June 15, 2013

Baxter, Stephen

Tagged: Author

(1957-    ) UK writer, who has also signed his name Steve Baxter and S M Baxter. He began publishing sf with "The Xeelee Flower" for Interzone in Spring 1987, which with most of his earlier short work fits into his Xeelee Sequence, the main work of the first decade of his career. It constitutes an ambitious attempt at creating both – in the short term – a Future History for the human race, and – in the immensely long perspectives Baxter has increasingly found most comfortable to deal with – a Cosmology for the universe as a whole. The sequence to date includes Raft (September/October 1989 Interzone; much exp 1991), Timelike Infinity (1992), Flux (1993), Ring (1994) and Vacuum Diagrams: Stories of the Xeelee Sequence (coll 1997), which won a Philip K Dick Award in 1999 for its paperback publication in America; plus two shorter texts, Reality Dust (2000 chap) and Riding the Rock (2002 chap). The sequence – as centrally narrated in the second and fourth volumes – follows humanity into the fraught arena of interstellar space, already dominated by the complex and enigmatic Alien Xeelee, who soon prove to be highly inimical to the fragile expansionist hopes of humanity. The long epic ends darkly, aeons hence, giving with strong hints (> Hive Minds, Omega Point, End of Time) that the universe, and the Intelligences capable of comprehending it, may become coterminous. Though the incessant fertility of Baxter's imagination makes it appropriate to think of his larger-scale effects in terms of Space Opera, the Xeelee Sequence, like most of his later fiction, is dense with Thought Experiments; along with Greg Bear and Gregory Benford, he is perhaps the most successful of all modern sf writers in marrying Space Opera and Hard SF. Raft, for instance, though it labours under the strain of an ineptly conceived protagonist, effectively posits an ultra-high-gravity universe, and argues the consequences to migrant humans of living there; Flux minutely describes a microscopic folk who live on the surface of a Neutron Star; and the Time-Travel intricacies of Ring are dauntingly well-argued. But none of these books is defeated, as fiction, by the arguments they promulgate; and the sweeping millennia-long tale is carried off with a genuine Sense of Wonder.

Baxter also wrote several singletons over the same period. Anti-Ice (1993) is an Alternate History set in an England transfigured into a Steampunk Dystopia by the discovery of the eponymous superconductor – extracted from a fallen moonlet – which explodes with nuclear force when heated, but which is also capable of powering spaceships. There is an occasional almost metallic flatness of tone in this novel, an affectlessness when individual humans take the foreground, which also has a muting effect on Baxter's finest single early work, The Time Ships (1995). The latter novel won a John W Campbell Memorial Award in 1996, as well as the Philip K Dick Award, the latter given, as in the case of Vacuum Diagrams (see above), for the book's later publication in the US in paperback [this peculiarity is mentioned here as – see Checklist below – we list only first editions]. Based explicitly and with the approval of his estate on H G Wells's The Time Machine (1895), this Sequel by Other Hands confirms the sense that Baxter is almost certainly the premier current author of the Scientific Romance, and that – like his great predecessors in the form, Wells, Olaf Stapledon and Arthur C Clarke (with whom he has collaborated, see below) – he tends most naturally to work out the implications of his tales through long-breathed Evolutionary perspectives; that he is pessimistic about how likely it is that the human race is destined to triumph, either on this planet or abroad; that he is uncomfortable with the model of the Competent Man central to twentieth-century American Hard SF; and that he has a sweet-tooth for the eschatological climax (> again End of the World, Omega Point: see also Transcendence).

Voyage (1996), also from these fertile years, is an Alternate History in which America does not abandon the movement into space, landing the first man on Mars in 1986; and Titan (1997) offers a deeply bleak vision of Near Future Earth, politically corrupt and terminally contaminated, which is not much lightened by a valiant (but doomed) space voyage to the eponymous moon. Moonseed (1998) is a not entirely successful attempt to wed Baxter's concerns to the widescreen approach of the American Disaster novel: Earth is devoured by alien Nanotechnology and there is a wildly unlikely evacuation to the Moon (provided with a deus ex machina atmosphere). But Baxter's finest later singleton may be Evolution (2002), a pure Scientific Romance traversal of the story of Evolution on Earth, from the deep past and the passing of the Dinosaurs through humanity's brief ascendancy down to a future of Devolution not dissimilar to (but more closely argued than) that depicted by Wells in The Time Machine (1895); as in the Scientific Romance form at its most intense, dozens of exemplary characters are viewed with chastening objectivity, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

