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Xeelee Sequence #17
Xeelee: Redemption
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...
432 pages, Paperback
First published April 11, 2019
About the author
Stephen Baxter
388 books2,441 followersStephen Baxter is a trained engineer with degrees from Cambridge (mathematics) and Southampton Universities (doctorate in aeroengineering research). Baxter is the winner of the British Science Fiction Award and the Locus Award, as well as being a nominee for an Arthur C. Clarke Award, most recently for Manifold: Time. His novel Voyage won the Sidewise Award for Best Alternate History Novel of the Year; he also won the John W. Campbell Award and the Philip K. Dick Award for his novel The Time Ships. He is currently working on his next novel, a collaboration with Sir Arthur C. Clarke. Mr. Baxter lives in Prestwood, England.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
August 31, 2020
Okay. I'm going to have to caveat the hell out of this novel.
I am BOTH waving my hands over my head like a green muppet AND I'm slamming my fists down on the floor, yelling, "Nooooooo!"
Let me unpack this:
As a long-time fan of Baxter and being a bonafide nerd about the Xeelee universe, I'm also extremely annoyed at Poole and all the relatives of Poole and all the alternate universe versions of Pool. (Although, I'm pretty okay with the software version of Poole. He's all right.)
YES, I get why so many Pooles are necessary and I even enjoyed the gimmick for quite some time, but ALSO as a long-time fan, I just want NEW CHARACTERS with all shiny awesome shit.
And let me be clear: this novel (and the one right before it) are JAMMED PACKED with shiny awesome shit. From the sheer scope, from the inception of the universe to the creation of the Ring (or here, called the Wheel), and far beyond the last star winking out, we've ALSO got multiple do-overs in alternate universes, tons of time-like loops, galaxy-spanning wars (or you'll see, you spoiler hounds,) and so much more. Just read the novel if you want to have all that neat stuff.
It is AMAZEBALLS.
And so that brings me to one of the hardest things I've ever had to say:
NEW READERS, START WITH Xeelee Vengeance (book 16), continue with Xeelee Redemption (book 17).
HUH?
As a new reader, getting to know Poole is no big deal. Baxter has improved his writing over the years, too. If I had read these two novels without ever once knowing ANYTHING about Baxter or the Xeelee, I would have started worshipping him as an SF god.
Do you want a scope like Cixin Liu's recent trilogy? How about some classic Asimov or Clarke? Do you want HARDCORE magical science with good science but taken to totally magical levels? Do you want an obsessive story that has taken on mythical levels?
START HERE.
And here's the good part: you get a total overview of the over-story. If you get hooked and need to fill in ALL the massive amazing blanks, THEN go back and read the entire Xeelee sequence.
It's a total win-win. The best of all worlds.
I am BOTH waving my hands over my head like a green muppet AND I'm slamming my fists down on the floor, yelling, "Nooooooo!"
Let me unpack this:
As a long-time fan of Baxter and being a bonafide nerd about the Xeelee universe, I'm also extremely annoyed at Poole and all the relatives of Poole and all the alternate universe versions of Pool. (Although, I'm pretty okay with the software version of Poole. He's all right.)
YES, I get why so many Pooles are necessary and I even enjoyed the gimmick for quite some time, but ALSO as a long-time fan, I just want NEW CHARACTERS with all shiny awesome shit.
And let me be clear: this novel (and the one right before it) are JAMMED PACKED with shiny awesome shit. From the sheer scope, from the inception of the universe to the creation of the Ring (or here, called the Wheel), and far beyond the last star winking out, we've ALSO got multiple do-overs in alternate universes, tons of time-like loops, galaxy-spanning wars (or you'll see, you spoiler hounds,) and so much more. Just read the novel if you want to have all that neat stuff.
It is AMAZEBALLS.
And so that brings me to one of the hardest things I've ever had to say:
NEW READERS, START WITH Xeelee Vengeance (book 16), continue with Xeelee Redemption (book 17).
HUH?
As a new reader, getting to know Poole is no big deal. Baxter has improved his writing over the years, too. If I had read these two novels without ever once knowing ANYTHING about Baxter or the Xeelee, I would have started worshipping him as an SF god.
Do you want a scope like Cixin Liu's recent trilogy? How about some classic Asimov or Clarke? Do you want HARDCORE magical science with good science but taken to totally magical levels? Do you want an obsessive story that has taken on mythical levels?
START HERE.
And here's the good part: you get a total overview of the over-story. If you get hooked and need to fill in ALL the massive amazing blanks, THEN go back and read the entire Xeelee sequence.
It's a total win-win. The best of all worlds.
Want to read
October 13, 2018According to the publisher, this hardcover of "Xeelee: Redemption (Xeelee 8)" was published 23 Aug 2018. and not what the Goodreads entry states for this edition.
February 19, 2019
Okay, so the latest Xeelee duology had me scratching my head quite a bit. Essentially it is both a retelling of the entire time/story line (which has taken up much of Baxter’s writing career to date), as well as Baxter’s attempt at a Grand Unified Theory of the Xeelee, encompassing everything from Time’s Tapestry to Destiny’s Children.
Vengeance is definitely more successful than Redemption, and it is a pity that the sequence did not end on a stronger note. Well, the term ‘end’ is rather fluid in the case of Baxter. I doubt if this is the last we will ever read about the Xeelee. Or the Poole family, for that matter.
Having said all that, one major caveat is that you must read Vengeance first. You can treat the duology as a standalone introduction to many of Baxter’s main themes and ideas, but the order is critical to make sense of the story.
Well, what little story there is. Redemption is as much a travelogue of galactic marvels as Vengeance was of a solar system hellbent on being destroyed. Baxter references both Niven and Banks with his concept of the Wheel – probably the biggest, though by far not the dumbest, Big Object in science fiction ever.
I suppose you have a real problem with the characterisation in your novel when the aliens appear more fully-rounded and human than the, er, humans. Well, this is probably due to the fact that the Xeelee, Ghosts, and Qax are more interesting than any run-of-the-mill humans. I would have expected Michael/Jophiel to have made a bigger impact in Redemption though.
And then there is that (potential non) ending, which kind of resets everything in the same (highly annoying) way that Stephen King did at the end of the Dark Tower sequence. What I did particularly like is how Baxter turns Michael’s quest around, with some fascinating implications about who the true aliens (and monsters) really are.
