真空ダイヤグラム―ジーリー・クロニクル〈2〉 (ハヤカワ文庫SF) [文庫]

"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 that outrace light; the back-time invasion of the Qax: the mystery and legacy of the Xeelee, and their artifacts as large as small galaxies; photino birds and Dark Matter; and the Ring, where Ghost, Human, and Xeelee contemplate the awesome end of Time.

Stephen Baxter is the most acclaimed and accomplished of a brilliant new generation of authors who are expanding the vision of science fiction and taking itto a new golden age.

--このテキストは、 マスマーケット 版に関連付けられています。

宇宙進出から1万年の歳月が経過し、異星種属スクウィーム、クワックスによる支配をも克服した人類は、ついに超種属ジーリーに次ぐ地位を獲得するに至った。しかし、彼らはまだ知らなかった―時空の開闢以来、数百億年をかけてジーリーが遂行してきた計画の存在を。その目的が、間近に迫った宇宙の終末とともに成就されることを…。人類という種の絶頂から衰退、時空の黄昏までを描ききった驚愕の未来史連作集第2巻。

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
--このテキストは、絶版本またはこのタイトルには設定されていない版型に関連付けられています。

"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 that outrace light; the back-time invasion of the Qax: the mystery and legacy of the Xeelee, and their artifacts as large as small galaxies; photino birds and Dark Matter; and the Ring, where Ghost, Human, and Xeelee contemplate the awesome end of Time.

Stephen Baxter is the most acclaimed and accomplished of a brilliant new generation of authors who are expanding the vision of science fiction and taking itto a new golden age.

--このテキストは、 マスマーケット 版に関連付けられています。

Stephen Baxter is an acclaimed, multiple-award-winning author whose many books include the Xeelee sequence, the Time Odyssey trilogy (written with Arthur C. Clarke), and The Time Ship, a sequel to H. G. Wells's classic The Time Machine. He lives in England.

--このテキストは、 マスマーケット 版に関連付けられています。