^ "2006 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Archived from the original on 11 September 2017. Retrieved 3 August 2009.
- ^ "BSFA Awards – Previous Award Winners". British Science Fiction Association. Archived from the original on 19 April 2013. Retrieved 28 August 2016.
- ^ "The Xeelee Sequence – Timeline". stephen-baxter.com. Archived from the original on 5 July 2014. Retrieved 12 June 2014.
- ^ "Fiction Excerpts and Interviews". themanifold.co.uk. Archived from the original on 2 October 2006.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) - ^ McAuley, Paul (January 2010). "Introduction". In Baxter, Stephen (ed.). Xeelee: An Omnibus. Gollancz. pp. viii–ix. ISBN 978-0575090415.
External links
[edit]- Stephen Baxter's official website.
- The complete (as of September 2015) timeline for the Xeelee Sequence of novels and stories, hosted on Baxter's official website.
- Xeelee Sequence series listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- Xeelee Sequence
- Book series introduced in 1991
- Fictional universes
- Cosmic horror
- Mythopoeia
- Novels about extraterrestrial life
- Stephen Baxter series
- Fiction about transhumanism
- Fiction about artificial intelligence
- Fiction about wormholes
- Fiction about consciousness transfer
- Fiction about immortality
- Fiction about the Solar System
- Fiction about time travel
- Works about the future
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