While this is psychologically astute, and very grim in the tradition of much modern speculative fiction, it does make for a curiously downbeat and muted (non) ending, given the extent of the revelations and excellent set pieces in the duology as a whole.
In all, a resounding conclusion (or not) to one of the greatest SF series ever. Long live Michael Poole!
Vengeance is definitely more successful than Redemption, and it is a pity that the sequence did not end on a stronger note. Well, the term ‘end’ is rather fluid in the case of Baxter. I doubt if this is the last we will ever read about the Xeelee. Or the Poole family, for that matter.
Having said all that, one major caveat is that you must read Vengeance first. You can treat the duology as a standalone introduction to many of Baxter’s main themes and ideas, but the order is critical to make sense of the story.
Well, what little story there is. Redemption is as much a travelogue of galactic marvels as Vengeance was of a solar system hellbent on being destroyed. Baxter references both Niven and Banks with his concept of the Wheel – probably the biggest, though by far not the dumbest, Big Object in science fiction ever.
I suppose you have a real problem with the characterisation in your novel when the aliens appear more fully-rounded and human than the, er, humans. Well, this is probably due to the fact that the Xeelee, Ghosts, and Qax are more interesting than any run-of-the-mill humans. I would have expected Michael/Jophiel to have made a bigger impact in Redemption though.
And then there is that (potential non) ending, which kind of resets everything in the same (highly annoying) way that Stephen King did at the end of the Dark Tower sequence. What I did particularly like is how Baxter turns Michael’s quest around, with some fascinating implications about who the true aliens (and monsters) really are.
While this is psychologically astute, and very grim in the tradition of much modern speculative fiction, it does make for a curiously downbeat and muted (non) ending, given the extent of the revelations and excellent set pieces in the duology as a whole.
In all, a resounding conclusion (or not) to one of the greatest SF series ever. Long live Michael Poole!
August 25, 2018
A neofascist abomination written for the age of Trump
So, suppose that you're some kind of technological super genius, and one day a mysterious, and apparently omnipotent, alien turns up and announces its intention of eradicating you, your species and your solar system. You're a bit upset right? You're a nice, liberal type of person, after all. So you try to co-ordinate some kind of resistance, and, because your dad happens to be a kind of Mussolini-wannabe, who takes the opportunity to make the trains run on time on a global basis, you find yourself with the full might of Planet Earth (oh, and its colonial possessions: never forget them) behind you. This is, after all, a fight against unjustified genocide, right?
Now suppose you discover that this alien came from an alternative timeline where humanity had, basically out of a fit of pique at discovering that, in the galactic pecking order, it was about as far from being number one as you can get, set about systematically eradicating every alien species it could find, and that only this alien's people, who were called Xeelee, survived. Moreover, in that timeline, humanity had remade itself as one huge army of indoctrinated child warriors, and spent tens of thousands of years fighting a 'war' against the Xeelee (because humanity had to be number one you see: just think of what those aliens might do to human women if they were given chance?). The result was that humanity lost, pretty comprehensively, but, in the process, managed to disrupt the Xeelee's attempt to prevent a universal catastrophe, as a result of which everyone, apart from a few Xeelee, who managed to escape to other universes, died. The end. So, it occurred to this Xeelee that going back in time and wiping out humanity would be, at least from the point of view of all those racially inferior non-humans, something akin to wiping out the smallpox virus, i.e. a Good and Noble Deed.
So: you are a techno genius, hero, saviour of mankind, whose dad appears to have adopted Emperor Palpatine as a role model. How do you react to this alien's mission to save the universe from your species? Why, you announce that you intend to follow it to the ends of the universe and hurt it. Because of vengeance.
Fine, so that's pretty much what happened in this book's almost as noxious prequel: Xeelee: Vengeance. Pretty bad, eh? Now let's see what makes this book so uniquely awful in its own right.
Well, there's a lot of tedious bad-SF-style 'exploring strange new worlds' and taking pity on their inferior inhabitants, and killing as many as possible of those you meet who appear to be inconveniently non-inferior (because they must have been inferior because now they're dead and you're not). In the process the author arrives at a very odd interpretation of evolutionary biology, according to which our genome is a kind of reference library, full of the equivalent of those 'Make' books, one for each species in our evolutionary ancestry, and, if we happen to arrive in an environment where we don't need brains for struggle for survival, our genomes abruptly switch to a less advanced model. Thus humans, finding themselves in a nice, Earth-like environment, lovingly tailored for them by a benevolent alien whose name doesn't begin with an 'X' at all, will automatically dump their brains and revert to Homo erectus. This is not just wrong, not just entirely false, it is a reversion to the era when eugenicists and fascists alike preached their racist pseudo-Darwinism as an excuse for wiping out people they didn't like. Unfortunately, given this and that, it would seem that Baxter is that astounding thing, a Dawkinsian true believer, who actually believes that evolution is all about genes 'struggling to survive', and nothing at all to do with the animals they live in. Suddenly all becomes clear.
But let us turn away from Baxter's inadequate understanding of biology (while noting, for future reference, that Dawkinsians have other disturbing tendencies): what of his hero, and his mission of vengeance?
Well it goes on. For pages and pages and page, in fact, many of which could have been removed, or reordered, or pasted in upside down, without materially affecting the book or the experience of reading it (in other words: boring), and he remains square-jawed and determined to take revenge, on behalf of all humanity, for the terrible thing the Xeelee did in giving all these other inferior aliens he has been meeting a chance to have lives of their own, and not end up blasted into atoms by humanity's collective attempt to prove that it had larger sexual organs than the Xeelee did.
