Review Summaries

• Readers praise the cosmic ambition and intellectual excitement, though the scientific density is demanding.

Reviews

• SF物理学・歴史のカレイドスコープ

  壮大なとでも形容しようがない、ダイナミックで生命に満ち溢れた我が宇宙の歴史物語です。短編の積み重ねで読みにくい面もありますが、歴史が終わってしまうまでの正真正銘の歴史です。戦いと滅亡という一面の歴史でしかありませんが。人類はSqueemとQaxという二つの種族に支配され、その支配から脱却するたびに、新たな革新的な技術を手に入れ、宇宙の征服者たらんと、全能のXeeleeに挑戦して行きます。Xeeleeは宇宙の物理を深く、深く理解していますが、そのXeeleeですら適わない全く異なる物質宇宙のPhotinoという存在に人類は気が付くことができません。「it was a struggle for survival between two inimical life modes trapped in a single Universe.」500万年後最後の人類が滅亡し（Xeeleeのお情けで新しく作った宇宙へ脱出することができますが）、1000万年後baryonic life（我々の物質世界を形成している通常の物質バリオンからなる全ての生命体）が滅亡します。涙もでないような物語ですが、まあ、ほっとする結末は用意されています。

• Uplifting stories

  The first half of the stories are brilliant, with their themes, dreams and scientific ideas. The second half is full of death, decay and delirium, but even they are brimming with scientific ideas. I dropped a star for the content matter of the 2nd half, but overall, the book is recommended.

• Uncommonly great

  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.

• Old school without the charm

  Reminds me of sci-fi from 50 years ago. A lot of novellas back then started with one great idea and then explored how that idea would affect human society. This series of novellas is very similar except it doesn't have anything to offer beyond the great ideas. Each chapter in the series features a great idea, a paper thin juvenile plot and a couple of thoroughly unpleasant one dimensional characters.

• The Xeelee Sequence condensed.

  The original Xeelee Sequence, which is comprised of four separate novels; those being:- Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux and Ring, is arguably one of the finest works of imagination in, not only contemporary SF, but in SF as whole, and not only in SF, but in the field of fiction in it's entirety. It is a body of work than covers the life of the entire universe, it's death and the birth of another. It spans billions of years, multiple alien occupations of Earth, and locales and concepts that will invoke your sense of wonder, and simultaneously take your breath away and knock your socks off, but only as a precursor to blowing your mind. Vacuum Diagrams is a condensed, chronologically organised novel that brings together (I am refusing to refer to it a summation. It deserves to be far more than that.) all four of the original Xeelee Sequence, and presents them in a neat, streamlined, powerhouse of a book, NOT to be mistaken for the now available 'Xeelee: An Omnibus', which is all four books in their entirety, and also not inclusive of the 'Destiny's Children' arena of the Xeelee pantheon, though it certainly includes those aspects of the 'War', most notably in relation to the parts of the novel covering the events from 'Flux'. This all sounds rather complicated, and it cannot be any other way, until you have immersed yourself in Baxter's amazingly realised universe, and that is where Vacuum Diagrams comes into its own, allowing you to cover those four wonderful novels and those billions of years, allowing you to witness the death of one universe and the birth of another; to follow the magnetic flux lines of the inside of a sun, as you follow the intricacies of a post human civilization living and travelling along them, as well as the achingly simple and familiar symptoms of the human condition despite where or how these human lives have been forced to scratch a living, an to be privileged enough to realise the meaning of those tiny flickers of life, in the midst of awesome and terrifying events within a hostile yet indifferent universe, in a way we're never likely to or our own; and to even see beyond our universe of baryonic matter and life, to dark matter based entities dependent on the mechanics of the photonic world within the hearts of suns(as ours is in a crucially different way) and whose way of life is inimical to our own; and where a war is being fought to save the universe, while humanity is fighting against those who are doing the most to save it. Vacuum Diagrams is a wonderful book that stands alone without the need to read the other books. It is in fact written to do that very thing, to tell the entire story without the, arguably, superfluous details, such as deeper character exploration. Actually, I am having a hard time trying to figure out just what has been taken away from the four books in order to fully realise this one, and I realise that it doesn't even matter. Baxter is a master of his craft, and has in fact used this very same format to great effect (and again I am loathe to use the word summary or summation, because doing so seems to imply a loss of something, when in fact the opposite holds true.) in his other great body of work, the 'Bootstrap/Malenfant Chronicles', where like the four novels of the Xeelee Sequence, he brings together the three amazing books, Time, Space and Origin, with the excellent 'Phase Space'. I can't recommend this book enough. It's a joy to read, and it won't be enough, you WILL return to read the four novels in full, if you haven't already, and you Will love them as much if not more so. Even if you don't choose to read this book, do yourself a favour and read another of his excellent books, Evolution springs quickly to my mind, or even the aforementioned 'Phase Space'. Take this not as a book review, but as acclaim for Stephen Baxter himself. I've read practically all his books, and most, if not all of them, have enhanced my life in some way. So , if you are lucky enough to never have read any of his many wonderful books, then do yourself a turn. Read this book. It will be an experience, and I envy you.

• Amazing

  I had always waited for the imagination that would blow my mind, and Stephen Baxter, in this collection of story of sorts has. Yes, he took less time in character development but character development was not the star of the show, it was the universe which he explained very well.

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