Even after the Xeelee had finally won their war against humanity, the stars continued to age, too rapidly. The Xeelee completed their great Projects and fled the cosmos.
Time unravelled. Dying galaxies collided like clapping hands. But even now the story was not yet done. The universe itself prepared for another convulsion, greater than any it had suffered before.
And then—
‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Michael Poole.’
THE XEELEE SEQUENCE – TIMELINE
Singularity: Big Bang
ERA: Earth
AD 476–2005: Events of Coalescent.
AD 2047: Events of Transcendent (see also c.AD 500,000).
ERA: Expansion
AD 3000+: Opening up of the Solar System.
AD 3685: ‘Return to Titan’.
AD 3717: Launch of GUTship Cauchy. Events of Timelike Infinity begin.
AD 3829: The Emergency: time-travel invasion by Occupation-Era Qax (Timelike Infinity).
AD 3951: Events of Ring begin (see also c. AD 5,000,000).
AD 4820: ‘Starfall’. Collapse of Empire of Sol.
ERA: Squeem Occupation
AD 4874: Conquest of human planets by Squeem.
AD 4925: Overthrow of Squeem.
AD 5071: ‘Remembrance’.
ERA: Qax Occupation
AD 5088: Conquest of human planets by Qax.
AD 5274: ‘Endurance’. Return to Solar System of GUTship Cauchy. Launch of backward time-travel invasion by Qax (Timelike Infinity).
AD 5407: Overthrow of Qax. Third Expansion begins under Coalition.
ERA: The War with the Ghosts
AD 5810: ‘The Seer and the Silverman’.
ERA: The War to End Wars
AD 24973: Events of Exultant.
AD 104,858+: Events of Raft.
c.AD 193,700: Events of Flux.
c. AD 500,000: Events of Transcendent (see also AD 2047). The retreat of mankind begins.
AD 978,225: ‘Gravity Dreams’.
c.AD 1,000,000: Final siege of the Solar System by Xeelee. The Saving of Old Earth.
ERA: Photino Victory
c.AD 5,000,000+: Events of Ring (see also AD 3951).
ERA: Old Earth
c. AD 3.8 billion years: ‘PeriAndry’s Quest’.
c. AD 4 billion years: ‘Climbing the Blue’.
c. AD 4.5 billion years: ‘The Time Pit’.
c. AD 4.8 billion years: ‘The Lowland Expedition’.
c. AD 5 billion years:‘Formidable Caress’.
Singularity: Timelike Infinity
This outline timescale provides the context for the stories in this collection, as well as the novels published in the Xeelee Sequence so far. Other short fiction has been collected in Vacuum Diagrams (HarperCollins, 1997) and Resplendent (Gollancz, 2006). For a full timeline of the ‘Xeelee Sequence’ of novels and stories, please visit:
www.stephen-baxter.com
ALSO BY STEPHEN BAXTER FROM GOLLANCZ:
NON-FICTION
Deep Future
The Science of Avatar
FICTION
Mammoth
Longtusk
Icebones
Behemoth
Reality Dust
Evolution
Flood
Ark
Proxima
Ultima
Xeelee: An Omnibus
NORTHLAND
Stone Spring
Bronze Summer
Iron Winter
Gulliverzone
Webcrash
DESTINY’S CHILDREN
Coalescent
Exultant
Transcendent
Resplendent
A TIME ODYSSEY (with Arthur C. Clarke)
Time’s Eye
Sunstorm
Firstborn
TIME’S TAPESTRY
Emperor
Conqueror
Navigator
Weaver
Previous publications:
‘PeriAndry’s Quest’ first published in Analog, June 2004. Copyright Stephen Baxter 2004.
‘Climbing the Blue’ first published in Analog, July/August 2005. Copyright Stephen Baxter 2005.
‘The Time Pit’ first published in Analog, October 2005. Copyright Stephen Baxter 2005.
‘The Lowland Expedition’ first published in Analog, April 2006. Copyright Stephen Baxter 2006.
‘Remembrance’ first published in The New Space Opera, ed. Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan, Voyager, 2007. Copyright Stephen Baxter 2007.
‘The Seer and the Silverman’ first published in Galactic Empires, ed. Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan, SFBC, 2008. Copyright Stephen Baxter 2008.
‘Starfall’ first published by PS Publishing, April 2009. Copyright Stephen Baxter 2009.
‘Formidable Caress’ first published in Analog, November 2009. Copyright Stephen Baxter 2009.
‘Return to Titan’ first published in Godlike Machines ed. Jonathan Strahan, SFBC, 2010. Copyright Stephen Baxter 2010.
‘Gravity Dreams’, first published by PS Publishing, April 2011. Copyright Stephen Baxter 2011.
‘Endurance’, original to this edition. Copyright Stephen Baxter 2015.
This collection copyright Stephen Baxter 2015.
All material newly edited for this anthology.
Copyright
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Stephen Baxter 2015
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The right of Stephen Baxter to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by
Gollancz
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An Hachette UK Company
This eBook first published in 2015 by Gollancz.
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 1 473 21273 2
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and
any resemblance to real persons, living or dead,
is purely coincidental.
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