Finally, he catches up with the Xeelee. It has constructed a marvel of engineering, a kind of ark, intended to preserve at least some parts of every species it can find, protecting them from the coming cosmic catastrophe, and then rebuilding a universe fit for beings to live in, into which it will release them. It turns out that there even humans in there, which puzzles our hero immensely, for surely the Xeelee is evil and hates everyone unlike itself, especially humans. Or, as we call it in the trade, the pot calls the kettle black. So, what does he do? Well, what would any well-meaning super genius, hero who wishes to save life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, faced by an incomprehensibly powerful alien being who is intent on doing just that on a much larger scale, but which he personally has a bit of a snit at? He hurts it, of course. In fact he cuts bits off. And, that not being sufficient by way of hurting, he kills his 'lover' (the only description possible of their relationship, in spite of the fact that he refuses to ever have any kind of sexual or even emotional relationship with her, for reasons which are not entirely well-explained, but which seem to come down to her being racially inferior to him in some undefined way), who is suggesting gently that maiming the potential saviour of all living things might be foolish, and only then does he stop. And then he decides to take advantage of the Xeelee's offer kind of a berth in the ark, in order to survive the coming catastrophe, so humanity at last has the opportunity to wipe everyone else out, and stand proud, in the safe knowledge that now nobody has bigger sexual organs.
This is, frankly, quite vile. Apart from the not very-well hidden facist undertones (which I hope my summary above has made subtly explicit), we now come to the book's principal defect. Nowhere is there even a remote hint of any ethical, moral, or philosophical consideration of what is going on here. Baxter treats us to a flat, unengaging, workmanlike narrative in which there is plenty of derring do, but not much in the way of thought.
Now, in the Adrian Tchaikovsky's infinitely better Children of Time, we see a parallel evolution of spiders from creepy-crawlies to complex, ethical, civilised beings, and devolution of their former human overlords into little better than mindless predators (just like the spiders used to be). Tchaikovsky makes no explicit judgements, but he does not need to, for his subtle, highly literary, presentation of the narrative leads us to see the ethical issues for ourselves, even tricking readers into supporting the spiders in treating the humans to a bit of what we think is good old-fashioned hurting, but turns out to be something far nobler, far more altruistic, far more human. Baxter doesn't do that. He presents his characters' actions straightforwardly. One fears he considers them reasonable.
And yet, something could have been made of this book. Consider again: the utterly alien, incomprehensible, seemingly all-powerful Xeelee arrives and does things that are for the good of all in the universe, save the inhabitants of one small planet, and then shows a way that all, including even some from that planet, can survive the coming disaster, to be reborn into a better, cleaner world. And some of the humans, strangely enough, those with lots of power, don't like this, and denounce it, and attack it, and try to kill it, but fail. Does this remind you of something? It does me: chap called Jesus who got executed by his people's religious leaders, because they didn't like his message that rules and racism were not enough: you had to have regard for everyone, then somehow pulled off redeeming them anyway.
So, could this book be recast as a narrative about the powerful railing against a god who does not care for their power, but for the well-being of the totality of life and intelligence? Could it become a parable of evil, worse because it doesn't even realise it is, overcome by its contact with the divine, and, not necessarily made good, but at least made impotent? Of course it could, and it could be a fascinating book if it was, something like Charles Williams' 'theological thriller' The Place of the Lion, only this time on a genuinely cosmic scale. Unfortunately it is not. Baxter is not a sufficiently good writer to pull it off, but, more to the point, his deadly 'new atheist' dogma means he is so limited in his understanding, or in what he is willing to understand, that, though he could have given us a masterpiece, he has instead chosen to give us four hundred pages of monstrously immoral bad prose.
But the fanboys will love it, so who cares?
So, suppose that you're some kind of technological super genius, and one day a mysterious, and apparently omnipotent, alien turns up and announces its intention of eradicating you, your species and your solar system. You're a bit upset right? You're a nice, liberal type of person, after all. So you try to co-ordinate some kind of resistance, and, because your dad happens to be a kind of Mussolini-wannabe, who takes the opportunity to make the trains run on time on a global basis, you find yourself with the full might of Planet Earth (oh, and its colonial possessions: never forget them) behind you. This is, after all, a fight against unjustified genocide, right?
Now suppose you discover that this alien came from an alternative timeline where humanity had, basically out of a fit of pique at discovering that, in the galactic pecking order, it was about as far from being number one as you can get, set about systematically eradicating every alien species it could find, and that only this alien's people, who were called Xeelee, survived. Moreover, in that timeline, humanity had remade itself as one huge army of indoctrinated child warriors, and spent tens of thousands of years fighting a 'war' against the Xeelee (because humanity had to be number one you see: just think of what those aliens might do to human women if they were given chance?). The result was that humanity lost, pretty comprehensively, but, in the process, managed to disrupt the Xeelee's attempt to prevent a universal catastrophe, as a result of which everyone, apart from a few Xeelee, who managed to escape to other universes, died. The end. So, it occurred to this Xeelee that going back in time and wiping out humanity would be, at least from the point of view of all those racially inferior non-humans, something akin to wiping out the smallpox virus, i.e. a Good and Noble Deed.
So: you are a techno genius, hero, saviour of mankind, whose dad appears to have adopted Emperor Palpatine as a role model. How do you react to this alien's mission to save the universe from your species? Why, you announce that you intend to follow it to the ends of the universe and hurt it. Because of vengeance.
Fine, so that's pretty much what happened in this book's almost as noxious prequel: Xeelee: Vengeance. Pretty bad, eh? Now let's see what makes this book so uniquely awful in its own right.
Well, there's a lot of tedious bad-SF-style 'exploring strange new worlds' and taking pity on their inferior inhabitants, and killing as many as possible of those you meet who appear to be inconveniently non-inferior (because they must have been inferior because now they're dead and you're not). In the process the author arrives at a very odd interpretation of evolutionary biology, according to which our genome is a kind of reference library, full of the equivalent of those 'Make' books, one for each species in our evolutionary ancestry, and, if we happen to arrive in an environment where we don't need brains for struggle for survival, our genomes abruptly switch to a less advanced model. Thus humans, finding themselves in a nice, Earth-like environment, lovingly tailored for them by a benevolent alien whose name doesn't begin with an 'X' at all, will automatically dump their brains and revert to Homo erectus. This is not just wrong, not just entirely false, it is a reversion to the era when eugenicists and fascists alike preached their racist pseudo-Darwinism as an excuse for wiping out people they didn't like. Unfortunately, given this and that, it would seem that Baxter is that astounding thing, a Dawkinsian true believer, who actually believes that evolution is all about genes 'struggling to survive', and nothing at all to do with the animals they live in. Suddenly all becomes clear.
