Автор - Stephen Baxter

Transcendent

Set in the same vast time scale and future as Coalescent (2003) and Exultant (2004), Transcendent can be read independently. Michael Poole is a middle-aged engineer in the year of the digital millennium (2047) and Alia is a recognizably human (but evolved) adolescent born on a starship half a million years later. Michael still dreams of space flight, but the world and its possibilities are much diminished due to environmental degradation. The gifted teen has studied Michael’s life, for the Poole family played a pivotal role in creating the human future, and thus her world. Through seemingly supernatural apparitions, Alia bridges time to communicate with Michael as they determine the future of humanity. The Pooles are a troubled family, and readers will appreciate the conflict between Michael and his son as they are forced to find common ground in a struggle to reverse the final tipping point of global warming. Teens will also understand Alia’s alarm, and her growing determination to choose her own destiny, when she is selected to join the Transcendents and is rushed into their unimaginable post-human reality. This is visionary, philosophical fiction, rich in marvels drawn from today’s cutting-edge science. A typical paragraph by Baxter might turn more ideas loose on readers than an entire average, mundane novel does, but all this food for thought is delivered with humor and compassion. Experienced SF readers will enjoy sinking their teeth into the story, while general readers who have enjoyed near-future, science-based suspense novels such as those by Michael Crichton will discover here that science fiction can set a higher, much richer standard than what they’ve experienced before.

Tratwa

Wyobraźcie sobie wszechświat, w którym grawitacja jest miliard razy większa od tej, którą znamy; istoty ludzkie wytwarzają silne pole grawitacyjne; gwiazdy znajdują się blisko siebie i gasną już w ciągu roku... Wiele stuleci przed wydarzeniami opisanymi w Tratwie statek z ludźmi na pokładzie przypadkowo dostał się do owego wszechświata przez dziurę w czasoprzestrzeni. Załodze udało się przeżyć, gdyż zanurzyła się w obłok gazu otaczający czarną dziurę. Pięćset lat później potomkowie owych astronautów wciąż walczą o przetrwanie, podzieleni na dwie główne grupy. Górnicy żyją na Pasie, zaniedbanym kręgu domostw orbitujących wokół żelaznego jądra wygasłej gwiazdy, z której wydobywa się surowce. Żelazo można wymienić na żywność z Tratwy, struktury utworzonej z wraku statku. Mała grupa uczonych, którzy ją zamieszkują, kultywuje prastarą wiedzę umożliwiającą przetrwanie. Górnik Rees jest ciekaw świata, dlatego też wybrał się w podróż na latającym drzewie — jednym z wielu organizmów na tym obszarze — które służy do przewozu towarów między Pasem a Tratwą. Przyjęty do grona naukowców jako młody adept, uświadamia sobie, że otaczający świat ginie, i jeśli ludzie chcą przetrwać, muszą zdecydować się na jeszcze bardziej niebezpieczną i zdumiewającą eskapadę niż ta, którą podjęli ich przodkowie.

Vacuum Diagrams

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 (from amazon.com)

Voyage

The book depicts a manned mission to Mars as it might have been in another timeline, one where John F. Kennedy survived the assassination attempt on him in 1963. Voyage is the epic saga of America’s might-have-been — a powerful, sweeping novel imaginatively created from true lives and real events. NASA, the Saturn rocket, and historical figures from Neil Armstrong to Ronald Reagan are interwoven with unforgettable characters that only a world-class novelist could bring to life: Dana, the Nazi camp survivor who achieves the dream of his hated masters; Gershon, the Vietnam fighter jock determined to be the first African-American to land on another planet; Lee, the small-scale aerospace contractor with a big dream; Priest, who gives his life so that others might live to walk on Mars. And most memorable of all, Natalie York, the brilliant geologist/astronaut who is her own worst enemy, and best friend; a passionate woman who risks a career and a lifelong love for the chance to run her fingers through the soil of another world. Voyage won a Sidewise Award for Alternate History, and was nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1997.

Weaver