Book Preview She loved to see the Expedition train strung out across the Lowland’s arid plain, with its spindling-drawn wagons, the chains of servants and bearers, the gleaming coach that transported her father and his precious books, even the small flock of runner-birds. If the weather was fine the Philosophers themselves would walk, marching into … Read more
Book Preview “The Ice War” is related to Stephen Baxter’s 1993 novel Anti-Ice, which was his first major attempt at alternate history. He recently completed his Time’s Tapestry alternate history series for Ace, with the fourth book, Weaver. He tells us he enjoys AH so much that this year he’s serving as a judge on … Read more
Book Preview Perhaps the most important lesson of all is that yesterday’s lessons may or may not serve tomorrow. An ornitholestes stalked through the dense Jurassic forest, hunting diplodocus. This ornith was an active, carnivorous dinosaur. She was about the height of an adult human, but her lithe body was less than half the weight. … Read more
Book Preview The first time she woke she was in the ruins of an abandoned gravity mine. At first the Community had chased around the outer strata of the great gloomy structure. But at last, close to the core, they reached a cramped ring. Here the central black hole’s gravity was so strong that light … Read more
Book Preview © copyright Stephen Baxter 1997 The Glittering Caverns “… but there’s no darkness in our lives,” Lee said. He held a knife in one fist. Now he opened his other hand flat on the bar top and began to thump the knife’s point into the spaces between his fingers. “I wish you wouldn’t … Read more
Book Preview MANFRED’S ON THE ROAD AGAIN, MAKING STRANGERS RICH. It’s a hot summer Tuesday and he’s standing in the plaza in front of the Centraal Station with his eyeballs powered up and the sunlight jangling off the canal, motor scooters and kamikaze cyclists whizzing past and tourists chattering on every side. The square smells … Read more
Book Preview Originally published in Interzone 123, September 1997 I know I’m still lying here in the regolith, on this dumb little misshapen asteroid, inside my fubar suit. I know nobody’s come to save me. Because I’m still here, right? But I can’t see, hear, feel a damn thing. Although I sometimes think I can. … Read more
Book Preview ike many of his colleagues here at the beginning of a new century, Brit-ish writer Stephen Baxter has been engaged for more than a decade now with the task of revitalizing and reinventing the “hard-science” story for a new generation of readers, producing work on the cutting edge of sci-ence which bristles with … Read more
Book Preview Copyright © Stephen Baxter 2000 All rights reserved The right of Stephen Baxter to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988. This edition published in Great Britain in 2002 by An imprint of the Orion Publishing Group Orion … Read more
Book Preview In the minutes before launch, Doctor Geoff Lighthill heard the whine of the elevator gantry leaning away from the booster stack, and the clatter of power and propellant umbilicals popping out of their sockets in the Blue Streak’s metal flanks. The pressure cabin of the Prospero was an aluminium box the size of … Read more
Book Preview First published as a Novacon chapbook, 1993; collected in Vacuum Diagrams. When the Squeem occupation laws were announced, Anna Gage was half way through a year long journey into Jove from Port Sol. She paged through the news channels, appalled. Human space travel was suspended. Wherever the great GUTship interplanetary freighters landed they … Read more
Book Preview Analog 2004-06 — Science Fiction: The Best of 2004 Stephen Baxter lives in Buckinghamshire in the British Midlands and has been a full-time writer since 1995. His first stories appeared in Interzone in the late ’80s and he has subsequently published twenty novels (two in collaboration with Sir Arthur C. Clarke and five … Read more
Book Preview Like many of his colleagues writing near the beginning of the new cen-tury—Greg Egan comes to mind, as do people like Paul J. McAuley, Mi-chael Swanwick, Iain M. Banks, Bruce Sterling, Pat Cadigan, Brian Stableford, Gregory Benford, Ian McDonald, Gwyneth Jones, Vernor Vinge, Greg Bear, David Marusek, Geoff Ryman, Alastair Reynolds, and a … Read more
Book Preview The Brief Life Burns Brightly broke out of the fleet. We were chasing down a Ghost cruiser, and we were closing. The lifedome of the Brightly was transparent, so it was as if Captain Teid in her big chair, and her officers and their equipment clusters–and a few low-grade tars like me–were just … Read more
Book Preview Bado was alone on the primeval beach of Cape Canaveral, in his white lunar-surface pressure suit, holding his box of Moon rocks and sampling tools in his gloved hand. He lifted up his gold sun-visor and looked around. The sand was hard and flat. A little way inland, there was a row of … Read more
Book Preview (Author’s note: I was sent the enclosed document anonymously, The document itself, a photocopy, is government-speak, blank to the point of unreadability. But the notes scribbled in the margins are intriguing.) United States General Accounting Office GAO report to the Honorable William X. Lambie, House of representatives Results of a Search for Records … Read more
Book Preview Manifold: Baxter, May 5, 2002 This is a third volume in the Manifold series; the same characters reappear in a different universe. Now, I agree with other reviewers. This book contained far too much violence and the Zealots (the “villains”) were disappointing. Baxter does best with antagonists who are never seen, such as … Read more
Book Preview Manifold series, book 2 To my nephew, Thomas Baxter. And Simon Bradshaw and Eric Brown Innumerable Suns exist; innumerable earths revolve around these Suns in a manner similar to the way the seven planets revolve around our sun. Living beings inhabit these worlds… —GIORDANO BRUNO (1548–1600) If they existed, they would be here. … Read more