But let us turn away from Baxter's inadequate understanding of biology (while noting, for future reference, that Dawkinsians have other disturbing tendencies): what of his hero, and his mission of vengeance?
Well it goes on. For pages and pages and page, in fact, many of which could have been removed, or reordered, or pasted in upside down, without materially affecting the book or the experience of reading it (in other words: boring), and he remains square-jawed and determined to take revenge, on behalf of all humanity, for the terrible thing the Xeelee did in giving all these other inferior aliens he has been meeting a chance to have lives of their own, and not end up blasted into atoms by humanity's collective attempt to prove that it had larger sexual organs than the Xeelee did.
Finally, he catches up with the Xeelee. It has constructed a marvel of engineering, a kind of ark, intended to preserve at least some parts of every species it can find, protecting them from the coming cosmic catastrophe, and then rebuilding a universe fit for beings to live in, into which it will release them. It turns out that there even humans in there, which puzzles our hero immensely, for surely the Xeelee is evil and hates everyone unlike itself, especially humans. Or, as we call it in the trade, the pot calls the kettle black. So, what does he do? Well, what would any well-meaning super genius, hero who wishes to save life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, faced by an incomprehensibly powerful alien being who is intent on doing just that on a much larger scale, but which he personally has a bit of a snit at? He hurts it, of course. In fact he cuts bits off. And, that not being sufficient by way of hurting, he kills his 'lover' (the only description possible of their relationship, in spite of the fact that he refuses to ever have any kind of sexual or even emotional relationship with her, for reasons which are not entirely well-explained, but which seem to come down to her being racially inferior to him in some undefined way), who is suggesting gently that maiming the potential saviour of all living things might be foolish, and only then does he stop. And then he decides to take advantage of the Xeelee's offer kind of a berth in the ark, in order to survive the coming catastrophe, so humanity at last has the opportunity to wipe everyone else out, and stand proud, in the safe knowledge that now nobody has bigger sexual organs.
This is, frankly, quite vile. Apart from the not very-well hidden facist undertones (which I hope my summary above has made subtly explicit), we now come to the book's principal defect. Nowhere is there even a remote hint of any ethical, moral, or philosophical consideration of what is going on here. Baxter treats us to a flat, unengaging, workmanlike narrative in which there is plenty of derring do, but not much in the way of thought.
Now, in the Adrian Tchaikovsky's infinitely better Children of Time, we see a parallel evolution of spiders from creepy-crawlies to complex, ethical, civilised beings, and devolution of their former human overlords into little better than mindless predators (just like the spiders used to be). Tchaikovsky makes no explicit judgements, but he does not need to, for his subtle, highly literary, presentation of the narrative leads us to see the ethical issues for ourselves, even tricking readers into supporting the spiders in treating the humans to a bit of what we think is good old-fashioned hurting, but turns out to be something far nobler, far more altruistic, far more human. Baxter doesn't do that. He presents his characters' actions straightforwardly. One fears he considers them reasonable.
And yet, something could have been made of this book. Consider again: the utterly alien, incomprehensible, seemingly all-powerful Xeelee arrives and does things that are for the good of all in the universe, save the inhabitants of one small planet, and then shows a way that all, including even some from that planet, can survive the coming disaster, to be reborn into a better, cleaner world. And some of the humans, strangely enough, those with lots of power, don't like this, and denounce it, and attack it, and try to kill it, but fail. Does this remind you of something? It does me: chap called Jesus who got executed by his people's religious leaders, because they didn't like his message that rules and racism were not enough: you had to have regard for everyone, then somehow pulled off redeeming them anyway.
So, could this book be recast as a narrative about the powerful railing against a god who does not care for their power, but for the well-being of the totality of life and intelligence? Could it become a parable of evil, worse because it doesn't even realise it is, overcome by its contact with the divine, and, not necessarily made good, but at least made impotent? Of course it could, and it could be a fascinating book if it was, something like Charles Williams' 'theological thriller' The Place of the Lion, only this time on a genuinely cosmic scale. Unfortunately it is not. Baxter is not a sufficiently good writer to pull it off, but, more to the point, his deadly 'new atheist' dogma means he is so limited in his understanding, or in what he is willing to understand, that, though he could have given us a masterpiece, he has instead chosen to give us four hundred pages of monstrously immoral bad prose.
But the fanboys will love it, so who cares?
November 26, 2018
Stephen Baxter is a favourite author of mine - some of the ideas he comes up with are staggering and that is most definitely the case here in this journey to the centre of the Galaxy. The way in which the book plays with time is particularly gobsmacking. There were elements that flew over my head, especially during the latter stages of the novel, but overall this is a breathtaking read. review to follow shortly on For Winter Nights.
November 1, 2019
Xeelee: Redemption sees through the reboot that Stephen Baxter started with his previous novel Xeelee: Vengeance. The action and the grand galactic scale projects that we're getting with this one are what I expected in the first place when I 'rebooted along' with this franchise. If you wanted to see what the universe looks like some 5 million years after all the suns die (and of no natural cause, mind you), then this is the book to pick up.
I expected it to be a summation of all previous Xeelee books, but no. It sure has a few themes (and, ahem, one very large cosmic object) in common with the past books, but otherwise a bunch of new ideas take precedence.
The usual downside with Baxter's novels is the lack of interesting characters. More and more of the same Pooles bent on universe domination, or the avatars willing to take risks where the humans aren't.
Would I recommend this? Totally! Would I recommend it over the originals? Nah. How about as a new starting point? Nah either. There are enough references to 'would have beens' to leave you scratching your head.
I expected it to be a summation of all previous Xeelee books, but no. It sure has a few themes (and, ahem, one very large cosmic object) in common with the past books, but otherwise a bunch of new ideas take precedence.
The usual downside with Baxter's novels is the lack of interesting characters. More and more of the same Pooles bent on universe domination, or the avatars willing to take risks where the humans aren't.
Would I recommend this? Totally! Would I recommend it over the originals? Nah. How about as a new starting point? Nah either. There are enough references to 'would have beens' to leave you scratching your head.
August 28, 2018
Xeelee Redemption is a true science fiction novel with breathtaking story and classical sense of wonder. Baxter is back to his true high quality form.
I will not discuss the plot, the synopsis does a good enough job.
