Stephen Baxter
1) Titan
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Humankind's greatest—and last—adventure!
Possible signs of organic life have been found on Titan, Saturn's largest moon. A group of visionaries led by NASA's Paula Benacerraf plan a daring one-way mission that will cost them everything. Taking nearly a decade, the billion-mile voyage includes a "slingshot" transit of Venus, a catastrophic solar storm, and a constant struggle to keep the ship and crew functioning. But it is on the icy
...2) Proxima
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Proxima volume 1
Summary
"Mankind's future in this galaxy could be all but infinite.... There are hundreds of billions of red dwarf stars, lasting trillions of years--and their planets can be habitable for humans. Such is the world of Proxima Centauri. And its promise could mean the never-ending existence of humanity. But first it must be colonized, and no one wants to be a settler. There is no glamor that accompanies it, like being the first man on the moon, nor is there...
3) Ultima
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Series
Proxima volume 2
Summary
"Hailed as "one of the most inventive writers that science fiction has ever produced" (SF Site), Stephen Baxter builds on the massive success of Proxima with a career-defining novel of big ideas.... On the planet of Per Ardua, alien artifacts were discovered--hatches that allowed humans to step across light-years of space as if they were stepping into another room. But this newfound freedom has consequences.... As humanity discovers the real nature...
4) Ark
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Flood volume 2
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It's the year 2030. The oceans have risen rapidly, and soon the entire planet will be submerged. But the discovery of another life-sustaining planet light years away gives those who remain alive hope. Only a few will be able to make the journey-Holle Groundwater is one of the candidates. If she makes the cut, she will live. If not, she will be left to face a watery death...
5) Flood
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Series
Flood volume 1
Summary
Four hostages are rescued from a group of religious extremists in Barcelona. After five years of being held captive together, they make a vow to always watch out for one another. But they never expected this. The world they have returned to has been transformed-by water. And the water is rising.
6) Moonseed
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It Eats Planets. And It's Here.
It starts when Venus explodes into a brilliant cloud of dust and debris, showering Earth with radiation and bizarre particles that wipe out all the crops and half the life in the oceans, and fry the ozone layer. Days later, a few specks of moon rock kicked up from the last Apollo mission fall upon a lava crag in Scotland. That's all it takes . . .
Suddenly, the ground itself begins melting into pools of dust that...
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“Magisterial and uplifting . . . A brilliant, grandscale sampling of sixty-five million years of human evolution . . . It shows the sweep and grandeur of life in its unrelenting course.” —The Denver Post
Stretching from the distant past into the remote future, from primordial Earth to the stars, Evolution is a soaring symphony of struggle, extinction, and survival; a dazzling epic that combines a dozen scientific...
Stretching from the distant past into the remote future, from primordial Earth to the stars, Evolution is a soaring symphony of struggle, extinction, and survival; a dazzling epic that combines a dozen scientific...
8) Coalescent
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Destiny's children volume 1
Summary
Baxter connects the lives of George Poole in the present and Regina at the end of the Roman empire. George's father has just died, and the picture of a girl, Rosa, comes to light in his effects. Rosa is the mysterious twin George never knew, and he becomes consumed with the desire to find her. Regina's part of the story begins in Britain at the end of Roman rule and takes her through the western empire's collapse to Rome itself. Back to the near-past:...
9) Space: Space
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“As always, [Stephen] Baxter plays with space and time with consummate skill. . . . He continues to be one of the leading writers of hard science fiction, and one of the most thought-provoking as well.”—Science Fiction Chronicle
The year is 2020. Fueled by an insatiable curiosity, Reid Malenfant ventures to the far edge of the solar system, where he discovers a strange artifact left behind by an alien civilization:...
The year is 2020. Fueled by an insatiable curiosity, Reid Malenfant ventures to the far edge of the solar system, where he discovers a strange artifact left behind by an alien civilization:...
10) Origin: Origin
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“One of the best SF writers in the business . . . [Manifold: Origin is] filled with marvelous scientific speculations, strange events, novel concepts, and an awe-inspiring sense of the wonders of the universe.”—Science Fiction Chronicle
In the year 2015, astronaut Reid Malenfant is flying over the African continent, intent on examining a mysterious glowing construct in Earth’s orbit. But when the...
