Return to the eon-spanning and universe-crossing conflict between humanity and the unknowable alien Xeelee in this selection of uncollected and unpublished stories, newly edited and placed in chronological reading order. From tales charting the earliest days of man's adventure to the stars to stories of Old Earth, four billion years in the future, the range and startling imagination of Baxter is always on display. As humanity rises and falls, ebbs and flows, one thing is always needed - the ability to endure. Contains eleven short stories and novellas.

Return to the eon-spanning and universe-crossing conflict between humanity and the unknowable alien Xeelee in this selection of uncollected and unpublished stories, newly edited and placed in chronological reading order. From tales charting the earliest days of man's adventure to the stars to stories of Old Earth, four billion years in the future, the range and startling imagination of Baxter is always on display. As humanity rises and falls, ebbs and flows, one thing is always needed - the ability to endure. Contains eleven short stories and novellas.

The Philip K. Dick Award-winning saga of humankind’s next five million years: “Mind-stretching science fiction at its boldest.” —Orlando Sentinel And everywhere the Humans went, they found life . . . This dazzling future history, the most ambitious and exciting since Asimov’s classic Foundation saga, 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. “It’s old-fashioned 1950s-style science fiction . . . and it’s also lots of fun.” —Cleveland Plain Dealer “Enormously impressive.” —Locus

Half a million years in the future, on a dead, war-ravaged world at the centre of the Galaxy, there is a mile-high statue of Michael Poole. Poole, born on Earth in the fourth millennium, was one of mankind's most influential heroes. He was not a warrior, not an emperor. He was an engineer, a builder of wormhole transit systems. But Poole's work would ultimately lead to a vast and destructive conflict, a million-year war between humanity and the enigmatic, powerful aliens known as the Xeelee. The Xeelee won, but at a huge cost. And, defeated in a greater war, the Xeelee eventually fled the universe. Most of them. A handful were left behind, equipped with time travel capabilities, their task to tidy up: to reorder history more to the Xeelee's liking. That million-year war with humankind was one blemish. It had to be erased. And in order to do that, a lone Xeelee was sent back in time to remove Michael Poole from history . . .

Stephen Baxter's highly acclaimed first novel and the beginning of his stunning Xeelee Sequence finally enters the SF Masterwork series! A spaceship from Earth accidentally crossed through a hole in space-time to a universe where the force of gravity is one billion times as strong as the gravity we know. Somehow the crew survived, aided by the fact that they emerged into a cloud of gas surrounding a black hole, which provided a breathable atmosphere. Five hundred years later, their descendants still struggle for existence, divided into two main groups. The Miners live on the Belt, a ramshackle ring of dwellings orbiting the core of a dead star, which they excavate for raw materials. These can be traded for food from the Raft, a structure built from the wreckage of the ship, on which a small group of scientists preserve the ancient knowledge which makes survival possible. Rees is a Miner whose curiosity about his world makes him stow away on a flying tree - just one of the many strange local lifeforms - carrying trade between the Belt and the Raft. And what he finds will change his world...

Together for the first time in one awe-inspiring single volume, the novels that established Stephen Baxter's landmark creation: The Xeelee Sequence. A masterpiece of epic imagination. --

2025. Tied in to Baxter’s masterful Manifold trilogy, these thematically linked stories are drawn from the vast graph of possibilities across which the lives of hero Reid Malenfant have been scattered.

Timelike Infinity: the strange region at the end of time where the Xeelee, owners of the universe, are waiting... The second novel in Stephen Baxter's Xeelee sequence. First there were good times: humankind reached glorious heights, even immortality. Then there were bad times: Earth was occupied by the faceless, brutal Qax. Immortality drugs were confiscated, the human spirit crushed. Earth became a vast factory for alient foodstuffs. Into this new dark age appears the end of a tunnel through time. Made from exotic matter, it is humanity's greatest engineering project in the pre-Qax era, where the other end of the tunnel remains anchored near Jupiter. When a small group of humans in a makeshift craft outwit the Qax to escape to the past through the tunnel, it is not to warn the people of Earth against the Qax, who are sure to follow them. For these men and women from the future are themselves dangerous fanatics in pursuit of their own bizarre quantum grail. Michael Poole, architect of the tunnel, must boldly confront the consequences of his genius.

“Baxter has an uncanny gift for mixing a punchy, cyberpunk cynicism with his resolutely hard SF story base. . . . [Exultant] rivals Asimov in its boundless vision for the future evolution of humanity.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) For more than twenty thousand years, humans have been at war with the alien race of Xeelee. Faced with certain death, a young pilot, Pirius, disobeys orders and travels into the future. Upon his return, Pirius is court-martialed and sentenced to penal servitude. But it is not only Pirius who pays the price. In flying into the future and back again, Pirius returned to a time before he’d left, a time inhabited by his younger self, who also receives punishment. Commissary Nilis believes that the elder Pirius, whom he dubs Pirius Blue, may know how to defeat the Xeelee. But Nilis can do nothing for Pirius Blue. Instead, he takes the younger Pirius—Pirius Red—back to Earth. There Pirius Red will discover truths that shatter his preconceived notions of all that he is fighting for, while Pirius Blue will learn even harsher truths. But the most shocking revelation of all is still to come. “Absurdly ambitious, technically brilliant, and downright exciting.”—SFX Magazine “Striking . . . chilling . . . [with] a triumphant conclusion.”—Starburst

Michael Poole finds himself in a very strange landscape . . . This is the centre of the Galaxy. And in a history without war with the humans, the Xeelee have had time to built an immense structure here. The Xeelee Belt has a radius ten thousand times Earth's orbital distance. It is a light year in circumference. If it was set in the solar system it would be out in the Oort Cloud, among the comets - but circling the sun. If it was at rest it would have a surface area equivalent to about thirty billion Earths. But it is not at rest: it rotates at near lightspeed. And because of relativistic effects, distances are compressed for inhabitants of the Belt, and time drastically slowed. The purpose of the Belt is to preserve a community of Xeelee into the very far future, when they will be able to tap dark energy, a universe-spanning antigravity field, for their own purposes. But with time the Belt has attracted populations of lesser species, here for the immense surface area, the unending energy flows. Poole, Miriam and their party, having followed the Ghosts, must explore the artefact and survive encounters with its strange inhabitants - before Poole, at last, finds the Xeelee who led the destruction of Earth...