Do you like space exploration with that difficult to achieve sense of wonder, massive time scales, Galaxy spanning story and not least asking the question of what is to be human? - this novel is for you.
In an age where science fiction has been polluted by politics this is a breath of fresh air. A classic science fiction novel for the true connoisseur.
Note that this is part of Baxter's Xeelee Sequence comprised of many books and short stories. I have to add that you need to at least have read the previous book Xeelee Vengeance in order to "get" the story in this one, but I wholeheartedly recommend the entire sequence, it is among the best ever written in the genre.
I will not discuss the plot, the synopsis does a good enough job.
Do you like space exploration with that difficult to achieve sense of wonder, massive time scales, Galaxy spanning story and not least asking the question of what is to be human? - this novel is for you.
In an age where science fiction has been polluted by politics this is a breath of fresh air. A classic science fiction novel for the true connoisseur.
Note that this is part of Baxter's Xeelee Sequence comprised of many books and short stories. I have to add that you need to at least have read the previous book Xeelee Vengeance in order to "get" the story in this one, but I wholeheartedly recommend the entire sequence, it is among the best ever written in the genre.
April 13, 2022
3.5 stars, Metaphorosis Reviews
Summary
Having set out for vengeance on the Xeelee that attacked Earth, Michael Poole and his crew cross the galaxy and much of time to get their way.
Review
It’s been a while since I read a new(ish) Stephen Baxter books. The last ones I did, Flood, The Long Earth, and The Long War, were pretty disappointing. Still, this book promised to bring the whole Xeelee saga to a close and, while I didn’t read all the stories in it (I skipped most of the short stories), I did read and enjoy most of the novels.
Still, when I started in on this book, I had a moment of worry. Baxter is intensely dry, and I worried about the 450 pages ahead of me. A few chapters in, though, I fell back into the rhythm of what Baxter does well – hard SF with interesting characters. While Baxter sometimes writes about emotion, you seldom feel it, so these are not the most emotive characters, but they’re clever.
Things went pretty well for the bulk of the book – though since I didn’t remember the other books that well, I was hopelessly lost in his whole ‘second try at the universe’ thing. But at the end, Baxter gets carried away with trying to wrap up the entire complex series (Amazon calls this Book 8 of 3; Goodreads calls it #17), including books that I take it on faith are part of the universe, but don’t recall knowing when I read them (like the Destiny’s Children series – there’s a lot of Coalescent in here). The book suffers for it as the plot stutters along from one ‘Remember? I wrote about this!’ moment to the next, all while the larger arcs of the story and the mechanics that get us there vanish into the background only to be yanked back, the worse for their absence. And the culmination of the whole thing – the final, face to face encounter with a Xeelee – just doesn’t really make much sense and is passed by quickly. The same is true of most of the hard science doodads Baxter spends so much time building up. Some are just forgotten, and some ignored. The whole ending has a sense of epilogue, without ever actually having reached the climax of the story. A long buildup to a firework show that’s a damp squib.
And the rationale for the whole trip – vengeance on the Xeelee – really just doesn’t hold up, though it takes a new generation to mutter from the sidelines that maybe it’s wrong (but not do anything about it).
It’s a shame, because until the last quarter of the book (maybe the last third), I was enjoying the ride, even when parts of it were more author-convenient than logical. Maybe if I’d been more of a Xeelee aficionado, I’d have been more excited. But the truth is, I was one until Baxter just wore me out. Sadly, I feel more ‘glad that’s done’ than ‘hey, that was cool!’
Summary
Having set out for vengeance on the Xeelee that attacked Earth, Michael Poole and his crew cross the galaxy and much of time to get their way.
Review
It’s been a while since I read a new(ish) Stephen Baxter books. The last ones I did, Flood, The Long Earth, and The Long War, were pretty disappointing. Still, this book promised to bring the whole Xeelee saga to a close and, while I didn’t read all the stories in it (I skipped most of the short stories), I did read and enjoy most of the novels.
Still, when I started in on this book, I had a moment of worry. Baxter is intensely dry, and I worried about the 450 pages ahead of me. A few chapters in, though, I fell back into the rhythm of what Baxter does well – hard SF with interesting characters. While Baxter sometimes writes about emotion, you seldom feel it, so these are not the most emotive characters, but they’re clever.
Things went pretty well for the bulk of the book – though since I didn’t remember the other books that well, I was hopelessly lost in his whole ‘second try at the universe’ thing. But at the end, Baxter gets carried away with trying to wrap up the entire complex series (Amazon calls this Book 8 of 3; Goodreads calls it #17), including books that I take it on faith are part of the universe, but don’t recall knowing when I read them (like the Destiny’s Children series – there’s a lot of Coalescent in here). The book suffers for it as the plot stutters along from one ‘Remember? I wrote about this!’ moment to the next, all while the larger arcs of the story and the mechanics that get us there vanish into the background only to be yanked back, the worse for their absence. And the culmination of the whole thing – the final, face to face encounter with a Xeelee – just doesn’t really make much sense and is passed by quickly. The same is true of most of the hard science doodads Baxter spends so much time building up. Some are just forgotten, and some ignored. The whole ending has a sense of epilogue, without ever actually having reached the climax of the story. A long buildup to a firework show that’s a damp squib.
And the rationale for the whole trip – vengeance on the Xeelee – really just doesn’t hold up, though it takes a new generation to mutter from the sidelines that maybe it’s wrong (but not do anything about it).
It’s a shame, because until the last quarter of the book (maybe the last third), I was enjoying the ride, even when parts of it were more author-convenient than logical. Maybe if I’d been more of a Xeelee aficionado, I’d have been more excited. But the truth is, I was one until Baxter just wore me out. Sadly, I feel more ‘glad that’s done’ than ‘hey, that was cool!’
December 10, 2019
The King of Exposition ist back! If you like the author’s writing already, you will enjoy this book. Simply add that. All usual quirks are there: The vast timescales, the always near perfect deduction, the lack of character building.
I actually like these things, they feel comfortable. Only 2 things annoyed me about the book. I think he could have done more on the human evolution side of this novel and it would have been nice to see actual communication with Xeelee finally.
Otherwise it was entertaining, had some interesting speculations and added another aspect to this series.