In the year 2015, astronaut Reid Malenfant is flying over the African continent, intent on examining a mysterious glowing construct in Earth’s orbit. But when the...
11) Time: Time
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“Reading Manifold: Time is like sending your mind to the gym for a brisk workout. If you don’t feel both exhausted and exhilirated when you’re done, you haven’t been working hard enough.”—The New York Times Book Review
The year is 2010. More than a century of ecological damage, industrial and technological expansion, and unchecked population growth has left the Earth on the brink of devastation....
The year is 2010. More than a century of ecological damage, industrial and technological expansion, and unchecked population growth has left the Earth on the brink of devastation....
12) Voyage
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The space mission of a lifetime
An epic saga of America's might-have-been, Voyage is a powerful, sweeping novel of how, if President Kennedy had lived, we could have sent a manned mission to Mars in the 1980s. Imaginatively created from the true lives and real events, Voyage returns to the geniuses of NASA and the excitement of the Saturn rocket, and includes historical figures from Neil Armstrong to Ronald Reagan who are interwoven with unforgettable...
13) The Time Ships
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The highly acclaimed sequel to H G Wells's THE TIME MACHINE, from the heir to Arthur C. Clarke. Written to celebrate the centenary of the publication of H G Wells's classic story The Time Machine, Stephen Baxter's stunning sequel is an outstanding work of imaginative fiction. The Time Traveller has abandoned his charming and helpless Eloi friend Weena to the cannibal appetites of the Morlocks, the devolved race of future humans from whom he was forced...
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Audiences around the world have been enchanted by James Cameron's visionary Avatar, with its glimpse of the Na'vi on the marvelous world of Pandora. But the movie is not entirely a fantasy; there is a scientific rationale for much of what we saw on the screen, from the possibility of travel to other worlds, to the life forms seen on screen and the ecological and cybernetic concepts that underpin the 'neural networks' in which the Na'vi and their sacred...
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Stephen Baxter's The Martian in the Wood, a Tor.com Original
In the aftermath of the First Martian War, in the interim between it and what was to come later, England seemed to once again become a green and peaceful place, if one haunted by the terrible events in Surrey that had happened in those early years of the century. Although people hoped and prayed peace had come, they were wrong. Across the gulf of space, plans were being drawn for a return,...
16) Vacuum Diagrams
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"And everywhere the Humans went, they found life ..."This dazzling future history, winner of the 2000 Philip K. Dick Award, is the most ambitious and exciting since Asimov's classic Foundation saga. It 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...
17) Exultant
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Series
Destiny's children volume 2
Summary
When it comes to cutting-edge science fiction, Stephen Baxter is in a league of his own. His mastery of hard science, his fearlessly speculative imagination, and his ability to combine grand philosophical questions with tales of rousing adventure make him essential reading for anyone concerned with the future of humankind. Now, in Exultant, Baxter takes us to a distant future of dazzling promise and deadly threat, in which a far-flung humanity battles...
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Long Earth volume 5
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The thrilling conclusion to the internationally bestselling Long Earth series explores the greatest question of all: What is the meaning of life?. Nearly six decades after Step Day, a new society continues to evolve in the Long Earth. Now, a message has been received: "Join us."The Next--the hyper-intelligent post-humans--realize that the missive contains instructions for kick-starting the development of an immense artificial intelligence known as...
19) The long Utopia
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Series
Long Earth volume 4
Summary
Lobsang's pursuit of a human life, Joshua's search for his father and the adaptation efforts of "the Next" post-humans are challenged by a voracious alien race that would conquer and colonize the Long Earth.
"2045-2059. Human society continues to evolve on Datum Earth, its battered and weary origin planet, as the spread of humanity progresses throughout the many Earths beyond. Lobsang, now an elderly and complex AI, suffers a breakdown, and disguised...
20) The long Earth
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Long Earth volume 1
Summary
1916: The Western Front. Private Percy Blakeney wakes up. He is lying on fresh spring grass. He can hear birdsong and the wind in the leaves. Where have the mud, blood, and blasted landscape of no-man's-land gone? For that matter, where has Percy gone? 2015: Madison, Wisconsin. Police officer Monica Jansson is exploring the burned-out home of a reclusive--some say mad, others allege dangerous--scientist who seems to have vanished. Sifting through...