By the end of the century, Baxter was focusing once again on series. The Mammoth sequence – Mammoth: Silverhair (1999; vt Silverhair 1999); Longtusk: Mammoth Book Two (2000) and Icebones: Mammoth Book Three (2001) – describes an Earth in which sentient mammoths survive, though just barely, through the time of humanity. The Manifold sequence – Time: Manifold 1 (1999; vt Manifold: Time 1999), Space: Manifold 2 (2000; vt Manifold: Space 2000) and Origin: Manifold 3 (2001; vt Manifold: Origin 2001) – explores almost frenziedly a series of Alternate History iterations of the implications of the Fermi Paradox, which argues that if Alien species did in fact exist in the wide universe, they would have already visited us ("If they existed, they would be here."). As so often in Baxter, there is no final answer understandable by humans, though some higher controlling entity (for whom/which we are all iterations in an experiment beyond our ken) may have the answer. This manipulative remoteness also governs the Time's Tapestry sequence – comprising Emperor (2006), Conqueror (2007), Navigator (2007) and Weaver (2008) – through a figure from the future known as the Weaver, actually a group engaged in a Changewar with Nazi Germany, whose Scientists are attempting to prevent the discovery and growth of America. The series climaxes in an Alternate History version of World War Two with the Invasion of England, the traditional Hitler Wins implication of this climax being averted by the eventual defeat of Germany. More down to Earth, the Disaster Diptych comprising Flood (2008) and Ark (2009) depicts first a great Disaster in which Earth is effectively flooded, and the subsequent escape of part of humanity via Generation Starship.

The best of these later sequences is probably the Destiny's Children series comprising Coalescent (2003), Exultant (2004) and Transcendent (2005), with the story collection Resplendent (coll 2006) added as a pendant, which compellingly conflates two strands of Baxter's work: his increasingly intense concern with family groups as natural units and natural bearers of genes through time; and the increasingly poignant escapology inherent in what has begun his standard conclusion to a story of any heft: Transcendence, some paradise of unfleshed universe-encompassing Intelligence which Posthuman "humans" may aspire to join, as motes might aspire to join the sun. This is perhaps less evident, though hinted at, in the Alternate History Northland sequence comprising Stone Summer (2010), Bronze Summer (2011) and Iron Winter (2012), which begins as Prehistoric SF set in an Earth where the last Ice Age retreated only partially, leaving Britain (here known as Etxelur) attached to the continent; by the late middle ages the ice begins to return, and the sequence ends sombrely. With Terry Pratchett, Baxter has begun a new sequence, the Long Earth series starting with The Long Earth (2012), a title which refers to a possible infinity of Parallel Worlds, and as well to the colourful journeys of exploration from world to world (> Fantastic Voyages) afforded the principal characters of the first volume, who include an ambulatory AI and a World War One soldier named Percy Blakeney (for the Scarlet Pimpernel > Baroness Orczy); some revelation may be at hand. [JC]

see also: Asteroids; Clichés; Christ; Games Workshop; Gravity; Imaginary Science;; Physics; Rays; Seiun Award; Time Opera; Time Radio; Time Viewer; Virtual Reality.

Stephen Michael Baxter

born Liverpool, England: 13 November 1957

died

works

Xeelee

Xeelee: Destiny's Children

  • Coalescent (London: Gollancz, 2003) [Xeelee: Destiny's Children: hb/EkhornForss]
  • Exultant (London: Gollancz, 2004) [Xeelee: Destiny's Children: hb/EkhornForss]
  • Transcendent (London: Gollancz, 2005) [Xeelee: Destiny's Children: hb/EkhornForss]
  • Resplendent (London: Gollancz, 2006) [coll: Xeelee: Destiny's Children: hb/EkhornForss]

The Web

Mammoth

Manifold

The Time Odyssey Duology

Time's Tapestry

  • Time's Tapestry (London: Gollancz, 2006) [Time's Tapestry: hb/]
  • Conqueror (London: Gollancz, 2007) [Time's Tapestry: hb/Shamwana]
  • Navigator (London: Gollancz, 2007) [Time's Tapestry: hb/]
  • Weaver (London: Gollancz, 2008) [Time's Tapestry: hb/]

Disaster Diptych

  • Flood (London: Gollancz, 2008) [Disaster Diptych: hb/]
  • Ark (London: Gollancz, 2009) [Disaster Diptych: hb/]

Northland

The Long Earth

  • The Long Earth (London: Doubleday UK, 2012) with Terry Pratchett [special issue of this edition contains 1980s draft material by Pratchett: Long Earth: hb/Getty Images]

The Long Earth

individual titles

collections and stories

nonfiction

about the author

  • Vector, special Stephen Baxter issue (Winter 2011 Vector #265) [mag/]

links

Previous versions of this entry

Website design and build: STEEL

Site ©2011 Gollancz, SFE content ©2011 SFE Ltd.