I actually like these things, they feel comfortable. Only 2 things annoyed me about the book. I think he could have done more on the human evolution side of this novel and it would have been nice to see actual communication with Xeelee finally.
Otherwise it was entertaining, had some interesting speculations and added another aspect to this series.
April 9, 2019
Where Stephen Baxter had been flailing of late, the latest in the Xeelee series brings back what makes him superb; personal protagonists caught up in Universal defining events full of huge ideas.
Xeelee: Redemption brings back the Xeelee, Michael Poole and a bevy of familiar characters both old and new in a blockbuster way.
Post Cold Earth, Michael Poole travels in a convoy of three generational ships with a single purpose: revenge on the sole Xeelee that decimated the Sol system. Along the way, the mission gets corrupted and the crew splinters. Discoveries unlock more questions of the Xeelee's intent, culminating in a galactic (and even Universe) spanning voyage that climaxes in unexpected ways.
If you've loved early Baxter (Raft, Ring, Transcendent, etc ...) you will love this title. My only ding on it is that it is repetitive of past Baxter theme's and I feel like he could expand on any one of them more in its own book or series (but I've felt that way about almost all of Baxter's books).
Xeelee: Redemption brings back the Xeelee, Michael Poole and a bevy of familiar characters both old and new in a blockbuster way.
Post Cold Earth, Michael Poole travels in a convoy of three generational ships with a single purpose: revenge on the sole Xeelee that decimated the Sol system. Along the way, the mission gets corrupted and the crew splinters. Discoveries unlock more questions of the Xeelee's intent, culminating in a galactic (and even Universe) spanning voyage that climaxes in unexpected ways.
If you've loved early Baxter (Raft, Ring, Transcendent, etc ...) you will love this title. My only ding on it is that it is repetitive of past Baxter theme's and I feel like he could expand on any one of them more in its own book or series (but I've felt that way about almost all of Baxter's books).
August 29, 2018
Believably unbelievable!!
The scope of this work is incalculable. Baxter’s ability to create a mind-blowing timescale within a compelling, fast paced and coherent storyline is unparalleled. Hard science fiction at it’s best.
The scope of this work is incalculable. Baxter’s ability to create a mind-blowing timescale within a compelling, fast paced and coherent storyline is unparalleled. Hard science fiction at it’s best.
June 20, 2019
Not as good as its predecessor, this book is weaker on story and heavier on hard science exposition. Mr. Baxter reverting very much to type. Nuff said.
September 27, 2023
This isn't a bad book at all, but it feels so completely...unnecessary. Xeelee: Redemption (and I presume Vengeance as well) is basically a retelling of his masterpiece Ring which more or less covered the entire Xeelee saga from near future to 5,000,000 AD. Don't get me wrong, the Xeelee stuff is what Baxter is known for and I consider Ring to be one of my favorite Sci Fi books so this sounds good enough on paper...but, Ring didn't have a whole lot that could be or needed to be improved upon, so ultimately we just get most of the same people/events/aliens just told in a different order and given different names. The Ring is now The Wheel. Photino Birds are now Photino Fish, etc. Michael Poole has already done all there is to do in the universe so now here he is doing it all again in a slightly different version of that universe, for some reason--oh and now there are two Michael Pooles because one just isn't enough I guess. That said, if you're not that familiar with Baxter's work than there is quite a bit to like here without the burden of having heard it all before.
My biggest problem with the book is that it feels so...dull. There is almost nothing in the way of conflict or action. For the most part the entire thing is just an observer's perspective - the equivalent of a national geographic documentary on Baxter/Poole's universe. We're taken to a lot of interesting locations, given some description of them, the characters try to understand how/why a thing is the way it is, and then we move on. Rinse, repeat. There is nothing that endears the reader to the characters or events as whole, nothing that makes you feel anything for any of them. This also isn't helped by the dry, functional writing.
That said, there is a lot of legitimately cool stuff that is brought up in the book and if you're not that familiar with the Xeelee Sequence than I'm sure it will be vastly intriguing. The big picture of the Xeelee/Photino Bird conflict is of course mindblowing; the sheer scale of the Ring itself, how it works, what the Xeelee's plan for it is, the discworlds, watching galaxies move (and collide) over millions of years, etc is all insane to contemplate and brilliant. Forcing the reader to expand their mind to think in terms of extremely long timelines is awe-inspiring and one of the best aspects of Baxter's writing. However, the problem is that all this was already done, and done better in Ring. I found the universal conflict to be significantly more impactful in Ring as the Photino Birds were explained in greater depth, the characters were more invested in the events (things of significant consequence were happening TO them, not just AROUND them), and Baxter really nailed the feeling of ultimate despair at the end of the universe when the Ring is destroyed; you don't get that at all here as the focus is more on explaining how the Ring was/is built, how it functions, and then some side stuff about evolution on fabricated Xeelee worlds (don't get me wrong, this is also cool, and fills in some aspects that were not in Ring, but none of it is nearly as impactful). As for the Photino birds, they feel like an afterthought and are only briefly mentioned. The crew make a point to keep a stored Photino Bird with them for basically the entire book, and I can't even remember if they actually did anything with it or not.
One of my favorite aspects of Baxter is his ability to write compelling and truly alien-feeling alien races. The only race we meet here is the Ghosts, which I definitely enjoyed-- the Ghost planet is the most exciting part of the book. But much to its detriment, the other pivotal alien races from Ring: the Squeem, the Qax, and their Spline warships, are all but completely left out. We do finally get to meet an actual Xeelee though which is great, although the encounter is extremely brief and largely insignificant.
One big positive about this book is that Baxter has refined his ability to portray his scientific genius. In the past he tended to blind the reader with science-- either extremely hard-to-conceptualize abstract descriptions like in Flux (not to mention the straight-from-textbook style infodump), or long-winded, jargon-filled passages like the entire chapter in Ring describing how the Sun works. As per usual, there is plenty of science here, but it doesn't feel forced, overdone, heavy-handed, or unnecessarily abstract. It's clear that Baxter put significant effort into providing accurate, if theoretical, explanations for how things would work.
