In this postmodern age he is the closest we come to a reborn Arthur C. Clarke (Vacuum Diagrams - Stephen Baxter)

Member Name: jdkane

Product:	Vacuum Diagrams - Stephen Baxter
Date:	14/11/00 (42 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Science; could it be better? A+

Disadvantages: Characterisation; shallow and malevolent

Stephen Baxter's collection of short stories set in the Xeelee Sequence; they make up the spine of his history of the future. Find a copy and look at the praise heaped upon it, and look at who has heaped it upon. Sort of gets you right there, doesn't it?

To be honest, this is one of the books not that reviewers- and fellow authors- judge but that they are judged by the comments they pass upon. In this postmodern age he is the closest we come to a reborn Arthur C. Clarke- and if you thought he wasn't already dead yet, look at the quality of some of the stuff he's produced in the late eighties and nineties.

Anyway. Baxter is a physicist, and although the overall track of the vacuum diagram (literally the case with the plotline) is clearly stylised and imposed from above- rather than simply setting a universe go and watching what happens from there- it works. Allegories in science fiction are possible because it is highly likely that we will organise and build our technology in a similar manner, according to our own hopes, fears and flights of fancy. He manipulates the limits of physical theory, relying on the dimly glimpsed, so well that, as surely as this is where physics will lead us if we can only fund it, the future using these (and given the sadistic viciousness evident, only these) tools, dependent on them, will be the future, or at least something like it. With an entirely imposed and artificial plot, this is no mean achievement.

He is playing with the entire universe, and is not afraid to bend it to suit. He knows the equations which say it can, after all. The universe is being eaten, essentially, by sentient creatures composed of dark matter, nulloforming the stars to their own extinguished preference, which is rather hard on we baryonic lifeforms who are dependent on them. I don't think that anywhere in the Xeelee sequence does the reader actually meet a photino bird or have one have it's say; there are d
rawing- room (or laboratory) confrontations, but not that one. The photino birds are resisted on behalf of all visible life, but chiefly themselves, by the Xeelee. Who, also, we only see the work of, and boy is it big. A door at the centre of the universe, built as an escape hatch to an alternate reality... this could be considered to be taking the Enormous Big Thing to rather ridiculous extremes. I also have no objection in principle to Starbreakers- the name of which is quite literally appropriate- apart from the chief one of making them handheld.

The overall picture is of an ugly, violent, anarchic cosmos; economics rules, humanity is twice enslaved by alien races- one of which consists of creatures based on convection cells, not hard walled conventional biological ones; they are literally living turbulence patterns. Odd, and very few writers could pull it off. Anything that can be done is. They're just looking out for number one like we would. This is overtaken by the dramatic events of the cycle itself, which unfolds over five million years. The human race survived alien control, achieves a measure of revenge, gradually grows- Assimilation is the term used, and it is probably every bit as harsh- to become the dominant sub- Xeelee species, and then as humans will (and blithely ignoring the photino birds and the threat they pose) attempt to challenge the Xeelee.

After tormenting ourselves, and embarking on a program of cosmic genocide for gain, into a form capable of fighting the Xeelee, we do so, never grasping the big picture, and lose. Rather badly, leaving only a handful of humans left alive to escape, eventually, through the Xeelee hole in the universe.

Other weirdness like helium-7 stars, the Planck- zero AI in the framing story made possible by violations of the uncertainty principle, GUTforces, universes with different physical laws, supersymmetry, control of Machá'ás Principle, Inseparability links, and quagma arks p
reserving lifeforms from the heart of the big bang, abounds.

The science of it is in inverse proportion to the degree of civilisation exhibited by the participants. Techno- barbarianism is about right- extremely techno, but in the end the heartbreaking cosmic stupidity of the humans and all the races is just too much. On that scale itá'ás hard to focus in any case, but no-one has the wit to stop (there is one fraudulent attempt to do so- humans deceiving themselves). In the end the universe is laid waste, in a collection with by far the highest probable body count of any serious piece of science fiction.

Brilliant but depressing in the extreme (and still not as bad as Titan ), this verges on antiscience, by divorcing science and intelligence. Dumb brutes are all that the universe requires. Technological idiot savants. If this is the future, why bother? Sorry, but great science, lousy humanity.

ratings;
Imagination; more grandeur than detail, B
Science; could it be better? A+
Scene-setting; well done- only the objective is flawed; B
Characterisation; shallow and malevolent; C

Overall; 'Did IQ's just drop sharply while I was away?'; B

Summary: