Rotating at a respectable fraction of the speed of light. Composed of some unknown, crystalline substance. As a set-up novel it succeeds fantastically, because, consider: this whole story actually just sets up the heavy-hitter of the series, namely Ring.Īnd speaking of which, Baxter has probably come up with what is probably the craziest artifact to ever grace the pages of a Sci-Fi novel (please comment below if you disagree, since I would be keen to investigate the competition). The novel features just enough exposition to truly make the reader believe. From the construction of wormholes to towing one to the Galactic Centre (and back, no less) to exploit relativistic time dilation effects… and much more. Timelike Infinity is chock and block full of wonder, and casually juggles brobdingnagian ideas and cool science as if it is absolutely nothing. The great quantum functions that encompassed the universe slid past him like a vast, turbulent river, and his eyes were filled with the gray light that shone beneath reality, the light against which all phenomena are shadows. For one thing, the story here takes place a lot earlier in the timeline (only about a 100,000 years, give or take) and for another, while Raft deals with an isolated event, Timelike Infinity takes place in deep space and introduces the space-time elements and quantum physics that is so integral to the sequence. Now, even though this is the second book in the Xeelee sequence, it is nothing like its predecessor. I’ve had the Xeelee omnibus lying around for ages, and I’d read Raft some time back, but never got around to Timelike Infinity even though it was on my “to-read” shortlist.

Out of the blocks this novel scratched a sensawunda itch that was causing me no small amount of reading distress (I haven’t really been reading a lot of books for the last three years, and I was desperately looking for something to kickstart my reading obsession again).

Stephen baxter timelike infinity