Overall, this is an adequate return to the Xeelee universe, though in myriad ways it feels like Baxter's Greatest Hits: a bunch of stuff from his other books cobbled together which has little to set it apart or above any of his other work. Not a terrible place to start, or to check out if you've read some of his other work, but not the best. Regardless, definitely check out Ring because it's basically the same story but superior in almost every way.
My biggest problem with the book is that it feels so...dull. There is almost nothing in the way of conflict or action. For the most part the entire thing is just an observer's perspective - the equivalent of a national geographic documentary on Baxter/Poole's universe. We're taken to a lot of interesting locations, given some description of them, the characters try to understand how/why a thing is the way it is, and then we move on. Rinse, repeat. There is nothing that endears the reader to the characters or events as whole, nothing that makes you feel anything for any of them. This also isn't helped by the dry, functional writing.
That said, there is a lot of legitimately cool stuff that is brought up in the book and if you're not that familiar with the Xeelee Sequence than I'm sure it will be vastly intriguing. The big picture of the Xeelee/Photino Bird conflict is of course mindblowing; the sheer scale of the Ring itself, how it works, what the Xeelee's plan for it is, the discworlds, watching galaxies move (and collide) over millions of years, etc is all insane to contemplate and brilliant. Forcing the reader to expand their mind to think in terms of extremely long timelines is awe-inspiring and one of the best aspects of Baxter's writing. However, the problem is that all this was already done, and done better in Ring. I found the universal conflict to be significantly more impactful in Ring as the Photino Birds were explained in greater depth, the characters were more invested in the events (things of significant consequence were happening TO them, not just AROUND them), and Baxter really nailed the feeling of ultimate despair at the end of the universe when the Ring is destroyed; you don't get that at all here as the focus is more on explaining how the Ring was/is built, how it functions, and then some side stuff about evolution on fabricated Xeelee worlds (don't get me wrong, this is also cool, and fills in some aspects that were not in Ring, but none of it is nearly as impactful). As for the Photino birds, they feel like an afterthought and are only briefly mentioned. The crew make a point to keep a stored Photino Bird with them for basically the entire book, and I can't even remember if they actually did anything with it or not.
One of my favorite aspects of Baxter is his ability to write compelling and truly alien-feeling alien races. The only race we meet here is the Ghosts, which I definitely enjoyed-- the Ghost planet is the most exciting part of the book. But much to its detriment, the other pivotal alien races from Ring: the Squeem, the Qax, and their Spline warships, are all but completely left out. We do finally get to meet an actual Xeelee though which is great, although the encounter is extremely brief and largely insignificant.
One big positive about this book is that Baxter has refined his ability to portray his scientific genius. In the past he tended to blind the reader with science-- either extremely hard-to-conceptualize abstract descriptions like in Flux (not to mention the straight-from-textbook style infodump), or long-winded, jargon-filled passages like the entire chapter in Ring describing how the Sun works. As per usual, there is plenty of science here, but it doesn't feel forced, overdone, heavy-handed, or unnecessarily abstract. It's clear that Baxter put significant effort into providing accurate, if theoretical, explanations for how things would work.
Overall, this is an adequate return to the Xeelee universe, though in myriad ways it feels like Baxter's Greatest Hits: a bunch of stuff from his other books cobbled together which has little to set it apart or above any of his other work. Not a terrible place to start, or to check out if you've read some of his other work, but not the best. Regardless, definitely check out Ring because it's basically the same story but superior in almost every way.
April 10, 2024
This is the first and only Baxter book that I've read. I chose it because it was the most recent, and also because it seems to provide the most complete account of its particular timeline.
It's a compelling read, full of far-reaching ideas. However I am not a fan of the underlying defeatist attitude, with the Exultant timeline apparently permanently replaced by the current one. I am also not a fan of the "Gilligan's Island" theme, with the protagonists ending up marooned on the Ring both in terms of location and of relativistic time-shift. That's fine for this novel, but it cannot be the end of the story. If the Xeelee can go back in time and change history, then so can humans. This novel's timeline and the Exultant timeline are two extremes, but there is room for a middle ground where Humanity triumphs without exterminating other species and without the need for billions of child-soldiers. Call me an optimist, if you will. I look forward to a sequel with an account of this happy "middle ground" timeline - initiated, perhaps, by the descendants of Flammarion Grant.
It's a compelling read, full of far-reaching ideas. However I am not a fan of the underlying defeatist attitude, with the Exultant timeline apparently permanently replaced by the current one. I am also not a fan of the "Gilligan's Island" theme, with the protagonists ending up marooned on the Ring both in terms of location and of relativistic time-shift. That's fine for this novel, but it cannot be the end of the story. If the Xeelee can go back in time and change history, then so can humans. This novel's timeline and the Exultant timeline are two extremes, but there is room for a middle ground where Humanity triumphs without exterminating other species and without the need for billions of child-soldiers. Call me an optimist, if you will. I look forward to a sequel with an account of this happy "middle ground" timeline - initiated, perhaps, by the descendants of Flammarion Grant.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 10, 2019
This was a fun romp along engineering and science’s bleeding edge and through serious deep time. This and its prequel, “Xeelee Vengeance”, make a great pair for both the dedicated Baxter fan as well as being a great, epic, self-contained intro to his vast future history. Covering a human expedition from Earth to the galactic core at just sunlight speeds, the story is a trip into the alien unknown that plays with time dilation to make both the space and time dimensions of the story to be vast.
The cover gives away the element of a ring world within the novel’s pages, but what the characters eventually find makes Niven’s look like a tinker toy. And (for current Xeelee fans) THE (Bolder) Ring comes into play as well.
This book was a pure guilty pleasure for me, even if I didn’t always buy the character motivations and actions. It’s great gray matter bubblegum!!! If your tastes are like mine, this one is recommended.
The cover gives away the element of a ring world within the novel’s pages, but what the characters eventually find makes Niven’s look like a tinker toy. And (for current Xeelee fans) THE (Bolder) Ring comes into play as well.
This book was a pure guilty pleasure for me, even if I didn’t always buy the character motivations and actions. It’s great gray matter bubblegum!!! If your tastes are like mine, this one is recommended.
September 14, 2018
The second half of the Xeelee revisitation (not a trilogy)
Basically, Baxter pursues his rewriting of the Xeelee Sequence. Thankfully, this does not goes beyond a second book. I always loved the Xeelee universe, but trying to remake it, while reusing parts of it felt a bit too forced at times. The end result is more of a travelogue across a remade universe than a real book in the Xeelee vein. Your characters being essentially low tech going straight vs clarke-squared tech ones rob them a lot of their agency: you know nothing they do will really work, but the book lacks any large replacement works showing off their capacity. The ending gets a lot muddled by this.
I still give it 3 stars because it's Baxter and the Xeelee. But it reminds me a bit too much about the efforts of old authors in their waning days trying to mix and merge all their various works and universes.
Basically, Baxter pursues his rewriting of the Xeelee Sequence. Thankfully, this does not goes beyond a second book. I always loved the Xeelee universe, but trying to remake it, while reusing parts of it felt a bit too forced at times. The end result is more of a travelogue across a remade universe than a real book in the Xeelee vein. Your characters being essentially low tech going straight vs clarke-squared tech ones rob them a lot of their agency: you know nothing they do will really work, but the book lacks any large replacement works showing off their capacity. The ending gets a lot muddled by this.
I still give it 3 stars because it's Baxter and the Xeelee. But it reminds me a bit too much about the efforts of old authors in their waning days trying to mix and merge all their various works and universes.
September 5, 2019
My first read by this author and I apparently came in late.
I feel like I fell through a black hole and fell for millennium.
Not something I will read again for pleasure, but I was fascinated by the science fiction.
The main character is a Virtual copy of a human being created to do a task. Usually these copies are assimilated back into the human after the task is completed.
I was interested by the time constraints of space travel and how time was affected by certain factors. It was very relevant to the plot.
The title is apt. The storytelling was told in parts. The devolution of humans caged was disturbing. Sometimes I skimmed because I wanted more action instead of science.
I feel like I fell through a black hole and fell for millennium.
Not something I will read again for pleasure, but I was fascinated by the science fiction.
The main character is a Virtual copy of a human being created to do a task. Usually these copies are assimilated back into the human after the task is completed.
I was interested by the time constraints of space travel and how time was affected by certain factors. It was very relevant to the plot.
The title is apt. The storytelling was told in parts. The devolution of humans caged was disturbing. Sometimes I skimmed because I wanted more action instead of science.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 24, 2020
In short: the story of an expedition of humans, led by Michael Poole, that chases a Xeelee spaceship to the center of the galaxy. The book evolves in chronological order, taking the expeditioners to meet another extraterrestrial species (the Ghosts), and continuing their trip to Chandra, the black hole (at the center of the Milky Way), which has a Xeelee-built ring around it (the Wheel).
The good: I think any Baxter fan will enjoy this book. It has all the elements that make of Baxter a master of modern sci-fi. I am just an engineer, but his books seem to be properly supported by science hypothesis, and his descriptions are powerful and detailed. This is as good as it gets.
The good: I think any Baxter fan will enjoy this book. It has all the elements that make of Baxter a master of modern sci-fi. I am just an engineer, but his books seem to be properly supported by science hypothesis, and his descriptions are powerful and detailed. This is as good as it gets.
December 2, 2018
I was disappointed by "Xeelee: Vengeance". Not that many interesting concepts. No huge scale. Bizarre decision making. Hence I am very happy with Xeelee: Redemption, which has all the Hard SF goodness I was expecting from Vengeance.
May 10, 2020
This was the first of the Xeelee series that I had read, and I was a little concerned that I wouldn't be able to follow it because of that. In fact it wasn't until the final chapters that that played a role, when I had the idea that I was missing some things because of that.
The book shows tremendous imagination and interesting playfulness with physical theory. Sometimes the latter gets a.bit much and requires more concentration than I want to invest on reading a book like this.
Bottom line, I'll be back for more in the series.
The book shows tremendous imagination and interesting playfulness with physical theory. Sometimes the latter gets a.bit much and requires more concentration than I want to invest on reading a book like this.
Bottom line, I'll be back for more in the series.
August 25, 2019
Described by the author himself as a "pendant" added to the chain of his previous Xeelee tales, this book is, along with its predecessor, Xeelee Vengenace, truly a jewel. With mind-bending locales and concepts, this story of a man and, ultimately, mankind, leads the reader on a cosmological quest full of surprising situations and characters but also (if you've read the other Xeelee books) many familiar characters as well. An excellent, sparkling pendant, indeed.
January 1, 2020
The story itself is not worth more than 3 (weak) stars. The lackluster ending would easlily make it a 2 star book. But I so long for books that tackle such grand stories as this. The audacity! I just wish the author followed through with a little depth and a meaningful and rewarding ending!
So I'll give it 4 stars.
So I'll give it 4 stars.
August 29, 2018
Its good to get back into the Xeelee universe. It looks like Baxter is pulling a "X-Men" movies move by creating an alternate reality so that all that has happened in the previous books is in another timeline.
I'm ok with this as long as we get a bunch more books!
I'm ok with this as long as we get a bunch more books!
October 6, 2018
Dragged on for a bit.... What I don't get is that if humans in Michael Poole era found ways and weapons to harm and defeat the xeelee... How could humans more advanced with a xeelee captive be unable to do so for 30,000 years? I think S. B. should get his story logic straight.
January 31, 2020
Baxter does love his Deep Time stories. The conclusion of this trilogy spews mind-bending ideas left and right, yet makes all of them accessible. With some old characters and some new. A good read, indeed.
September 28, 2018
Complete but leaves you wanting more
An enjoyable alternate look at the xeelee saga witty familiar characters. Very fun big science and scale material. Very recommended.
An enjoyable alternate look at the xeelee saga witty familiar characters. Very fun big science and scale material. Very recommended.
October 31, 2018
As I hadn't red the first books in this series it didn't really make sense to me so I gave up and moved on.
Read
November 1, 2019So good
January 4, 2021
Freeman Dyson’s ‘scaling hypothesis’ (‘Time Without End: Physics and Biology in an Open Universe’, Review of Modern Physics, vol. 51, pp. 447–60, 1979),
June 8, 2021
Amazing !
Another awesome addition to the Xeelee series. A must read for any Baxter fan. Could not stop reading it once I started
Another awesome addition to the Xeelee series. A must read for any Baxter fan. Could not stop reading it once I started
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